Chapter 34.5 - Rei
My best friend was sick and I didn’t know.
I never pushed.
That was the devastating failure that I kept coming back to. I saw the tiredness and thought he’s anxious. I saw the weight loss and thought he’s not eating enough. I saw the way he pressed his hand to his chest sometimes - and I thought he’ll tell me when he feels safe enough.
I thought that if I was patient enough, if I was gentle enough, if I gave him enough space and enough nonjudgmental presence, he would eventually trust me with whatever it was that was making him smaller.
I was wrong.
And now he was lying on a hospital bed.
And as I stood beside him, my tears wouldn’t stop falling.
I didn’t want to be seen crying.
I didn’t want to be crying at all.
But I couldn’t fucking stop.
He looked at me. His face was pale. More pale than I had ever seen it - and I had seen him pale many times, had noticed it and filed it away and not pushed and not asked and not done the one thing I should have done, which was grab him by the shoulders and say what is wrong with you, Marco, tell me, tell me right now, I’m not leaving until you tell me.
“Rei,” he said. “Please don’t cry.” His voice was thin.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. I wiped and wiped and wiped and the tears kept coming.
I was the last to enter after Alexei.
I wanted to go in after Marco’s parents but apparently Marco had been calling for Alexei.
Like a chant.
That was another thing I didn’t know.
When had they gotten close? Why didn’t I pay enough attention?
I slowly sat down and grabbed his hand. His skin was so cold. I held it in both of mine, trying to warm it, trying to give it something, trying to - I didn’t know what. To be there. To be present. To do the one thing I had always tried to do, which was be the person Marco could lean on.
Even if I hadn’t been.
Even if I failed.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I’m okay now.”
He wasn’t okay. We both knew he wasn’t okay.
“I just want to go home,” he added.
I pressed my lips together. “But the doctors said you can’t.”
“Rei, I don’t want to stay here.”
“Will your parents be okay with it? What if something happens while they aren’t home?”
“I’ll be staying with Alexei. He will talk to them.”
I swallowed. “So you and Alexei…” I started.
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. It’s not that I didn’t trust you. I know you told me about Dimitri, and I should have told you about Alexei too. But I…”
He paused and his eyes drifted to the window, to the sky outside. “I didn’t want anyone to know, really,” he said. “I don’t know how much time I have, and I—”
“Don’t say that.”
My eyes were wet again. The tears didn’t stop - had they ever really stopped?
I could feel them gathering, falling, tracking down my face.
“Don’t say that,” I repeated, softer this time.
“You’re sick, yes. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was too dumb to notice.
But we will find you a new heart, and you’ll have surgery, and you’ll be okay again. ”
He looked at me.
And the expression on his face was the worst thing I had ever seen.
Pity, not for himself but for me.
“Rei.” He sighed. “I haven’t been honest with you in many things,” he continued. “So let me be honest about this.”
I held my breath.
“I don’t think I have much time.” He looked down at our hands. “It’s not like a heart will magically appear for me.”
I shook my head. “Don’t say that, okay? I’ll…”
I didn’t know what I would do.
I didn’t know what I could do.
He tightened his hand on mine. The grip was weak. So weak.
“Rei, it’s okay.” It wasn’t okay. Nothing about this was okay.
“If there will, by some miracle, be a heart for me, then good. But if it won’t then it’s okay.” He was smiling. “You’ll be okay. You have Dimitri. I don’t have to worry about you anymore.”
I wanted to crumble.
I wanted to dissolve. To disintegrate. To collapse into elemental pieces that made up a person and scatter across the floor.
I shook my head. “No. I need you, Marco.” I was struggling to breathe properly.
“Dimitri isn’t a replacement for you,” the words were coming faster now. “No one is. No one will ever be, okay?”
I was crying so much. God, why couldn’t I stop for a fucking moment?
“You’ll be okay.” I didn’t know who I was trying to convince.
Him or me. “You’ll be okay. They’ll find a heart.
They’ll find one. They have to. Someone will…
someone will die, and their heart will be good, and they’ll give it to you, and you’ll have the surgery, and you’ll be okay.
You’ll be okay. You have to be okay. You have to—” I choked on my own tears and crawled into the bed.
I curled against his side, my head finding his shoulder, my arms going around his thin, failing body.
I held him.
The way I had held him in school hallways when he was frightened.
The way I had held him at parties when the noise was too much.
The way I had held him in his small bedroom during all those afternoons we spent together when I used to be too anxious to go home.
He would always let me stay at his house and make me feel so wanted and loved.
I couldn’t lose him. I wouldn’t survive it.
He was my best friend.
My sunshine.