Everything Love Can't Do
By rose - bronze member
Submitted on June 12, 2025
CHAPTER ONE
He was eighteen, and we’d just started dating.
It still felt fragile then—new, electric, a little terrifying. Like if I moved too quickly, I’d scare it off. Or worse, say the wrong thing and he’d laugh and walk away, say he was only joking—that he didn’t actually like me all that much, that he was just dating me because everyone else at school had someone and he hadn’t yet. I wasn’t totally sure about him yet. We hadn’t even watched Spirited Away together, and I considered that movie non-negotiable.
Everything felt like it had invisible strings on it—pulling us together, but easy to snap. I pretended that I didn’t like him as much as I did and he pretended not to like how nervous he made me. I was constantly weighing my words, watching my expressions, wondering how liking someone could be so nerve-wracking.
We were at the lake. Not the big one near the park where parents took too many photos of their toddlers chasing ducks while pretending to enjoy each other’s company because isn’t this just adorable? Honestly, if I heard one more thin blonde woman say adorable in that tone, I was going to scream.
Henry knew I liked quiet. So we went to the smaller lake, hidden behind the nature trails—half-forgotten, barely marked. It had a rickety dock and a sun-bleached sign with peeling paint that read SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK, which was basically an open invitation for teenagers.
I didn’t swim. I’d heard there were leeches. Also, I wasn’t about to get caught dead in a swimsuit in front of him yet. Or in anything except my baggiest jeans and unfashionably long shirts.
The air smelled like pine needles, and the water shimmered like a sheet of melted glass. I was wearing a sweater even though it was too warm, because I felt weird about my arms. I was seventeen and still learning to live inside my own body. Henry wore his usual oversized band tee—black, with red faded letters spelling out a logo I still couldn’t read. I kept thinking I should ask what band it was but somehow it felt better not knowing since I wasn’t even sure his taste in music yet. If it was ska or hip-hop or another abomination of society, I was breaking up with him.
No, I wasn’t. I’d never break up with him.
He was stretched out on the dock, one arm folded behind his head, the other trailing off the edge, fingertips skimming the surface of the water.
“I can’t believe we’re here,” I said, kicking off my shoes and sitting cross-legged beside him. “It feels illegal.”
“That’s the point,” he said, smiling without opening his eyes. “You think I’d bring you somewhere legal?”
“Well, I don’t know,” I teased, nudging his side. “You help your mom with groceries. You hold doors for people. Not exactly criminal material.”
“That’s just my cover. I’m trying to look respectable. It’s all a con.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Definitely. I’m planning a dramatic life of crime. Robbing bakeries. Stealing pies. Eating ungodly amounts of sugar.” He sat up, grinning. “Better than whatever data analytics job my mom’s imagining for me.”
His parents were those perfectly pressed, church-potluck, my-son-is-on-the-honor-roll types. They’d drafted a blueprint for his life before he was even born: good grades, no distractions, Ivy League acceptance, high-paying career. I wasn’t part of that blueprint. Maybe that’s why I hadn’t been invited over yet. My parents didn’t care who I dated—as long as they were polite. Henry was the first boy I’d dated, and they’d given the kind of vague parental nod that meant “just don’t screw this up too badly.”
I snorted at his comment. His smile widened. I think he liked making me laugh more than he admitted. It was the one thing he never did with sarcasm.
I sometimes wondered what Henry would look like years from now, stuck in a job he hated. Pressed shirt, short hair, forced smile. And whether he’d still remember this moment. Whether I would. I sealed it into my memory.
“You know,” he said suddenly, voice softer, “you can tell me if this is too fast.”
“What?”
“Us. All of this. I mean, it’s only been, like . . . three weeks.”
I looked at him. Really looked. At his messy hair. The faint sunburn across his cheekbones. The tentative softness in his eyes. And even though my heart was pounding like it wanted out of my chest, I said, “It doesn’t feel fast.”
“No?” He tilted his head.
“No. It feels . . .” I paused, trying to find the right word—something poetic. “It feels like it’s supposed to be happening.” I wished that I’d said something cooled. More romantic.
But his face changed and he smiled. Not his sarcastic one-sided grin, but a real one. The kind that used his whole face. Quiet. A little stunned. I didn’t regret what I’d said anymore.
“That’s probably the best thing anyone’s ever said to me,” he said.
“Get better friends,” I replied, even though my heart fluttered like an idiot and I was trying not to smile too.
“Rude.”
“You like it.”
“I do.”
We stayed there until the sky softened to lavender. Shadows stretched across the lake’s surface, swallowing the last of the golden light. A mosquito buzzed near my ear and I swatted it away halfheartedly.
Henry stood, stretching until his joints popped. “Come on,” he said, holding out a hand. “Let’s head back before I embarrass myself tripping over a root.”
“Again?” I took his hand and let him pull me up. His fingers were cool and a little sweaty. I let go quickly once I was on my feet.
“I told you that time was because of the rain.”
“There was no rain, Henry.”
“Then it was a very aggressive leaf.”
“Sure,” I said, smiling as we started walking. Our shadows moved ahead of us on the trail, long and overlapping, making it hard to determine where one ended and the other began.
I didn’t realize until later how much I wished I’d kept holding his hand. We were alone—no one to judge us. I just didn’t know if it was the right thing. I’d never held a boy’s hand before, except for that one time in third grade when I fake-dated a classmate because everyone else was doing it. He “confessed” his love, then dumped me after the teacher told him to knock it off with the kissy noises. I cried for days. He later told me I was the only girl he’d ever marry but then ditched me during recess to play football with older boys.
That was the end of romance for a while. I started building walls then. Not big ones. More like fences. Just enough to keep my expectations for my romantic life from wandering off and getting hurt. Ninth grade, tenth grade, eleventh grade passed with no indication that anyone would ever get a crush on me. Then, over half my life later, Henry asked if I wanted to get milkshakes. And I said yes.
When we got back to his place that evening, he went straight to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Then another. Then filled the glass again. He barely stopped to breathe between sips.
"You’re really thirsty,” I said, opening the fridge. Finding nothing immediately edible, I closed it and leaned against the counter with my arms crossed.
“Yeah, must’ve been all the sun,” he said.
I narrowed my eyes. “Are you actually okay or is this like the time last year where you tried to ‘walk off’ a sprained ankle?”
He hesitated for half a second. Then he nodded. “Yeah. Just tired.” He pointed at me, smiling. “You wore me out with all your weird jokes.”
“Oh, so I’m the problem now?”
“Obviously.” He poked me lightly in the side.
I didn’t press.
I should’ve.
Later that night, I texted him.
Ava: Made it home.
Ava: You’re not that funny btw
Henry: You’re just a tough crowd. Night <3
I stared at the heart longer than I meant to.
Somewhere, maybe, he was staring at the ceiling in his dark room and thinking about me. Maybe he was thinking about something else. Maybe his parents. Or the way his fan made a clicking noise when it spun. Maybe school, college, life. He was going to Northwestern, and I was going to Dartmouth. I hoped that we’d still be able to see each other sometimes.
I fell asleep smiling at the little text heart, thinking that everything was fine. That he was fine.
God, I was so wrong.
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CHAPTER TWO
At first, it was small things.
He started cancelling plans. At first, it was just once or twice. Sorry, exhausted today. Can we hang out tomorrow? It didn’t seem that strange. I did the same thing. We were both in school. We were both tired. Life was busy. It was easy to believe that.
But then it happened again.
And again.
Sometimes when I saw him, his skin looked pale, almost yellowish. Not sick, just off. Like he hadn’t slept well. His eyes were duller. He laughed the same, teased the same, but it always looked like he was holding something else back.
It was a Saturday afternoon when I came over. I had let myself in because his mom said he was upstairs. I thought maybe we’d watch a movie or walk downtown for no reason except it was nice weather and the weekend, or sit on the porch and talk about literally nothing important for hours like we always did.
I found him curled up in bed, facing the wall, knees pulled up slightly, breathing shallow.
For a second I didn’t move. But then my hand pushed on the door a little bit more and it creaked. He flinched awake immediately, eyes wide for a second before recognition settled in.
“Oh. Ava.” His voice was a bit hoarse. “Hey. Didn’t know you were coming.”
“What do you mean you didn’t know I was coming? I texted you three times!”
He sat up, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “I know. Sorry. Lost track of time, I guess. Been asleep.”
“It’s nearly two in the afternoon,” I say, feeling a bit helpless. “Seriously, what’s wrong? You’ve, like, never slept this late before.”
He shrugs. “It’s Saturday.”
“I know. But you told me you were going to sleep at ten o’clock last night.”
He stood up slowly, wincing as he moved, like every part of him hurt. “Look, it’s fine. I’ve got this . . . thing, okay? It’s nothing serious.”
“What thing?”
He hesitated.
I just looked at him.
“I get these weird episodes sometimes,” he said finally. “When I’m wiped out. And I get dizzy, and my sides hurt, and sometimes I get sick.”
“Like . . . throwing up sick?”
He nodded once.
I moved to sit beside him. “Have you gone to a doctor?”
He laughed again, but it was hollow this time. “Yeah. I’m not a total idiot.”
“Okay. What did they say?”
“It's just . . .” He rubbed the back of his neck. “They’re still figuring it out.”
That felt like a lie.
“Henry—”
“I don’t want to talk about it yet,” he said, softly. Not angry. Just tired. “Please. Not today.”
I stared at him, wanting to push. but instead, I leaned against him, wrapping my arms around his waist. I felt his breath hitch a little before it settled again.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered. “You know that, right?”
His hand came up to rest lightly on mine. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
He told me three days later.
I think I knew it was coming, in that bone-deep way you sometimes sense storms before you see the clouds. He’d been quiet that day. Not distant, just quieter, like he was keeping everything tightly folded inside himself.
We were in his backyard, lying side by side on the patchy grass, watching a plane crawl across the sky like a silver beetle. He wasn’t saying much. I kept waiting for him to crack a joke or poke me in the ribs, but it didn’t come.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Tell me.”
He didn’t look at me. “Tell you what?”
“You know.”
He exhaled slowly. His eyes were still fixed on the sky, but I could see his jaw clench.
I sat up. “Henry. Please.”
Silence. And then:
“My kidneys are failing.”
I blinked. The words didn’t make sense at first. Like they belonged to someone else. Like he’d said them in another language.
“What?”
He sat up too, knees drawn toward his chest, arms draped loosely over them. “I’ve known for a while. Since before we started dating. I didn’t tell you because . . . I didn’t want it to change things.”
It took a second for my brain to catch up. “What do you mean failing? Like—you’re sick?”
“Yeah,” he said, and I noticed his voice was so calm it made me feel unsteady. “It’s called chronic kidney disease. I was born with some kind of defect—one of my kidneys never really worked right. The other one’s been doing most of the job since I was a kid. But now it’s not keeping up.”
I stared at him, hands knotted in my lap. “Is that why you’re tired all the time? And—”
He gave a faint, crooked smile. “Yeah. My body’s basically full of junk it can’t filter out. I get dizzy. Nauseous. My muscles hurt. Sometimes it’s fine. Sometimes it’s . . . not.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until he reached over and brushed a tear off my cheek with his thumb.
“You should’ve told me,” I said, barely getting the words out. “I—I would’ve helped. I would've understood.”
“I know. That’s why I didn’t.”
“That makes no sense,” I snapped, but my voice broke in the middle of it.
“I didn’t want you to feel trapped,” he said softly. “Or scared. Or like I was some walking diagnosis. I just wanted to be your boyfriend. Not the sick kid you have to take care of.”
“You’re not—” I shook my head, pressing my palm to my mouth. “You’re not that. You’re Henry.”
He looked away. “They think I’ll need dialysis soon. Or a transplant. I’m Stage Four. There are only five.”
My stomach dropped. “Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
We sat in silence. The sky above us was so blue it felt cruel. Like how dare the world look so normal when something like this was happening.
“Do your parents know?”
“Yeah. They’re amazing, honestly. My mom wants to give me her kidney, but she’s not a match. Neither is my dad.”
“Can they put you on a list?”
“They already did. But it can take years.”
I reached for his hand and didn’t let go. “You should’ve told me the day we met.”
“I almost did,” he said, “but then you smiled at me and I forgot how to speak.”
I gave a wet laugh and leaned my head against his shoulder. “Okay. Fine. You’re allowed to be charming for ten seconds.”
“Thank you.”
Then I sat up again. “You’re not doing this alone anymore. Okay? Not a single part of it.”
He looked at me like he wanted to believe that. Like maybe he didn’t know how. But after a long pause, he nodded.
“Okay.”
And just like that, the silence between us wasn’t heavy anymore. It wasn’t hiding anything. It was just quiet. Safe.
I didn’t know what would happen next.
But I knew I would stay.
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CHAPTER THREE
That changed everything, but not in the way I thought it would. I didn’t start treating him like he was fragile. Breakable. I didn’t hover. I didn’t flinch every time he sighed or pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead or winced and got pale when he stood up too fast. I would not become that person who pitied him. I felt bad for him, sure. What kind of monster wouldn’t feel bad for him? I just refused to let my feelings for him turn into pity.
But I did start watching him more closely and noticing things I hadn’t noticed before. I noticed the bruises on his sides that didn’t fade fast enough and the exhaustion that wouldn’t let go of him and how his hands sometimes shook. The way he pressed his hand to his side when he thought I wasn’t looking. How he’d get out of breath just walking across the parking lot to get to his car after school some days. He still joked around with me, did that thing where he made me feel like I was the only important thing in the entire world, like he’d do anything and everything for me.
He just always looked so tired. It hurt me more than I’d ever say to anyone, but especially him.
One afternoon in late October, we were sitting on the steps outside school, waiting for my dad to pick us up. Henry was leaning against the railing, eyes closed, hoodie zipped all the way up even though it wasn’t that cold.
I nudged him gently with my shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”
He nodded without opening his eyes. “Just tired.”
“Bad tired or regular tired?”
“Medium tired,” he said. “Not great. Not death.”
I tried to laugh, but it caught in my throat.
“You don’t have to sit with me,” he murmured. “You could go hang out with people who aren’t rotting from the inside out.”
I leaned my head against his. “I’m into rot.”
He cracked one eye open. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s my thing. Mold. Decay. Hot boys with organs failing slowly.”
“Wow. Super niche.”
“I’m very committed to the aesthetic.”
He smiled, but there was weight to it now, almost like the expression was too heavy for his face. It faded so quickly.
The next week, he started missing classes.
Then two in a row.
Then a whole day.
When I texted to check on him, his reply was short.
Henry: bloodwork’s bad. starting dialysis soon.
I stared at the message for a long time, heart climbing up into my throat.
Ava: Can I come over?
Henry: yeah. pls
When I got there, his mom was in the kitchen pretending not to cry over a pan of lasagna that wouldn’t heat up properly. His dad was silently folding laundry with that specific kind of passive-aggressive motions you reserve for when you need to take your anger with the world out on something completely helpless and unfeeling.
Henry was upstairs. In bed. The blanket was pulled up to his chest and he was pale under the soft glow of his desk lamp. The blinds were drawn over the late afternoon sun. He looked small.
I sat down without waiting for him to give me permission. He turned his face toward me but didn’t speak right away. Just took a shaky breath.
“I’m scared,” he said finally.
My throat burned. “I know.”
He blinked at the ceiling. “I don’t want to lose my life before I even get it.”
“You’re not,” I said. “This isn’t the end. It’s just the hard part.”
“I don’t want to do dialysis,” he whispered. “I know I need to, but . . . I feel like it’s going to change a lot.”
“Why? It’s just a machine, right? Just a machine that takes the bad stuff out of your blood.”
“I know. But it’s not the same as my kidneys doing the work for me.” He turned to look at me. “What if I’m not me anymore?”
“You will be,” I whispered. “Even if your life changes and you have to use a machine to clean out your blood, you’ll still be Henry and I’ll still like you as much as I do now.”
He didn’t say anything, just let me pull his hand into mine. It was cold. It was also the first time we’d held hands for more than five seconds. We stayed like that until he fell asleep and even afterwards I didn’t move for a long time. I stayed away for hours beside him, watching him breathe.
They set up the dialysis schedule that week. Three times a week, four hours at a time. Monday, Wednesday, Friday afternoons. The clinic was a fifteen-minute drive from school, and his mom took him the first few times. But by the second week, he asked if I could come instead.
“I don’t want to sit there alone,” he said over the phone. “And Mom just—she keeps looking at me like I’m disappearing.”
“You’re not,” I said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He didn’t answer. Just said, “Can you come?”
I said yes.
The first time, I had no idea what to expect. I thought it’d be a little room, a nurse, a chair. But it was a whole unit—bright white overhead lights, rows of recliners with machines beside them, soft beeping and hushed murmurs, people with blankets and earbuds and books.
Henry looked out of place.
Too young. Too alive in that weird, wrong way.
But he greeted the nurse with a small smile, then sat down without being asked. He didn’t even flinch when they put the needles in—one in, one out. His blood moving through tubes into the machine and back into his body again like a closed loop of survival.
I sat beside him in the plastic visitor chair. We didn’t talk much that first time. He was tired. His eyes kept fluttering shut.
So I read to him.
I had brought a copy of The Outsiders from my backpack because it was still jammed with homework I hadn’t done. I didn’t ask if he wanted it. I just opened to chapter one and started reading.
After a while, his hand found mine under the blanket.
By the end of the second chapter, he was asleep.
He looked even paler under the fluorescent lights. There was a faint unhealthy tint to his face. The tubes moved steadily, his blood like thin red ribbon.
I stayed for the whole session.
Afterward, in the car, he looked at me, exhausted but grateful. “That was the best dialysis nap of my life.”
“I have a very soothing voice,” I said.
“Like an NPR angel.”
I smiled and started the car.
By the end of the month, it was routine. School. Clinic. Homework at the dialysis center while Henry rested, or got snacks, or watched dumb videos on his phone. Sometimes he’d drift off mid-sentence. Sometimes he’d be sharp and funny and weirdly full of energy. It depended on the day.
The hard part wasn’t the machines or the blood or the watching.
The hard part was what it took from him.
Every week, a little more.
He missed more school. Lost weight. Got cold easily. His fingers were always freezing. His voice, sometimes, had this faint hoarseness to it, like he’d been shouting even when he hadn’t said a word all day.
One Friday, while we were walking from the clinic to the car, he stopped suddenly and leaned against the wall.
“I’m fine,” he said automatically.
“You’re not,” I said. “Just sit. I’ll get the car.”
He shook his head. “I hate this.”
“I know.”
“I hate being the sick one.”
“I know.”
He didn’t say anything else, but his jaw clenched and I knew he was trying not to cry in public. So I just stood there, beside him, not touching him but close enough that he could lean into me if he wanted.
I wanted to tell him that he could cry if he wanted to. I didn’t. He didn’t. But he stayed. And so did I.
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CHAPTER FOUR
It wasn’t working. Not in the way it was supposed to, anyway. Henry was still going to dialysis three times a week, still spending hours hooked to the machine, but lately he looked worse coming out than going in. His skin had lost all its warmth. He was almost gray, like someone had drained the color out of him. His appetite had vanished completely—he barely touched the crackers the nurses gave him, let alone real food.
His mom started crying in the kitchen again, more often now. I could hear her even when the door was closed.
And Henry stopped pretending so hard.
He still smiled. Still made me laugh sometimes. But it had changed. Like everything was being filtered through thick glass, slow and quiet and far away.
“I feel like I’m on a timer,” he told me one day as we sat on the floor of his room, backs against the bed. “Like I keep winding down before the next refill.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I just took his hand.
“What’s the point of it,” he said after a moment, his voice barely above a whisper. “If it’s not actually helping?”
“It’s buying time,” I said. “Time for the transplant.”
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. Time.”
But it was slipping through our hands. I could feel it.
So I did the only thing I could think of doing.
I got tested.
It was a Thursday morning. I didn’t tell anyone—not Henry, not my parents, not even his. I skipped class, rode the bus to the nearest hospital that handled this kind of stuff (I’d googled it, don’t ask), and told them I wanted to get tested as a living donor. They looked surprised at first.
“You’re . . . seventeen?” the nurse said, double-checking the form.
“Eighteen in six weeks.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And this is for . . . a friend?”
“My boyfriend,” I said. “He’s on dialysis. His name’s Henry. His kidney function is basically gone. He’s been on the list, but no matches yet.”
She gave me a long, unreadable look, then nodded. “Okay. We’ll start with bloodwork.”
It took two hours. A million questions. More blood than I’d ever given in my life. I went home shaking and feeling like I’d lost half my soul in the process, but a little more alive than I had in weeks. I had finally pushed back against the universe, just a little.
I told Henry the next day.
We were in the car, parked in his driveway. He was too tired to walk all the way to the door yet, so we just sat there, the engine off, pop music faint in the background. He’d told me once that he liked pop so I put it on for him whenever I remembered to.
“I did something,” I announced.
“Should I be worried?”
“I got tested. For the transplant.”
He turned to look at me—slowly, like the words hadn’t fully registered. “What?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. I just . . . I had to try.”
His mouth opened. Closed. Then, finally, “You didn’t have to do that, Ava.”
“Yes, I did.”
“Ava—”
“I wanted to.”
He shook his head firmly. “You’re supposed to live your life.”
“I am. I can still live with one kidney, but you definitely can’t live with zero kidneys.” I realized that I’d just admitted that I thought he was going to die and tears came hot and fast into my eyes. I squeezed them shut, forcing them back. “If I’m a match, then I’m going to give it to you. Right away.”
He let out a shaky breath and reached for my hand, gripping it tighter than usual. It hurt him to hold on, but he had to anyway. I clenched my fingers around his. I wasn’t going to let go of him either.
“You didn’t have to do that,” he said, his voice shaky.
“No. I did. It wasn’t even that hard,” I said, even though I had an ugly purple bruise where the needle had gone in on my inner elbow, one I covered up with extra layers so he wouldn’t see it. What really hurt me was inside anyway.
“So,” he said, letting out a shaky breath, “if you’re a match . . .”
“Then you’ll be okay.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, turning his head to look out the windshield at the sky. “I’ll be okay.”
The results came back three days later. The nurse who’d done my bloodwork called me personally.
“Your blood type is a match, which is surprising, considering that his blood type is very rare,” is pretty much the last thing I heard before I let out all the breath I’d been holding.
“Thank you,” I whispered into the phone. “Thank you thank you thank you.”
“But,” she added, “your antigens are wrong.”
“My what is what?”
“Your antigens,” she repeated. “You have the wrong antigens. His body would reject the kidney.”
Oh my god.
His body would reject the kidney.
I didn’t cry until she hung up. Then I sat on the edge of my bed and let the disappointment hollow me out. We’d carved pumpkins for Halloween a few days ago and the best explanation I could think of for how I was feeling was hollowing out the inside of the pumpkin with a big spoon to put a candle in it except there weren’t any candles anymore so it didn’t really make sense.
I waited until the next day to tell Henry. I didn’t want to do it over text. I sat beside him at dialysis and whispered it when the machine beeped too loudly for the nurse to hear.
“I’m not a match.”
He didn’t look surprised.
“Still,” he said quietly, “you tried.”
I looked at him—bone-thin now, cheeks hollowed out, eyes dark under the bright lights.
“Trying,” I said, breathing harsh and fast through my nose, “is not enough.”
I wanted to give him everything.
But all I could do was sit there and hope someone, somewhere, would.
They tested everyone.
His parents, obviously. His older cousin from Chicago who’d never even met me but sent me a string of heart emojis when she heard Henry had a girlfriend. Two family friends. A neighbor. His math teacher, Mr. Ramirez, who’d once told Henry he reminded him of his younger self.
None of them were a match.
Not one.
Each time, I could feel Henry shutting down a little more. Like with every “no,” he let himself believe the worst was inevitable.
We stopped talking about the transplant list.
We stopped talking about anything beyond tomorrow.
At school, people started noticing. Even the ones who usually lived in their own little bubbles. Someone asked me in the hallway if Henry was “like . . . dying?” and I almost threw my history book at their head.
But I didn’t. I just walked away. My throat tight. My hands shaking.
Because the truth was: I didn’t know anymore.
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CHAPTER FIVE
The waitlist is a kind of purgatory. You live in the maybe. Maybe this week. Maybe this month. Maybe someone out there will have the same blood type, the right antigens, a body that won’t reject a stranger’s kidney.
Maybe you just keep losing weight. Keep getting weaker. Keep fading.
Henry didn’t want to be seen anymore. He started skipping school even on the days he wasn’t at the clinic. Said the noise made his head hurt. That the lights were too bright. That everything tasted like metal and he couldn’t eat lunch anyway, so what was the point?
I brought him his homework. Watched movies with him in near-silence. Sat by his bed and read books out loud just to fill the air with something.
One night, after a particularly brutal dialysis session—he’d vomited in the parking lot and had to lie down in the backseat with his arm still bandaged—he looked at me and said:
“If this doesn’t work . . . I need you to keep going.”
I didn’t answer.
He reached for my hand, his grip weak. “Promise me.”
“No.”
“Ava—”
“No. I’m not promising that, because you’re not going anywhere.”
He closed his eyes. “I’m tired.”
“You’re going to rest, and get better, and wake up and text me something stupid like ‘you up?’ at 2 a.m. even though you know I sleep like a rock.”
He smiled, barely. “You don’t sleep like a rock. You just sleep loudly.”
“I do not snore.”
“You make this tiny, horrible little whistling noise.”
I was crying before I could stop it. The tears came fast, hot and silent, sliding down my face without permission.
He opened his eyes again and looked at me like he was sorry. For everything.
“I want to stay,” he whispered.
“Then stay.”
“I’m trying.”
And I knew he was.
Trying is one thing of many that doesn’t transplant an organ.
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CHAPTER SIX
We stopped making plans.
Not in any official, dramatic way. It just sort of . . . faded. Conversations that used to be filled with “next week” or “after finals” or “in the summer” started thinning out. Vanishing.
Henry’s room got quieter, too. The blinds stayed closed. The fan was always on, even when the air outside was cold. He slept more. Ate less.
Dialysis wasn’t enough anymore. His body was holding onto water it shouldn’t. His blood pressure was unstable. There were dark bruises around his arms from the needles, and he winced when he moved too fast, or sometimes even when he didn’t move at all.
I kept showing up. Every day. Even when I had nothing to say. Even when he couldn’t keep his eyes open. I brought him pieces of the world—songs on my phone, books I read to him, cookies from the bakery downtown that he used to love. He only took a bite. Sometimes not even that.
One afternoon, when his parents were out, I sat beside him on his bed, my back to the headboard, my fingers running gently through his hair. He was lying on his side, knees pulled up like it hurt to stretch all the way out.
He was so thin now. His hoodie swallowed him.
“You know what’s weird?” he murmured.
“What?”
He didn’t open his eyes. “I used to be scared I’d miss everything. Graduation, college, growing up.”
My breath caught.
“I don’t want to be a memory,” he whispered. “I don’t want to be one of those stories people tell where everyone just sighs and says, ‘he was so brave.’ I want to be here for the story.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Then stay.”
“I’m trying,” he said, again. Quieter this time. “But I think—I think my body’s done.”
I shook my head. “We’ll find someone. There’s still time.”
He finally opened his eyes and looked at me.
There was no hope in them. Just love. And fear. And this soft kind of peace that scared the hell out of me.
“They called yesterday,” he said.
“What?”
“The transplant coordinator. I didn’t tell you.”
My stomach dropped. “Why?”
“They just . . . they said they’re expanding the search. But the truth is, I’m slipping down the list. People with different conditions—they get priority. And I’ve been on dialysis too long. Some of my numbers aren’t good anymore. They don’t know if I can even handle a surgery.”
“No.”
He nodded. “I thought I’d have more time.”
“No.”
He reached for my hand, his fingers shaky. “Don’t do that.”
“I’m not giving up.”
“I know you’re not. That’s the thing about you, Ava. You never give up.”
He tried to smile, but it broke halfway through and turned into a cough. I moved closer, rubbing his back, and felt the sharpness of his shoulder blades through the fabric of his sweatshirt.
I just whispered, “Okay. Then I’ll hold on for both of us.”
He leaned his forehead against my shoulder.
“I love you,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “Me too.”
And we stayed like that until the sun started setting through the blinds.
And the world outside kept spinning, and the clock on his bedside table kept ticking, and I tried not to hate time for what it was taking away from us.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
No match came.
Not the week after that conversation. Not the one after that. Not when they expanded the radius again. Not when a new transplant coordinator got assigned and promised she’d “go through the registry one more time personally.”
Not when Henry got admitted to the hospital for the first time.
It wasn’t even a dramatic thing. He’d just been tired—more than usual—and his blood pressure wouldn’t come up, and he got dizzy standing up from the couch, so his dad drove him in.
I followed right behind them, heart pounding the whole way.
He was pale. Quiet. But still cracking small jokes with the nurses, still saying my name softly when I walked into the room like it meant something special.
“I’m okay,” he said when I took his hand. “Just needed a nap. Hospital-style.”
But he didn’t come home that night.
Or the one after.
They ran tests. Adjusted his meds. Increased dialysis.
It still wasn’t working.
The doctor pulled us aside—his parents and me—and explained in a gentle, clinical voice that Henry’s body was beginning to shut down. Not fast. Not dramatically. But steadily. Like a tide that only went in one direction.
“There’s no fix without a transplant,” she said. “And we’re running out of time for him to be strong enough to receive one.”
That night, I curled up in the blue plastic recliner beside his bed. It was past midnight. The room smelled like saline and lemon cleaning spray, and Henry was half-asleep, eyelids fluttering every time the IV beeped.
“I’m not ready,” I whispered.
He didn’t open his eyes. But I felt his fingers twitch inside mine.
“I’m not scared of dying,” he said quietly. “I’m scared of leaving you.”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
He smiled. Just barely. “We both know that’s not true.”
My chest burned, but I held it in. Held everything in. Because falling apart in front of him felt wrong. Selfish. Like asking him to carry my grief on top of his own.
Instead, I leaned closer, kissed the side of his forehead, and said, “Then we’re going to make this count. Every minute.”
“Even this one?”
“This one. Especially this one.”
He was quiet for a while. The only sound in the room was the faint hum of machines.
Then he said, “Ava?”
“Yeah?”
“When I go, I want you to know . . . I was so glad it was you. All of it. Even the awful parts. I’d do it again.”
I didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t.
But I stayed there all night. Listening to his breathing. Watching his chest rise and fall. I stay.
Because love doesn’t always save you.
But it can hold your hand the whole way through the dark.
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CHAPTER EIGHT
They send him home.
Not because he’s better.
Because he’s not.
But because he wants to be there. And there’s nothing else they can really do except try to make him comfortable. They call it palliative dialysis. It means: this is no longer about getting better. It’s about time. Borrowed and shrinking.
He jokes that he should’ve gotten a frequent flyer card for the hospital. No one laughs.
We set up his room like a tiny sanctuary. Extra pillows. A monitor they show his mom how to use. A chart for meds. There’s a quiet reverence in the house now, like everyone’s trying not to disturb something fragile. Or someone.
But Henry still smiles when I walk in. Still says my name like it tastes good in his mouth. Still teases me when I bring him the wrong brand of juice.
“You can’t just bring store-brand cranberry like it’s not a betrayal,” he says weakly.
“I carried it three blocks.”
“Still a betrayal.”
I sit beside him on the bed and let him win.
That night, his mom pulls me aside.
“You’re here more than anyone,” she says. She looks tired. Her eyes are red, and her voice has that soft, scraped-away sound that comes from crying too many times. “I want you to know . . . he looks for you. Every morning. Before he even asks for water.”
I nod. I don’t know what to say. It feels like permission and heartbreak wrapped together.
And then—two days later—something happens.
It’s not a miracle.
Not yet.
But it’s something.
I’m sitting on the back porch, scrolling through forums. Living donor message boards. Private groups. Places I never thought I’d look—where people post about blood types and transplant centers and loved ones in need. It’s bleak and overwhelming and filled with too much hope and too much sadness.
But one post catches my eye.
Someone from a town four hours away. A woman in her late twenties. Correct blood type. Registered to be a non-directed donor. She writes:
“I want to donate. I don’t have a recipient yet. I’m just waiting for the right one.”
I stare at the screen.
I read it again.
My hands start shaking.
I message her.
I tell her everything. About Henry. About the time crunch. About the blood type match and how he’s almost out of time.
I don’t expect a reply.
But she answers within the hour.
Jenna Lackley: I’m willing to be tested if the hospital will work with me. Send me his coordinator’s name.
I burst into tears right there on the porch.
When I go back inside, Henry is asleep. I don’t wake him. I just sit next to him and tell him silently:
There might still be something left.
There might still be one more page in this story.
And it might not save us. But maybe it could.
The next morning, I wake up before the sun.
Henry is still sleeping when I slip into the hallway, careful not to creak the old wooden floorboards. I step outside and call the transplant coordinator’s number on the hospital card I keep folded in my wallet.
She picks up on the second ring. Her voice is groggy but alert. I tell her about the message. The woman online. The blood type. The offer to be tested.
There’s a pause. Then she says, “We’ll call her today.”
I send the details. I hang up. I sit on the porch steps with a blanket wrapped around my shoulders and stare at the sky slowly turning pink at the edges.
It feels . . . unreal. Like I dreamed it. Like the universe has been pushing us underwater for so long and then, just when our lungs are about to give, it cracks open one tiny window.
Inside, Henry wakes up late.
He looks worse today. His face is puffy. His hands are cold. His voice is raspy from the dry air.
“You okay?” I ask as I help him sit up against the pillows.
“Do I look okay?” he tries to joke, but it doesn’t land. He sounds tired. Beaten. Like he’s already stepped a little outside of the world and is watching it from far away.
I hesitate. Then I say, “There’s someone.”
His eyes flick toward me. “Someone what?”
“Someone who might be a match.”
Silence.
The machines near his bed hum softly. Outside, a car door slams in the distance.
He blinks slowly. “Are you serious?”
I nod. “She reached out. Said she wants to be tested. She has the right blood type. She’s willing.”
He doesn’t speak for a long time.
Then he says, quietly, “That’s . . . that doesn’t happen.”
“Well,” I say, my voice breaking on the edges, “maybe it just did.”
He stares at the ceiling for a while. “You think it’ll work?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “But I think it’s the first real chance we’ve had in weeks.”
He leans his head back, and for a moment I think he’s going to cry. But he doesn’t. He just lets out this long, low breath that sounds like something being released after it’s been held way too long.
“Tell me her name,” he says.
“Jenna.”
“Jenna,” he repeats, like he’s tasting it.
“She’s twenty-eight. Lives near Millfield. She said she saw my message and something just clicked.”
He closes his eyes again. “I don’t want to hope. Not really.”
“I know.”
“But I do.”
I reach over and take his hand.
“Then do it. Hope, Henry. We can take it slow. One hour at a time.”
“Okay,” he whispers.
A tiny nod.
One breath.
That’s all.
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CHAPTER NINE
Waiting turns out to be its own kind of pain.
It stretches everything out—your nerves, your thoughts, your heartbeat. Time doesn’t move like it used to. Days feel like weeks. Hours throb in your chest. Nothing is still. Not really.
Jenna agrees to be tested.
She books time off work and drives to our hospital. I never even meet her. Not yet. The transplant coordinator says they’re doing crossmatching, tissue typing, antibody screening. Bloodwork. Everything. It’ll take a few days. Maybe more.
I pretend that’s fine.
I sit on Henry’s porch steps and pretend to read while his parents take turns watching him inside. Sometimes I go in and lie on the floor beside his bed while he sleeps. Sometimes he reaches down and touches my hair, just to know I’m there.
We don’t talk about the test much.
It feels too dangerous. Like naming it out loud might jinx the whole thing.
Instead, we talk about everything else. Stupid things.
“What’s the first thing you’ll eat if you feel better?” I ask him.
He thinks about it. “A sandwich so good it makes me cry.”
I grin. “What’s in it?”
“Triple cheese. Thick bread. Roasted garlic aioli. And you have to toast it, like—barely. So it’s just warm enough, not crunchy.”
“I’ll make it for you.”
“Yeah,” he says. “I want a sandwich, and I want to eat it outside. On a real blanket. With sunlight.”
“Deal.”
He closes his eyes again. “And watermelon. Mushy. Red.”
“You’re so weird.”
“You’re still here, so what does that say about you?”
I don’t answer.
The transplant coordinator sends updates. Little ones.
“We completed her bloodwork. She’s still eligible.”
“She’s been cleared psychologically and physically as a donor.”
“We’re running final crossmatch compatibility.”
Every text makes my heart race. Every not-yet drags me back down.
I don’t tell Henry everything. I don’t want him getting attached to the idea of a rescue before we know for sure.
But he can tell I’m watching my phone like it’s an altar. Like it’s holding the last candle lit in a storm.
On day five, while I’m helping his mom fold laundry in the living room, my phone buzzes.
Coordinator: We have the results. Can you talk?
My lungs stop working for a second.
I leave the pile of towels and step out into the hallway. My hands are shaking when I answer.
“Hi,” I whisper. “Is she—?”
There’s a breath on the other end. A pause that makes my stomach drop.
Then the voice says, “She’s not a match. He’d reject the kidney.”
I don’t even hear the rest.
I nod. I say “okay.” I say “thank you for trying.”
Then I hang up and sit on the steps with my face in my hands.
It’s quiet for a long time.
Too long.
I don’t know how long I stay there before I feel the soft tap of a hand on my shoulder.
It’s Henry.
He’s standing—barely—with a blanket around his shoulders and that soft look in his eyes like he already knows.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
He nods, slow.
Then he sits down beside me.
We don’t speak.
We just sit there, leaning into each other, breathing in the sharp ache of a dream flower that almost bloomed. And died before it could open.
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CHAPTER TEN
It gets colder as the evening sets in, but neither of us moves.
The porch creaks under us as the house breathes behind our backs—muffled dishes clinking, a faucet running, his mother’s soft voice on the phone in the kitchen. Life, somehow, still moving around us like it doesn’t realize we’ve stopped.
Henry clears his throat.
“I didn’t think it would work,” he says.
“What?”
“The match. I didn’t think there’d be a match. There was just such a small chance that it would.”
I glance over. “But you hoped it would.”
He gives me this sad half-smile. “Yeah.”
There’s a long pause.
He looks out across the yard where his dad’s old garden beds are overgrown with weeds, and the bird feeder swings slightly in the wind even though no birds have come in days.
“I think I should start telling people,” he says finally.
“Telling them what?”
“What’s really happening. That I’m not going to get better.”
My throat tightens. “We don’t know that yet.”
“We do,” he says gently. “We do, Ava. I’m tired of pretending like we don’t.”
It’s not angry. Not hopeless. Just honest. In that quiet, brave way that only comes when someone’s passed the denial stage and started walking willingly toward the inevitable. I just wish Henry could forget how to use his feet. Then he wouldn’t be walking. But there would still be that inevitable. I hate it. I hate that he’s right. But I don’t argue.
“Okay,” I say, even though nothing feels okay. “Who do you want to start with?”
He shrugs. “My little cousin, maybe. He keeps sending me links to miracle treatments and weird herbal teas from TikTok. He thinks I’m just resting.”
I try to smile. “Is this the same cousin who once told me in all seriousness that snapdragon flowers were really mutant dragon tongues and teeth?”
“Yeah. That one. He’s twelve.”
We go inside when the wind picks up. Later that night, I sit beside Henry while he FaceTimes his cousin. He makes a joke about aliens stealing his kidneys, and the kid laughs so hard he almost drops his phone. Henry doesn’t cry. Not even once. But after the call ends, he lies back down and doesn’t speak for nearly an hour.
The next day, he tells his best friend, some kid from the football team I don’t know very well.
Then his grandmother.
Then some friends from school, one by one.
Each time, it’s like cutting a thread loose from something heavy and setting the weight down very gently. Not giving up, just letting go.
One night, when it’s just the two of us and the house is quiet, he says, “I’ve been thinking about writing letters.”
“To who?”
“Everyone. But especially you.”
I look at him sharply. “You’re not dying tomorrow.”
“I know. But I want to do it while I can still sit up without help and make sentences that you can read.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. “Okay. But I’m writing you one too.”
“Deal.”
We don’t talk about the letters after that. We don’t have to. They become this thing we both know is happening. I don’t know when I’m going to write mine or what I want to say or if he’ll see it, but I know I will.
The days slow down again. His energy dips more often. He sleeps longer. He doesn’t always want music on, or lights, or food. His hands shake when he reaches for water. But he still smiles when I walk in. He still says, “Hi, Ava,” like I’m the best part of his day. And I still sit beside him like it’s the only place I’m supposed to be.
Maybe this is love, I think one night when I sit next to him. He’s exhausted after another round of dialysis and nurses reading him numbers spelling his ending. Maybe love isn’t about a person. Maybe it’s just the idea of that person. I don’t think I could love Henry—I don’t think I could ever love this boy, this shell, lying sweating and shaking under the covers, his face the color of ash, breathing shallowly. But I think I can love the idea of him. All the good things he gives to me.
The first letter appears on the doorstep.
Folded once, no envelope. His handwriting is messier than usual, slanted and uneven like he was trying to write between naps. The ink is smudged on the edge, probably from his fingers.
He didn’t say anything when I left his room earlier. Just kissed my hand and closed his eyes.
I open it with trembling fingers.
Ava,
I’m sorry I don’t get to live in every version of your future.
If I had more time, I’d build us something stupid. Like a castle with weird animal wallpaper and ten million mugs. I’d make you pancakes and pretend not to care that yours always turn out better. I’d follow you around the world if you ever decided to go, and I’d never stop teasing you about that time you ate seven boxes of Oreos for a dare and tried to convince me it was for science.
I hope you’ll do wild things after this. I hope you fall in love again someday and tell him that your first love was someone who once cried during a laundry detergent commercial and still insisted he was romantic.
(I’m romantic. Don’t argue.)
And I hope you never think you failed me. Because you didn’t. You saved me a thousand times in ways no kidney ever could.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
—Henry
I read it twice.
Then I fold it carefully and put it inside my journal.
When I go to his room, he’s half-asleep again, but his eyes open when he hears me.
“You got it?” he murmurs.
“Yeah,” I say, sitting beside him. “You said our wallpaper would be bad. I’d never allow that. If we ever get a castle, I’m doing the interior design.”
He smiles faintly. “I knew that part would bother you.”
“It did.”
“Still romantic, though.”
I reach for his hand. “You are.”
No one comes in. No one speaks. Just the two of us, breathing the same air and holding the weight of what’s been said.
I write the letter at night, sitting cross-legged on the rug beside his bed.
He’s asleep, mouth slightly open, breathing slow and uneven. There’s a pause between each inhale now, like his body’s negotiating with itself. Keep breathing, or stop? Keep breathing, or stop? Machines whir and hum faintly. I pretend we’re on an alien spaceship together. That we’re flying into a star.
The room smells like lavender from the diffuser his mom turned on earlier. The machines hum softly in the corner, doing the work his body can’t.
I keep the light low.
And I write.
Henry,
No one prepares you for running out of time. Not just death—but the shrinking of life before it. How the world gets smaller day by day until it’s just you and me in this room and I don’t even miss the rest of it. I don’t miss the noise or the phones or the stupid arguments or the bad cafeteria pizza. I just miss you when you’re sleeping. That’s how small my world has become.
Do you remember the first time we met? You said my name like it was a question. Like, “Ava?” and I hated how much I wanted to say “yeah?” like I already belonged to you.
You made me laugh in a hospital waiting room after you were told you were going to die. I don’t even know how you did that but if we could ever go back there I would laugh again and again because that’s what people do when someone makes them really, truly happy. You made me fall in love with you somewhere between hospital-grade Jell-O and how you always give me your jacket even when you’re colder than I am. You were mine before either of us said it.
Loving you has never, ever felt like a mistake. Not even now.
People will say this story is a tragedy. They’ll wonder why I chose you. But I’ll know better. I’ll know I got something most people never do. I got to love someone through everything.
And I’d do it again. A thousand times. Even knowing how it ends.
—Ava
When I finish, I don’t fold it. I just leave it on the nightstand next to the water glass and his half-read book.
Then I climb into the small space beside him—carefully, gently—like I’m afraid the bed might break, or I might, or he might.
He stirs a little. Murmurs something.
I whisper, “I’m here.”
His hand finds mine under the blanket.
“I know,” he says. Barely a breath. Barely awake.
But it’s enough.
And somehow, we sleep.
Like that.
There is no touching. There is no kissing. There is just me and him and we are together and we will not let go.
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CHAPTER ELEVEN
Henry is awake when I open my eyes.
Barely.
His eyes are half-lidded, and he’s watching me like he has been for a while. He looks tired, but not scared. His fingers are resting against mine under the blanket, still warm.
“Morning,” I whisper.
“Barely,” he says. His voice is rough. “It’s past noon.”
I sit up slowly. “You let me sleep?”
“You looked peaceful.”
I look down. “Oh God. I drooled on your pillow. I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah,” he smiles faintly. “Still peaceful, though.”
We stay in bed most of the day. People come in and out—his mom, the nurse, a social worker who talks very softly and asks if we’ve considered hospice. Henry doesn’t flinch at the word. He just nods and says we’ll talk about it later. Everything is later now. Like we even have a later. I don’t think about it. I think about now and almost and maybe but mostly I think about always and always and always.
We don’t talk about the future anymore. Not in the way we used to. Before we’d make plans. Now we just preserve it. We bottle it up into glass and we whisper things like “I’d take you to the moon” or “I’d take you sailing” and put all those dreams away. We say things like “I did” or “I won’t” or just “I know. I know I know I know.”
His dad brings a record player from the attic. It’s old and scratches slightly, but it works. We listen to music in the afternoons. He likes sad songs more than pop songs now.
“Tell me a story,” he says once, eyes closed.
“From when?”
“Anytime.”
So I tell him about when we were eleven and I wore two different shoes to school for a whole day and blamed the lighting in my closet. He laughs, weak but real.
“I would’ve said it was a fashion choice,” he says.
“You would’ve said it was a movement and tried to make everyone else do it.”
He smiles. “Sounds about right.”
A few days pass like that. We talk. We rest. We exist. That’s all it is now—existing together, minute to minute. The time between his dialysis treatments gets harder. His blood pressure drops more often. His skin is pale and cool even in the afternoon sun.
On Tuesday I get a call from his mom. My heart is pounding like no, no, no, no, no.
“He’s alive,” she says quickly. “But he’s in the hospital.”
“Why? What—”
“He fainted,” she says like that explains everything. “Maybe from standing up too fast, but his heartrate was irregular, and . . . you know.”
Yes, I know.
I’ve known for a long time now.
“Okay,” I say. “Okay, I’m coming. Tell him I’m coming.”
I skip school for the rest of the day and for the next day too just to sit with him. He’s asleep most of the time. He barely talks. Barely responds when I say his name.
I try to read to him one night but my voice chokes up over the first words and instead I cry.
The next morning I come early before visiting hours are technically started. I convince the receptionist to let me see him. He’s awake when I come in and smiles a bit. God, I wish I could tell you Henry always smiled at the end but this one fragile, breakable, barely-there tilt of his lips breaks my heart open all over again.
I don’t say anything but I tuck my little dog plushy under his arm, thinking he might want it for comfort.
He whispers, “Thank you.”
On Thursday, the nurse looks at me a little longer than usual after she finishes checking the IV.
I walk her out into the hall.
She says, softly, “We’re nearing the end, Ava.”
The words land in my stomach like a stone. I already knew. Of course I knew. But now it’s said out loud, and I have to carry it differently.
I go back inside.
He’s awake. Barely.
I sit beside him and don’t say anything at first. Just slide my hand under his and wait for him to notice I’m holding it tighter.
“Ava?” he whispers.
“I’m here.”
He blinks slowly. His eyes don’t always track anymore, like he’s half between this world and the next.
“I think . . . I’m going soon.”
I nod. I don’t say no. I don’t lie.
Instead I say, “Okay. I’m staying until you do.”
He tries to smile, but it breaks halfway. His breath catches.
“I’m scared.”
My throat tightens. I move closer until my forehead touches his.
“I’ll be right here,” I whisper. “The whole time. Even after.”
He exhales shakily. His eyes flutter shut.
“You’ll tell me when it’s time?” I say, brushing my thumb across his temple.
“I think . . .” His lips barely move. “I’ll know.”
I hold him through the night.
I don’t sleep.
And for the first time in weeks, neither does he.
He stays awake, his fingers curled around mine, as if he knows this is the last time he’ll feel them.
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CHAPTER TWELVE
It happens in the morning.
Not with a dramatic gasp or a sudden silence. Just . . . a pause that doesn’t unpause.
I know before the nurse does.
I’m still holding his hand.
The room is filled with that soft, golden kind of light that only shows up on mornings you know you’ll remember forever. The kind where everything glows a little, even the dust in the air. It feels like the house is holding its breath with me.
His chest rises once more—slow, careful—and then it doesn’t again.
No sound.
No flinch.
No goodbye.
I wait a full minute. Maybe more. Listening. Hoping.
Then I whisper, “Okay.”
Because I promised him I’d tell him when it was time.
And now I have to tell myself.
I don’t cry right away.
I just rest my forehead against his, still warm, and I whisper everything I didn’t get to say aloud:
You did it.
You stayed kind.
You were brave.
You were loved.
You were so, so loved.
When the nurse comes in, she pauses in the doorway.
I nod at her.
She doesn’t say anything, just walks over and gently places a hand on Henry’s shoulder. Her other hand reaches for her stethoscope, but I shake my head.
“Not yet,” I say.
And she understands.
She steps back and closes the door on the way out.
I stay with him a little longer.
I run my fingers through his hair, soft and too thin now. I trace the line of his jaw. I kiss his temple. I memorize the exact weight of his hand in mine before it changes.
Then, finally, I fold his letter.
I tuck it into his shirt pocket—right over his heart.
And I leave mine on the nightstand.
Because part of me is still here.
Always.
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The funeral is on a Sunday.
The sky is overcast in that gentle way—no rain, no sun. Just a gray hush over everything. Like even the weather is trying not to take up too much space.
I wear the only black dress I own. It doesn’t fit right. I don’t care.
People talk in whispers as they come in—neighbors, teachers, old family friends. Everyone brings something. A covered dish, a memory, a sad smile. It’s like they’re trying to build a dam out of small comforts.
It won’t hold.
Henry’s mom gives me a long, quiet hug when I arrive. She doesn't say “I’m sorry.” She just rests her forehead against mine and breathes like she’s trying to memorize me the way I did with him.
His dad cries openly. He doesn’t seem embarrassed. I admire that.
The service is short. Henry would’ve hated anything long and stuffy. Someone plays an old song he liked—something folksy and strange with a harmonica solo that doesn’t quite land, and it makes me laugh a little through my tears because of course. Of course he’d pick this song.
There’s a photo of him at the front, in a frame his mom decorated with gold leaf and pressed flowers. It’s from last summer. He’s smiling like someone just told the dumbest joke.
I remember that day. We’d gotten lost on the way to the lake and ended up in a field full of sunflowers instead. He said it was better than water anyway.
He always meant it, too.
I don’t speak at the podium. I can’t.
But I do put something in the casket before they close it.
A single cookie. Store-bought. Chocolate chip. The last of the batch his mom made a week before he got too weak to eat anything solid.
He didn’t finish it.
“Just in case you get hungry,” I whisper, placing it near the letter in his pocket.
Everyone starts leaving slowly, drifting toward their cars in pairs. I sit on the steps for a while. My brother sits next to me in silence, fiddling with the hem of his sleeve.
Finally, he says, “You think he knew how much you loved him?”
I nod.
“I told him every day.”
He nods back. “Good.”
That night, the house feels too quiet.
His stuff is still in the box by my bed. I don’t open it. Not yet.
I sit on the floor with my journal in my lap. Not to write anything poetic. Just two words, over and over, until the page is full.
He mattered.
The first morning after the funeral, I forget.
I wake up and check my phone to see if he’s texted. The way I always did. It takes about five seconds before I remember. And when I do, the remembering feels like falling straight down through my own chest.
No text.
No heartbeat on the other end of the world anymore.
I put the phone facedown and press the heels of my hands into my eyes until everything goes white.
The next few days blur together.
People keep stopping by the house. They bring food we don’t eat and stories they think I haven’t heard. They touch my arm too gently and say things like “he’s in a better place” or “at least he’s not suffering anymore.”
At least.
I smile and nod and say thank you, and then I go upstairs and cry into a sweatshirt that still smells like him.
My mom finds me like that once and doesn’t say anything. She just curls up on the bed next to me and doesn’t try to fix it. Which is the kindest thing anyone’s done since.
At night, I dream about him. Not always the hospital version. Sometimes it’s just him, whole and warm, lying on the hood of my car and pointing out constellations we used to make up. He laughs. He calls me “nerd.” He reaches for my hand, and I always let him.
When I wake up, the ache is everywhere.
One night, maybe a week after the funeral, I open the box.
The one by my bed.
It has the hoodie he gave me last fall when I forgot my jacket. A few sketchbooks he never let me see. A Rubik’s cube he never solved. Two letters I didn’t know he wrote.
I can’t read them yet.
Instead, I slip the hoodie over my head and curl into a ball on my mattress like I’m trying to fold time backward.
The next morning, I wear it to school.
No one says anything about it out loud, but I see the looks. I see the pity.
I don’t care.
I sit in his old seat in the library.
I walk by the vending machine where he used to stage “gumdrop negotiations.”
I write his name over and over in the back of my notebook, like if I don’t stop saying it, he won’t really leave.
Henry.
Henry.
Henry.
It’s a sound I want the world to remember.
Because I refuse to let the silence take him.
The first time I laugh again, it’s by accident.
It’s at lunch, two weeks after the funeral. My little brother is telling a story about how a goat chased him at a petting zoo field trip, and the way he describes it—arms flailing, goat bleating, total chaos—it pulls a laugh out of me before I can stop it.
I slap a hand over my mouth like I’ve done something wrong.
Everyone at the table goes quiet.
But my brother just grins. “Henry would’ve laughed too,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
And he’s right.
I think about how he always tried to make me laugh when I was upset—not because he didn’t take things seriously, but because he knew I did.
He wanted to make things lighter for me.
And maybe I need that now, too.
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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I go home and read one of his letters that night.
Just one.
It’s dated two months before he died. He must’ve written it when the doctor mentioned “low odds” and “quality of life.” His handwriting is neater than usual. Like he was trying to make sure I’d be able to read it even through tears.
Ava,
If you’re reading this, it means I’m not sitting next to you anymore. I hate that. But I need you to know something:
I loved you with everything I had. Every cell. Every second. Even the ones that hurt.
But I need you to promise me something.
Don’t freeze.
I know it’ll feel like stopping time will make it hurt less. But it won’t. It’ll just make everything dull.
Please keep laughing. Keep being weird. Keep doing that thing where you eat the cookie dough out of the bowl before it’s baked. Keep living. A lot.
And when you miss me—because I know you will—talk to me. Out loud. Yell at me if you need to. I’ll listen.
Always,
Henry
I sit with the letter in my lap for a long time. It smells like the inside of his room—like laundry detergent and peppermint tea. I don’t cry this time. I just sit there and breathe.
And later, I bake cookies. I eat half the dough straight out of the bowl. I laugh a little when I do it. Just a little.
I talk to him out loud, too.
“I still think you’re the worst at giving advice,” I mutter, licking chocolate off my finger.
No one answers, but that doesn’t matter.
I still feel him everywhere.
He’s here.
He’s always here.
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I didn't cry but omg this was so emotional and well-written. Thank you for sharing this
Comment by AsphodelBlue on June 19, 2025Liked by 0
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