I fell in love with his soul before I ever touched his skin.
My vision blurs with tears as I gently push the hair from his eyes, whispering, “Casper.”
The steady beep of the heart monitor slows, and the tension in Saylor’s body dissipates, letting him sink deeper into the pillow, his breathing becoming more shallow.
“That’s what I was talking about. That’s the vegetative state,” Hunter shares softly, his voice a distant echo.
A tingle tugs at my heart, and I turn to see Saylor standing beside me. My Saylor,my Casper, standing beside me, his eyes wide with shock as he stares at his own body. “Wha—” he starts, his voice laced with confusion and disbelief.
“You’re not dead, Casper,” I choke out, the words heavy with emotion.
“He’s here?” Hunter’s voice is thick, and I hear his sharp intake of breath.
“Yes.” I nod, wiping away another tear.
Saylor looks stricken, a mirror of my turmoil. So I reach out to the Saylor laying in the bed beside me and let my hand glide over his head, and his spirit reacts, a look of shock crossing his face. “I felt that. I can feel you. It’s just a whisper, but it’s there.”
I search his gaze, wanting to guess if what I’m about to do is too much, but I need to do it. I need to feel his skin under my lips. I lean in, my mouth barely brushing his birthmark on his cheek. “Do you feel this?”
Hunter mutters a curse under his breath, but I barely register it, my focus entirely on Saylor.
“Yes,” Saylor whispers, touching his cheek, tears glistening in his eyes.
I stand and turn to his spirit, mirroring my earlier action, kissing the air where his birthmark would be. “We’re gonna find a way, okay? Everything will be all right.”
The waves crashonto the shore rhythmically, but their consistency does nothing to calm the storm inside me.
We’re sitting on the beach in Lubec, at the familiar spot where Hunter and I used to hang out, Sloan beside me, Hunter to her left. I find myself in a whirlwind of thoughts, my mind racing yet painfully still.
Hunter talked me through it on the car ride back here, explaining everything that happened to me that I somehow missed. What they tried to help me, what they still do with physiotherapy with my unconscious body, light therapy. They do a lot.
It’s like I’m forgotten, yet not.
I don’t know how to feel. I’m not dead, just a fucking potato. Just like Sloan called me. But I’m not asweetpotato, more like an old, withered one.
Can you imagine? Being twenty-three one day and then, bam, you’re looking at your thirty-year-old self. Aged overnight and not in a good way. I’m pale, so damn pale—like a ghost.
Ha-ha.
And my hair, Jesus, it’s a disaster. Whoever is in charge of haircuts in that hospital should be fired. It’s like they just put a bowl on my head and go to town with dull scissors. Horrendous is an understatement.
It’s so damn unfair. You’d think I’d at least look decent in a forever sleep like inSleeping Beautyor some other fairy-tale shit. But nope, I look more like someone you’d want to shut the door on and forget. And it seems like my family did just that.
Left me to my sorry state.
If they had been around more in the past seven years, maybe I would’ve caught a glimpse of myself and had some inkling of what was happening to me. But no, they weren’t there. Not when I was around, and I feel like I was around a lot.
Or at least, I think I was. Wasn’t I?
“You okay?” Sloan’s voice breaks into my thoughts, her concern evident.
No, no, I’m not okay.
How can I be? But what can I say?
“I’m fine,” I lie because that’s what you do when you’re not fine at all. I force a smile, though it feels more like a grimace.
I look out at the ocean, its vastness a mirror to the emptiness I feel inside while the sun dips lower on the horizon. I’m stuck in this limbo, not dead, but not really living either. A part of me wants to laugh at the absurdity of it all, to crack a joke or make a sarcastic comment. But the laughter dies in my throat. This isn’t just about me. It’s about my family, about Sloan, and about everything we’ve lost and might never get back.
