Chapter 78
Chapter 78
‘Please, Mia, I’m begging you. Don’t leave me …’
Naomi could barely speak through the tears, but she had to make one last desperate effort. She was holding the unresponsive girl to her chest, her tears falling onto Mia’s pallid cheeks, but nothing she did seemed to have the slightest effect. Her caresses, her encouragement, her singing, had all fallen on deaf ears, her ailing friend having exhausted her last vestiges of energy. Mia lay heavy and hopeless in her arms, silent and immobile, save for the erratic rise and fall of her chest. She was clearly not getting sufficient oxygen, but appeared powerless to do anything about it, her shattered lungs useless and inert. There was no point in urging her to do anything to help herself – Mia had lost consciousness some time ago – nor anything to be gained by howling for assistance. They were quite alone down here. So, with no other recourse, Naomi had resorted to pleading, desperately begging her friend to find something, some spark of life, to avoid ending her days in this awful place.
‘Come on, Mia. We made a deal remember. We were going to get out of this together . You were going to find Freddie, I was going to see my mum …’
She nearly broke down, but somehow kept going, even through her cascading tears. If she just kept talking, if she kept her hope alive, then somehow Naomi felt sure that nothing would happen, that she could delay the inevitable by sheer force of will alone.
‘Maybe they can meet, we can have a little party to celebrate, it’d be fun …’
Now Mia did respond, shifting suddenly in Naomi’s arms. Buoyed up, Naomi looked down at her friend with wild, zealous encouragement. But immediately Naomi caught her breath, shocked, devastated. Mia was not responding to her pleas, instead her body was spasming wildly, bucking in Naomi’s arms, as the sound of a hideous, desperate wheezing filled the small room. This was it, the crisis Naomi had known was coming all along, but now it was here, all she could do was watch on as her friend slowly suffocated.
‘No, Mia, no …’
Naomi’s voice was cracking, her composure deserting her, as she witnessed her friend’s agony. Mia’s body jerked again, more violently this time, propelling the breathless teen upwards briefly, before she collapsed into Naomi’s arms once more. Then she lay there, languid and still, the fight seemingly at an end, before she took one last, desperate gasp.
‘Mia?’
Naomi couldn’t process what she was seeing. It was beyond her worst nightmares.
‘Mia, please …’
But looking down at her motionless friend, Naomi knew for sure that she was dead. Mia’s chest had stopped rising, and she felt heavier in Naomi’s arms. Perhaps Naomi should have felt relieved that her friend’s torment was over. Happy that she was finally at peace. But Naomi felt none of these things, instead gripped by crushing desolation and fierce, terrifying loneliness.
‘No …’ she howled, screaming as if her lungs would burst. ‘No, no, no, no …’
But her horror, her defiance, was as pathetic as it was pointless, her cries bouncing off the cold brick walls before slowly dying away. There was nothing to be done, no redemption to be found here, no victory to be snatched from the jaws of death. Her friend had died and Naomi suddenly knew with terrifying certainty that the same fate awaited her.