Page 78 of Irreversible

Anxious heat filters through me, only heightening the cramps and knots in my stomach. If he’s gone, I won’t survive it. I can’t do this alone. Not anymore.

I curl my hand into a fist and start pounding. “Isaac.” My voice sounds like I’ve smoked ten packs a day through a permanent lung infection. “Isaac, say something. Please.”

Slap, slap, slap.

His chain moves.

Relief sweeps through me so hard I collapse back to the mattress like a puppet with its strings cut. “You’re still there.”

He makes a drowsy, grumbling sound, telling me he was asleep. “To my profound excitement.”

“I thought… I thought you…” Tears prickle the back of my throat as I curl closer to the wall. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

His shackles drag over to me and his voice loudens. “You okay?”

Okayis code foralive.

Neither of us is okay. I’m not sure we ever will be again. “I-I don’t think I have much time left,” I say brokenly, splaying a flat palm to the divider, pretending it’s his hand to mine. Human touch. “They took what they needed from me. They?—”

“They still need to implant the eggs into the recipient, yeah? That’s how it works?” He pauses. “You have time. They aren’t getting rid of you before the transfer is successful. And who’s to say there won’t be more?”

I swipe the wetness off my cheeks, absorbing his words.

Maybe he’s right.

Maybe there is still time.

For me, anyway…

“What…what about you? Do you have an hourglass?” I realize I don’t even know how long I was in that operating room. My plate of lunch still sits beside me, ice cold. “How long was I gone?”

“Few hours, maybe. Then you slept another three or four.” A short pause. “No hourglass.”

I swallow, closing my eyes as I sprawl out on my back, pulling the blanket to my chin. “I’m cold,” I murmur. The pain in my abdomen throbs, and my teeth chatter at double the speed. “I hurt all over. It feels like they eviscerated me.”

“Fight through it.”

My eyes water again. “I don’t know if I can.”

“You have to. There’s no other choice.”

Choice.

I had the power of choice once. My choices led me here. “I don’t have any fight left. Everything is…so hard.”

He goes silent, and I wonder what he’s thinking. His mind is a labyrinth. I’m constantly anticipating his next words—what he’ll say to make me laugh, muse, question, or rage. Isaac has seen things. Worse things than me; I’m certain of it.

When he doesn’t respond after a few minutes, a stab of loneliness tugs at me. Maybe I was fishing for a reaction. A grand speech or wise words. A shot of conviction to my despair.

I should know him better than that.

My fingers curl around the edge of the blanket. “You have nothing to say?”

“What, that you’re done fighting?” He makes an abrasive sound. “I’m not the kind of guy to talk anyone off the ledge, Bee.”

Frowning, I pull myself up on unsteady forearms. “You’re the only guy I have.”

“And for that, I’m sorry.”

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