Chapter 41 - Alexei
It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts It hurts it h..
I can’t breathe.
I was thirteen when my parents died.
It wasn’t like we were close. My mother was mostly scared of me after the diagnosis and my father just tried to use me, but they were still my parents and I should have felt something.
They were both killed by the same Italian family we visited when I was ten, but when I found out, I didn’t cry.
I just moved on. Then Ivan took me. He stepped in when my parents died and took responsibility. He raised me. Or rather, he trained me. And yet I ended up killing him with no remorse. I didn’t feel much while doing it.
I didn’t feel much about anything.
I don’t think I ever knew real pain.
I thought I did. When I found out about Marco’s diagnosis. It hurt back then.
And then seeing him slowly get weaker wrecked me. There were moments when I couldn’t breathe.
I thought that was pain. I thought the constant ache that lived in my chest during those months was the real thing.
But I was wrong.
I don’t think it compares.
I don’t think anything compares.
I don’t think the word pain is sufficient for what is happening to me right now, for what I am feeling right now. It feels like I am being destroyed from the inside out.
The letter that was between the pages of his notebook.
There were a lot of sketches of me in there but they weren’t scary anymore.
Most of them were me smiling. Marco drew everything.
Smiling on the balcony. Smiling in the kitchen.
Smiling in the dark. Smiling with flour on my face.
Smiling while cooking. Smiling while sleeping.
He preserved my smile in all of these drawings.
The poems weren’t dark anymore. They were sweet.
But it was the letter that undid me. His handwriting on a letter that began with my name.
I couldn’t begin to explain the pain. It wasn’t in my chest.
It was everywhere. It was in every cell of my existence.
I was on my knees next to Marco’s hospital bed. I belonged on my knees.
I wasn’t worthy to stand.
I wasn’t worthy to sit.
I belonged on the floor.
He was lying in a bed with a machine keeping his heart pumping. When we got here after he collapsed in my arms, the doctors tried every possible thing but his heart could no longer contain him, so now those machines were the only thing keeping him alive.
My tears were falling ever since.
I never cried before. Yes, there were moments where my eyes would fill with tears these past few months when I had to see Marco losing his light, but I never let tears fall.
Never.
But now I couldn’t stop it.
He died with his lips against mine. With his last breath in my mouth. His heart stopped, and although the doctors managed to bring him back, his heart was still dead without that machine.
He needed a heart transplant in the next three days to survive.
I clutched the letter to my chest.
Outside the room, his family and friends were crying too. I could hear them but they didn’t disturb me.
I kissed his hand and the coolness of his skin against my lips would haunt me for the rest of my life.
“I’m sorry, baby,” my voice was so raw from crying so long. “I have to do something. And you will be mad at me.”
“No,” I corrected myself. “You will hate me.”
He would hate me.
I knew it.
I brushed his curls away and more tears fell.
“Forgive me,” I whispered.