My brother looks peaceful.
The lines of pain bracketing his mouth, his eyes… they’re gone.
He’s gone.
And I am drowning.
Emilia doesn’t speak. She curls up against Ben, holding onto him, and she doesn’t move.
An hour passes. Another.
“Emilia.” My fingers barely brush her shoulder before I pull them away. “You need to… they need to take him now.”
There are people here. A hospice nurse came first, and then others. They keep talking to me, to Emilia, but it sounds like we’re all underwater.
I can’t breathe.
“Not yet,” she barely whispers. She doesn’t look at me. “Not yet.”
I swallow down the lump binding my throat together. “They need to know what he wanted. The… arrangements. Do you know?”
Why don’t you know? Some fucking brother you are.
I take a step backward. “I… excuse me.”
I push past the sympathetic, professional faces, stepping onto the balcony. The sunset, shades of gold and orange and red, feels like an insult.
He picked this view.
I suck in the cool afternoon air, trying to fill lungs that refuse to expand.
It hurts.
Everything hurts.
What the hell do I do now, Benny?
31
Emmy
“What are you doing?”
I don’t look up. My voice croaks from exhaustion and pain and grief. “They’ll be here to collect his washing soon. I need to get it ready.”
I didn’t bag it up last night, too distracted by my argument with Jared.
The apartment is cold now.
Empty.
Ben is gone, and only Jared and I are left. And I have no idea what to say to him.
This is something I can do.
So I carefully bag up Ben’s washing, carrying it to the door ready for collection.
“We need to discuss the funeral.”
