Page 85 of Look on the Bright Side

Theo looked up, his face gray and twenty years older.

“I’m so sorry, Lark,” he said, his voice faint. “He died ten minutes ago. He tried to hold out till you got here, but he…he just couldn’t.”

•••

Justin’s room was dark and quiet. Heather fell into Lark’s arms, and the three of them stood in an agonized little circle, sobbing. Lark didn’t want to look at Justin. She didn’t want to turn her head and see the truth of him not being alive. If she didn’t look, it wouldn’t start, this impossible, apocalyptically bleak world where she would be forced to live without him.

But she did look, of course. She had to. She pulled back from the Deans and went to his bedside.

The nurses and CNAs had done their sad, kind job, and the tubes and needles were gone, the monitor black and silent. It was simply Justin, lying in the hospital bed.

He looked so still. His skin was not the right color…it was all one shade somewhere between taupe and gray. He looked smaller. But he didn’t look dead, either, not yet. Just…just not quite alive. Yesterday on FaceTime, he’d been so vital. From the Latin, vita, which meant “life.” His eyes had been alert, his grin adorable.

How could this be him now? Maybe there’d been a mistake, and this was someone else. Someone who looked a lot like him, but Justin…he was down the hall, responding well.

Stupid thought.

He’d had this fungus in him for at least three days, she thought. The cough. The rubbing of the chest. Even so, it had moved horribly fast, preying on his devastated immune system.

Now his skin was growing whiter while she looked at him, the blood in his body, no longer being pumped, succumbing to gravity. Hypostasis. The way he lay on the bed was different…he had sunk into it. His cheekbones looked more prominent. Muscle flaccidity.

Even when he was in horrible pain, he had looked better than he did now, because he’d been alive then. He’d been living. She’d take him screaming and shitting himself over this.

Quickly, before he was completely dead (what a ridiculous thought), without thinking to ask Heather and Theo, she climbed in next to him and put her head on his shoulder, her hand over his heart. Nothing. No rise and fall, no thump. His chest felt hard and bony, but he was still warm. Wasn’t that what everyone said? He was still warm. He looked like he was sleeping. You wouldn’t know he was dead.

Heather and Theo said something about giving her a few moments and left, and then it was just the two of them. Someone had turned off the light, and even the color of the air seemed gray and sad. Probably the smoke from that fire was hanging over the city, turning the previously beautiful day into dusk. It would be appropriate—nature acknowledging that the world could not be as bright without Justin.

Lark’s throat was too tight to speak. Her stomach felt like she’d been kicked, and her chest…it actually felt like there were shards of thick, jagged glass being shoved into her heart.

“I’m sorry,” she finally whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

She shouldn’t have gone to the Cape. She should’ve known that his chest was hurting, that the cough wasn’t from ice cream. She shouldn’t have gotten a facial. He wouldn’t even know how sweet-smelling she was. She should’ve taken the service road in Dennis or gone down 6A. She should’ve taken 495 instead of 3. She should’ve kicked that cop in the balls and rammed the fire trucks blocking her.

Oh, Justin. She gripped him hard, sliding one arm underneath him, pulling him to her, and he offered no resistance and no help. She let go, horrified. That wasn’t how it felt to hug him. That was obscene, this lack of reciprocity, this nothingness. She put him back as he was and once again rested her head on his shoulder, sobbing, shaking, her tears soaking into the sheet that covered him. She reached up to stroke his head, his still-bald head. He would have hated this to be the last image she had of him, but the bastard had left her no choice, had he? He smelled like hospital, and that was also a profanity. She buried her nose in his armpit, and there, that was his smell, and the shards of glass in her heart grew barbs and twisted.

This would be the last time she’d smell him. Twenty-one years of love, over. How would she survive? She didn’t know life without Justin. She barely had memory before him. No, thanks, she wanted to tell God or the universe. I’ll pass. Her hands gripped the sheets as wave after wave of anguish crashed over her, drowning her.

Ten minutes. All she’d needed was ten minutes, and at least the last thing he would’ve seen was her face, the love in her eyes. He wouldn’t have died wondering where she was. If she’d been in Wellfleet, even, that would’ve been enough, but no, she’d had to go to the stupid spa, somehow thinking she deserved a break. So wrenchingly selfish. If she’d gotten off in Quincy and gone the back way. If that 911 dispatcher had had an ounce of sympathy.

She was dimly aware that she would have to get out of this bed. The Deans would want to come back in. But Lark didn’t want to move. If she just lay here, the rest of her life could wait, unknown and unlived. She stayed where she was, tears streaming, sobs shaking her body, aware that she was in shock but not caring, exhausted from the adrenaline that had been raging through her bloodstream the past four hours.

Finally, she raised herself up and looked at Justin’s face. This was the last time she’d lay at his side, ever. His lashes were gone, and his eyebrows mere fuzz, and she’d never see the dark blue of his eyes again, would she? She wouldn’t marry him. Ever. She wasn’t a fiancée anymore. She wasn’t sure what she was now.

We grew up together, Larkby. Let’s grow old together, too.

Guess I’m shit outta luck on that front, she thought. She’d never tease him again. He’d never tease her.

She got out of the bed. It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, because in that move, their story, their beautiful, pure, happy story was over.

FIFTEEN

LARK

“You’re hyperventilating,” Dante said, putting a hand on her knee. “Knock it off, or I’m gonna have to pull over, okay?” His voice was calm. “We’re almost at your house, right? Hang in there.”

Her breath was shuddering in and out at an alarming rate, it was true. Was this what they meant by “triggered”? Her feet felt weird and tingly, and her teeth were chattering.

“What’s your address?” he asked.

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