Chapter Forty-Four
The room was too bright.
Not harsh, exactly, but definitely clinical. The kind of brightness from strip lighting that flattened everything into something sterile and impersonal, deleting it of warmth, softness, and anything else that might make it feel vaguely human.
It smelled sharply of disinfectant. Clean, but in a way that felt almost aggressive, and Augustine stood just inside the room letting her eyes adjust, her body catching up with where she was.
A pale blue mask covered her mouth and nose, the elastic biting slightly behind her ears, her breath warm and shallow against the fabric.
She took a few steps forward, before she fell into a plastic bucket seat, reaching out to pull one of his hands into her own.
It had been surprisingly easy to get in. A tired receptionist had asked her who she was there to see, and Augustine had replied easily, the words rehearsed over and over in her head on the journey over.
Dennis Clayton, she’d said. I’m his granddaughter. He’s in the ICU. Room 8.
She’d been able to give all the details they’d needed, her voice smooth, practised, and unhesitating. Everything Mrs Clayton had given her, handed over without question. Birth date. Address. National Insurance number. A lifetime, reduced to nothing more than access.
The woman behind the desk hadn’t even blinked as she’d buzzed Augustine in.
And now, here she was, sitting in a room she had no right to be in, holding the hand of a man who didn’t even know her, while another version of him stood just a few feet away.
Theo lay in the hospital bed, utterly still, his skin pale against the white sheets, his chest rising and falling in slow, measured movements. Wires trailed from him in every direction — monitors, machines, beeping rhythms that filled the space with a constant, artificial heartbeat.
His hand in hers was limp, but warm and alive, and Augustine swallowed, her thumb brushing faintly over his knuckles, like she could coax something out of him with touch alone.
“Theo,” she whispered, tears stinging her eyes. “Look at you.”
But there was no response. Not that she really expected one.
Theo — illusion Theo — hadn’t spoken since they’d entered the hospital.
He stood at the foot of the bed, staring, and Augustine followed his gaze.
It was strange, seeing them side by side like this.
The man in the bed, still and silent, reduced to wires and numbers, and the man beside her, warm, present, and watching himself like he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
“Are you okay?” Augustine finally asked, and beside her, Theo nodded slowly.
“Yeah,” he finally said. “It’s odd though. It’s me . . . but he isn’t me either.”
Augustine nodded faintly, her eyes still on the body in the bed. “Yeah,” she said softly. “You’re right.”
A long pause stretched between them, and Augustine watched as Theo took a slow step forward. He stopped at the bedside, looking down at himself — really looking now, taking in the pallor, the stillness, the machines doing what his body couldn’t.
“I look . . . bloody awful.”
Augustine couldn’t help herself. She laughed brokenly. “Yeah,” she murmured. “You do.”
Silence settled again, and Theo reached out, hesitating just before his hand passed through the space above his own arm, the gesture faltering as the reality of everything caught up with him. His hand dropped quickly back to his side.
Augustine tightened her grip slightly around the hand she held. She glanced at him curiously. “Can you, um, touch yourself?”
“There’s a sentence I never expected to hear.”
She gave a small laugh, watching as Theo reached down, still looking at the man in the bed. His fingertips met his own wrist.
But nothing happened.
There was another pause, and then Theo glanced at her. “So,” he said, a strange edge to his voice now — uncertain, but steadying, like he was bracing himself for whatever came next. “What now?”
Augustine looked down at the hand in hers, warm, real, and so completely Theo — while not being him at all. She swallowed, her thumb brushing once more over his knuckles before she answered. “I brought you here,” she said quietly. “And now . . . I’m going to send you back.”
Theo stilled as her words settled between them. Then, after a moment, he gazed at her. “Do you . . . know how to do that? Send me back? To . . . to this?”
Augustine let out a small breath that started as a laugh, before it caught in her throat and turned into a half-sob.
“No,” she admitted, her grip tightening slightly on Theo’s hand.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said.
“Not really. But this . . . this feels right.” She glanced up at him, something fragile but certain flickering in her expression. “I’m running on my instincts here.”
“A witch’s instincts,” Theo acknowledged, and she raised her eyebrows at him.
“You always did trust evidence.”
Theo shook his head faintly, stepping closer to her, urgency creeping back in. “Was there another way?” he asked. “If we could go back, had to do it again, could there have been another way for us?”
Augustine hesitated. “Maybe,” she said at last. “Maddy told me she wanted us to run away together. Disappear. New names. New lives.”
“Why didn’t we?”
Augustine shook her head. She knew why. She’d always known why.
“I couldn’t leave them,” she finally confessed.
Theo nodded. He knew who she was talking about.
“But ‘what ifs’ aren’t going to help either of us now.
You wanted to help your girlfriend,” she carried on, her voice softening despite everything.
“And you have. More than you know.” Her gaze flicked briefly to the body in the bed, the machines, the steady rhythm of borrowed life.
“You wanted to know what happened to you, and now—” she gestured faintly to the body before them — “we do.”
Augustine looked back at him, really looked this time, staring at the man who wasn’t quite there, and yet felt more real than anything else in the room. Her throat tightened, but all the same, she held his gaze anyway. “You can go back now,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”
It wasn’t entirely true, but it was close enough to sound like it.
Theo stepped towards her without a beat of hesitation.
Like this, like she, was the only thing in the room that made any sense to him at all.
He stopped just in front of her, close enough that she could feel him again, that impossible, aching warmth of him that her body still recognized without question.
He appeared to be trying to memorize her, as if looking at her long enough, hard enough, something might stick. Like something might follow him back.
“Memory’s a funny thing,” he told her, reaching out to run a finger along her cheek.
“People think it’s fixed. That you either remember something or you don’t.
” His gaze held hers, steady, intent. “But it’s not.
It’s reconstructive. Fragile. Influenced by emotion, repetition, and significance.
” A small pause. “Statistically, strong emotional experiences have a much higher likelihood of being retained. Even after trauma. Even after disruption.”
Augustine felt hope flutter in her stomach. “Statistically?”
“Statistically,” Theo confirmed, smiling softly. “I’m trying to tell you that when I wake up, I’m going to find you. I’m going to remember you.”
His words settled between them, fragile and impossible and so desperately wanted that it made Augustine’s soul hurt, and she shook her head, even as her eyes burned. She stood, releasing the real Theo’s hand.
“Don’t,” she said softly. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”
Theo didn’t even hesitate. “I never do.”
He kissed her, and it wasn’t rushed or desperate. His hand came up to her face again, warm and steady, and she leaned into it without thinking, her fingers curling into his shirt like she could hold him there, like she could stop what was coming next if she just held on tightly enough.
She couldn’t though. She knew that. So, even as she kissed him back, even as she tried to memorize everything — the feel of him, the shape of him, the way he felt against her — she knew this was the end for them. The end for this Theo, who’d known her and chosen her, fully, and without hesitation.
When he pulled back, it was slow and reluctant, his forehead resting briefly against hers. “I’m going to find you,” he murmured. “I promise. I found you once before. I can do it again.”
“Yes,” she said, and a tear slipped down her face. Without thinking, Theo brushed it away.
“Don’t cry,” he told her, kissing her once more.
“You conjured me from nothing. Called me back when I had nothing left to give.” His hand lingered against her cheek, thumb brushing once, like he couldn’t quite let go.
“So if I wake up, and I don’t remember, I’ll still find you.
I don’t know how,” he admitted, a faint, broken smile touching his mouth.
“But I will.” His gaze held hers, unwavering, even as something in him began to thin, to fade at the edges.
“Because I chose you once, and I’ll choose you again.
Again and again. In every lifetime I ever get to live. ”
She nodded, a tear slipping down her face as she pressed her eyes shut.
She couldn’t bear to watch him leave. To watch him fade into nothing.
She felt Theo’s thumb rub over her cheek once more, and she leaned into his touch.
The warmth faded, slowly but cruelly, and when Augustine opened her eyes once more, Theo was gone.
Augustine stood there, her hand still half-raised where his face had been.
A sound, sharp and sudden, cut through her grief as a monitor beside Theo’s bed shifted, the steady rhythm stuttering, and Augustine’s eyes snapped towards it.
For a split second, there was a new rhythm to Theo’s heart — but it wasn’t a waking one, and nowhere near the sharp, rising chaos of consciousness returning.
It was just different, as something adjusted within him.
Theo didn’t move however, his body still limp, his skin still warm, and Augustine stood there for a long moment, staring at him, her heart still caught somewhere between hope and something more resigned.
“Bye, Theo,” she said softly. “Come find me if you can.”
She stepped back from the bed, into the painfully empty space part of him had filled just moments ago. She walked out of the room, away from the too-bright lights and the sharp smell of disinfectant and the soft, indifferent hum of machines living for people who couldn’t do it for themselves.
The corridor was quiet, and Augustine walked slowly, her steps losing purpose as she moved forward, her thoughts still back in that room, still caught on a version of a man who no longer existed.