Chapter 12 Miles
Charlotte's face.
That was the first thing. The only thing that mattered.
Her face above me, blocking out the sky, and something was wrong with it, something was wrong with her, because Charlotte didn't look like that.
Charlotte was calm. The Charlotte I knew was steady hands and dark humor and the quiet certainty that everything would be fine.
She was screaming.
"Miles! Miles, can you hear me? Look at me!"
I tried to tell her I was here. That I could see her, even if the edges of her face kept blurring and sharpening like a camera that couldn't find its focus. But my mouth wasn't taking orders anymore. None of me was.
"Don't move. Don't try to move, okay? You're going to be fine." Her hands pressed against my chest, warm and steady, even as her voice cracked. "You're going to be fine. I've got you."
She didn't sound like she believed it.
The sky behind her was impossibly blue. The same sky we'd been running under five minutes ago. Or was it five hours? Time had turned liquid, unmeasurable.
All I knew was that moments ago, I'd been turning to tease her, and the sun had been catching the honey strands of her hair. I'd been thinking that I wanted to kiss her when we got home. That I wanted to spend the rest of my life finding excuses to kiss her.
Now there was screaming. And sirens, somewhere distant. And a pain so deep it had transcended pain entirely, becoming simply a white noise that filled every corner of my body.
"Help! Somebody call 911!" Charlotte's head whipped around, her ponytail flying. "Please! There's been an accident!"
I wanted to tell her that I wasn't going anywhere.
That I'd spent fifteen years without her, and I wasn't stupid enough to leave now.
But darkness kept lapping at the edges of my vision, pulling me under, and all I could do was stare at her face and try to memorize every freckle, every line, every detail I might forget.
But I couldn’t see anything.
The sirens grew louder. Charlotte kept talking to me, to the crying woman, to the 911 dispatcher on someone's phone. And yet her hands never left my chest.
Flashes of reality were all I had; I clutched to them and tried to hear her voice.
The ambulance doors slammed shut, and suddenly we were moving, sirens wailing, the world reduced to this small metal box and the woman gripping my hand like she could physically keep me tethered to life.
"Stay with me, Miles." Her voice came from somewhere. I could imagine her teary face, and I wanted to leap out to her. "Talk to me. Can you talk to me?"
I tried. God, I tried. But my body was in an ocean, and the words I wanted to say, ‘I love you,’ ‘I'm sorry,’ ‘I should have told you sooner,’ were trapped in my throat under the depths of infinity.
"Okay. Okay, that's okay, you don't have to talk." She pressed her lips to my hand, and I felt the wetness of her tears against my skin. "Just stay with me. Don't leave me."
My body was so heavy. Drifting further and further into nothing. The darkness was so warm, so soft, promising an end to the searing pain that pulsed with every heartbeat.
"Miles," Her voice cracked. "Please. I'm not done with you yet."
I'm not done with you either, I thought, but the thought was slippery, hard to hold onto. I wanted to watch you read the Sunday paper for fifty years. I wanted to learn how you take your coffee when you're sad versus when you're happy. I wanted to see your face again.
I could hear something about blood pressure, about head trauma, words that didn’t register. Charlotte responded in that steady nurse voice, but her hand never loosened its grip on mine.
"We're two minutes out," someone said.
I could hear echoes in the distance; I couldn’t tell anymore where they came from, or who it was. I was alone.
I tried to think of her eyes. Green like sea glass, like the first leaves of spring, like every clichéd comparison ever to be mocked in bad poetry. I understood those writers now.
When you loved someone this much, language failed. All you could do was reach for metaphors and hope they caught a fraction of the truth.
Then an earthquake shook me. I was comfortable at the bottom of this ocean, but the fault lines underneath were shifting. I felt I was moving. Echoes of doors opening and people yelling in the distance.
"Thirty-six-year-old male, pedestrian versus vehicle—"
“Started at eight, dropped to six in transit—"
"Get him to imaging. I want a full trauma panel and—"
The words blurred together, meaningless noise. The only thing that mattered was Charlotte's hand in mine. The bottom of the ocean was cold, but I could feel a warm current. I wanted to let it carry me.
"This is as far as you can go.”
I heard voices again as the water carried me. I couldn’t tell who it was. Did they speak to me? Was this over?
"No." Charlotte's voice rang out distinctly in the distance, "No, I need to—"
I forced all my being to hear more. I couldn’t choose where to go. My body wouldn’t move. I just prayed I’d hear that angel again.
"You fight. You hear me? You fight with everything you have."
I tried to speak. Tried to tell her I would. But the words wouldn't come.
Tried to scream out her name, but there was no air in my lungs.
"I love you."
It echoed through the ocean floor, reverberated across the water like a prayer. I heard it once. Then twice. It stuck to my ears. I love you. I love you. I love you.
One of my hands gripped sand, as if it grew a mind of its own. I felt it slip between my fingers. I was searching for something, anything. I needed to stop flowing away. Wanted to swim.
The cold hit me immediately. The warm water that flowed with me was gone. I was alone, but I still remembered her. I couldn’t let that voice go.
Something lit up at the surface; endless darkness was on the horizon, but the ground was illuminated by blinding white light. The trail of parted sand left by my hand was there.
Then I felt it, something covered my mouth. A mask, maybe?
Ten, I thought. Nine. Eight...
Charlotte in the kitchen, flour on her nose, laughing at something I'd said.
Seven... Six...
Charlotte on the bleachers, seventeen and glowing, telling me she thought I might be worth the trouble.
Five...
Charlotte this morning, hair flying, cheeks flushed, racing me toward a future we'd never reach.
Four...
I love you too. I should have said it sooner. I should have said it every day for fifteen years.
Three...
The light was fading again.
Two...
“Scalpel, get the suction cup ready.”
One.