I look around and Patrick is already asking around: he knows how to be very persuasive.
Joe continues speaking to me, trying to make me listen to reason, but I can’t hear him anymore. To tell the truth, I can’t hear anything other than my own heartbeat accelerating, drumming in my ears.
I see Patrick moving his lips, he makes a gesture for me to follow him but I’m not able to move. I am completely paralyzed and I can’t understand what’s happening around me.
My world is ending. My life has ended in this moment in this hospital. My self control has abandoned me. I’m shaking and I can’t stop, I can feel my legs are about to give way.
I fall to the ground, a dead weight and Patrick tries to lift me up, pulling me by the arm.
“Let’s go dude, don’t fall apart on me just yet.”
But I am. I’m falling apart. I’m imploding. I’m burning like a piece of paper, like a rough draft of a book that you will never finish because you know there’s not going to be a happy ending.
You demand it.
And I want it, for me and for her.
I want our forever.
—
ALEX
“Okay Alex, I’d say we’re just about done here. All you have to do is relax and be ready for tomorrow morning. You’ll be the first one in the operating room.”
The anaesthetist explains what I can expect. I nod along and let the doctors take care of me, trying to display a serenity I do not possess.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” she reassures me, rubbing my shoulder.
I take a few deep breaths while I’m waiting to be transferred to my room. I close my eyes and go back to thinking about the last hours I spent with Jason. I touch my lip with my finger, imagining that he is kissing me again, sweet and light with his itchy beard tickling my face and his hands running along my back, his body pressed to mine.
I don’t want to cry or have regrets. I want to be calm and maintain a steady heartbeat.
The nurses accompany me to the elevator in a wheelchair as they chat about what they’re doing tonight after work. I smile to myself and can’t help envying them just a little because I’d like another night too. Just one more, to breathe next to him again.
The elevator doors open and as they bring me to my room I hear someone yelling in the hallway.
“You’re not allowed to be here! I already told you visiting hours are over and only relatives are permitted to stay overnight.”
“I am begging you, just let me talk to her. Two minutes, that’s all I’m asking.”
“It’s not possible. You’re not even part of the family.”
“Don’t make me beg you.”
“Don’t you make me have to call security.”
“You don’t understand, I have to be here!”
“You can come back tomorrow.”
“Please. That woman is all I have. She…she is my family.”
Oh my God. It’s him.
I get up off the chair and walk along the hallway going to my room where a nurse, my mom and my dad are all trying to calm him down.
“Wait!”
