Page 67 of Dating After the End of the World
“What? Why?” He jerks his head back.
“So you’ll forget how much of an asshole you are.” I smile up at him, trying to make my dimpled cheeks as prominent as possible.
He chuckles and looks down at his watch, noting the time and doing a quick calculation based on when he was bitten. “It looks like you’ll only have to wait about twenty more minutes to see if your wish comes true.”
I notice the worry lines on his face, and my smile fades. My jocular attitude and attempts to keep the situation light are waning in their efficacy as the nearness of his fate is beginning to take hold. His bright eyes have seemed to dull, darting in random patterns, likely in lockstep with the frantic swirling of his thoughts. I set my plate down and wipe my hands and face with a napkin, composing myself.
“Are you scared?” I ask in a serious tone. I know I am, but I don’t say that part out loud.
I can tell by his expression that he wants to answer no. He wants to play tough and act like this is nothing compared to what he’s been through in his life. But not even he can fake it through the gravity of what might happen next. “Yeah,” he says just above a whisper, like he doesn’t want me to hear it.
“Don’t be. I’m sure you’ll be fine.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because only the good die young, so you’re gonna live forever.”
He stares at me; his face is unmoving. He starts to lightly cough, holding it in his throat, but soon the coughing breaks free. His mouth opens, and he erupts in a full, deep laugh as he takes some comfort in my wit.
Blake sits on his cot and finally starts eating. His runny yolk has congealed, but he doesn’t seem to care. He checks his watch several times in between bites. I can’t take my eyes off him because I’m scared, and deep down, I’m worried I’m gonna lose him. I study his face and eyes as they go through the torturous uncertainty. He meets my gaze every few seconds. There’s a fear in his eyes that I wish I could cure for him, but not everything can be fixed.
As much as I’ve joked about a negative outcome befalling him, I do hope he has the same good fortune I did. I glance down at my own scar from when I was bitten, realizing I didn’t go through any of the same agony of waiting that Blake is because I didn’t know any better. I thought a deranged patient, hopped up on meds or in a fugue state, bit me, and that was that. What he’s experiencing is far worse. We only fear what we’re uncertain of, and right now, that’s Blake’s future. His life hangs in the balance.
“You know at the hospital, when I froze?” he says, pulling me from my thoughts.
I lift my head and watch him stare off at the side wall of his cell. It’s the same look he had in the hospital, and it’s like he’s standing right back where he was.
“I couldn’t forget ... even if I wanted to,” I say.
Blake shakes his head, and tears run down his reddened cheeks. Suddenly, he slaps himself with both hands at the same time, blowing out a heavy stream of air.
“I knew him,” he admits.
I stand and walk to his cell, passing my arms through the bars, letting them hang down on their own. “Who?” I ask, not fully following what he’s saying.
“The biter. The one that bit me.”
“What do you mean youknewhim?”
Blake stares into my eyes with such an intense gaze, it’s like he wants me to see into his soul, so he doesn’t have to say it himself. “He was my friend. We were in theSeals together. His name was Grant,and he saved my ass more than once, and vice versa. You can’t really get closer than a bond like that.” I can see from the look on his face that these moments of life and death, someone else putting themselves on the line for you, are playing out in the theater of his mind.
He tightly presses his eyes shut, as though he’s trying to squeeze the memories out, not wanting to relive something so painful. Blake wipes away the tears and glances up at the ceiling, inhaling and exhaling deeply. “Grant was in town visiting. We’d gone out drinking to blow off some steam. The next day, he was feeling like shit. I chalked it up to him being hungover, since I wasn’t much better off myself. I told him to just take it easy, pound some fluids, and I’d get us something nice and greasy to soak up the aftermath of the booze. But his hangover wouldn’t go away, even into the next day, and then things started getting really weird. His memory was starting to go to shit, and I don’t mean like he was blackout the night before, which he was, and couldn’t remember how we got home, but I mean ... he couldn’t remember my name, or his. I panicked, and I took him to the hospital.”
“That was the right move,” I say.
“Yeah.” He turns to the far wall of the cell, his back facing me. “Well, maybe not.” Blake pounds his fist against the cinder block, holding it there. I can see his arm begin to shake, like he’s trying to push right through it, letting free the guilt trapped inside him.
“I was waiting in the lobby. The doctors said they needed to run some tests, but something was off. Nurses and doctors started rushing in and out. At first, they just seemed hurried and busy, but then their urgency morphed into fear, and I knew something big was going down. That’s when I saw my first one. A patient stumbled out of the double doors covered in blood, and he looked ...” Blake turns to me, shaking his head. His gaze falls to the ground, searching for a description for a thing that doesn’t exist. “I’d never seen anything like it. Seconds later, the hospital erupted in chaos. There were screams all around me, people running for exits, some bloodied, some still untouched. More and more of thosethingscame pouring out fromwhere my friend had been taken. I figured he was dead.” Blake walks to his cell door, taking my hands in his. “It wasn’t until the other night at dinner, when you told us about the different outcomes, that I realized if I had known better, I could have saved him.”
A new torrent of tears begins to stream down his face as he squeezes my hands. His grip is actually too much, sending pain shooting up my arms, but I’m more than happy to endure it in the moment. It all makes sense now. That’s why he was so upset with me, why he stormed off during dinner. He went from thinking he had left his dead friend to thinking he might have left someone who had a chance.
“That’s why I didn’t want to believe you. Because believing you meant that I was a coward and selfish and evil in a way I couldn’t bear to deal with. It meant that at the slightest inkling of danger, I only cared about me. It meant that I left my friend behind. I wouldn’t even be standing here if it weren’t for him. I’d be lying dead in a compound over in Syria, rotting in the sand with my head cut off or my legs blown halfway across the country. When danger came screaming toward us and stuck itself between Grant and me, he looked it head-on and chose my life. When the same happened in that hospital ... I ran.”
I squeeze his hands, guiding them up, hoping that his eyes will follow, and they do. “You didn’t know. You couldn’t possibly have known.”
Blake tries to pull away, but I yank him right back, keeping him engaged. He can beat himself up for being a jerk to me, but I won’t let him beat himself up for this.
“Hey, I did the same thing as you, Blake.”
