Chapter 26
I fell to my knees on the grass outside because my body couldn’t hold me up. Not with the heavy knowledge engulfing me that my worst fear had come true.
“Why?” I shrieked. “What happened? What happened? What happened?” I kept repeating myself over and over. My brain and my body felt like it had disconnected. My brain was stuck processing the words that had left Ash’s mouth, and my body had catapulted into grief.
What no one had ever told me, warned me, was that grief felt like fear. Like your worst nightmare come to life. Like you had been dunked in a pool of freezing water of cold-blooded fear. My body began to shake, and I chattered, “Where is he?” Had he been alone? Had he known what was happening? Had he been scared? Did it hurt?
I felt hot tears begin to flood my eyes and stream down my cheeks. The sobs that were being torn from my chest were guttural screams, sounds that I didn’t even realize I was making. I found myself rocking. I was sitting on the floor, my knees up against my chest, my arms wrapped around my knees, and I was rocking. To self-soothe, to stay distracted from the horror happening inside of me, or to keep myself moving so I didn’t stay frozen in this moment forever, no longer wanting to exist. I didn’t know why I was doing it; I was just doing it. Ash knelt down next to me.
“I’m so sorry,” I heard him say.
Sorry? My brain latched onto that word. How did sorry cut it? How could sorry ever possibly match up against this enormous hole in my heart? I sucked in some air because it felt like I had forgotten to breathe since the words “They found Myles,” had left his mouth. My face was sticky with tears, my throat hurt from screaming, and my chest ached from the knowledge that what once was would never be again, and I didn’t think I would ever recover.
I had imagined this moment over and over in my head. I had feared it. Dreaded it. Imagined it. Begged the universe about it. Even talked about it with Myles. But not once had I ever even come close to knowing what this would actually feel like. I thought I knew how bad it could be. I feared the sadness. I imagined the pain, but I had been so wrong. I had never touched the depths of this ache before. There was nothing my worst nightmares could have done to prepare me for the depths of hell my grief had pushed me into. From one moment to the next, my entire existence had changed. Nothing would ever be the same. It would all be shadowed by this life-altering, mind-boggling dread for something that had already happened but had changed the literal makeup of my brain. Breathe, I told myself as I sat and rocked. I took a deep breath that burned as it entered my lungs, which were raw from screaming. I felt my heartbeat, dead but alive in my chest. Keep breathing, I thought. For what? At this moment, I did not know.
“Jessa.” A strangled voice from behind me startled me out of my numb stupor. I looked up to find Kian standing over me. He fell to his knees next to me, and he gathered me against him as I began to sob—loud and ugly from the deepest recesses of hell inside of me. I would never recover. This ocean of fiery pain would slowly eat away at me until I was nothing.
“What do I do? What do I do?” I was repeating myself again, and my brain kept looping. My tears had soaked right through his shirt, and I felt him crying with me. His chest heaved, and I reached up to find his face wet. My big, quiet man had no answers for me. I peered up into his eyes, tears dripping off of my lashes. These stupid fake lashes the makeup artist had put on me.
“What do I do?” I whispered. Myles would know. He would tell me in his soft, gentle way. He would guide me. He always thought he needed me, but really, I was the one who needed him.
“Let’s go to the hospital,” I heard Ash offer from behind us. “Gordon finally figured out where the ambulance took him, and the car is here.”
Kian looked up at him and then back down at me. “Maybe he’s okay.” His voice was hoarse, and I saw that his knuckles were bleeding. He’s not okay , I thought, but I nodded anyway.
Ash offered me a hand, and I grabbed it, standing shakily, feeling like I was about to wake up and find that this was just a horrible nightmare. You’re awake, and this is real , my brain reminded me. Fuck you , I grumbled back to it.
While we had waited for Gordon to track down which hospital they had taken Myles to, Adara had run home and brought back a change of clothes for us. I stood in the bathroom shivering as she peeled the dress off me. Next came the shapewear, the jewelry, and the makeup. She left my hair alone and told me to lift my arms. I did, and she pulled a sweatshirt onto me and then did the same with a pair of leggings. She had me put my feet into a pair of soft slippers that I had never seen before, and then she took my hand and led me out of the bathroom as the sobs started up again, and I howled out my pain, completely blinded by the tears.
Ash met me at the doorway of the men’s bathroom, where I presumed Kian was changing. He pulled me into his arms, and I heard him whispering to Adara from over my head. My legs buckled, and he caught me, holding me up.
“It will never get better,” he whispered to me. My chest shook as I took in a deep, shuddering breath, shocked at what he had just said.
“But it will also get better,” he assured me. “Hold onto that.”
“H-how do you know?” I asked; my eyes felt puffy and swollen. My throat hurt from crying and screaming.
“I lost someone,” he said softly. “And so did he.” He looked over as Kian emerged from the bathroom wearing sweats as well. He looked pale and rumpled. Rose and the baby . Her face flitted before my eyes, unbidden, followed by two tiny feet. I let out another shuddering sob. Kian was still standing. Ripped in some spots and broken in others, but he was standing. He smiled; he even laughed sometimes. It felt like he loved me. He played music. He drank from licorice straws. If he could do it, so could I. I just couldn’t fathom how.
“Let’s go,” I croaked out. Kian took my hand, his eyes so full of pain that I could hardly stand to look at him.
“Maybe he’s okay,” Kian said again, holding onto hope.
“We’re going to say goodbye,” I said firmly. This much I knew. It was time to say goodbye.
The hospital was glaringly bright and cold. The receptionist pretended that she couldn’t see the tears leaking out of my eyes and my lip quivering as I asked where Myles was. Alex was standing behind me. Kian wanted to come in with me, but he couldn’t risk the publicity leak. He said he would wait until Alex could secure a quiet and safe entrance for him, and in the meantime, I would have my own time with Myles.
“Ms. Bardot,” I heard a voice say. I looked up to find a doctor standing there; her white lab coat said Dr. Green on the pocket. I nodded.
“Are you family?” she asked. I nodded again.
“His s-sister,” I stuttered out.
“Come with me.” She motioned for me to follow her. We walked down the hallway and stopped outside a room where the privacy curtains were drawn. I could hear the beeping of machines coming from the room. The doctor placed a hand on my arm.
“We did everything we could. We administered Narcan and activated charcoal. We did CPR for forty minutes. Unfortunately, he was without oxygen for too long. He is now intubated, but I need you to listen to me carefully. When you go in there, he will feel warm. He will be breathing. His eyes may flutter, but I need you to have no hope.”
I inhaled painfully.
“I do not say that to be unkind,” she said softly. “I say that with every ounce of compassion inside of me.” She held my hand now as I began to shake with cries. “He is not there anymore. The only thing keeping him looking alive is the machines. So go in there and say goodbye, and when you are ready, we will unplug the machines because that is the kindest thing you can do for him right now. To let him pass peacefully.”
“What will happen when you do that?” I asked, trying to compose myself.
“He will stop breathing within a few minutes.” She was very matter-of-fact about it, which I appreciated. Don’t sugarcoat this shit. I didn’t need that.
“Can I stay?” I had to force the words out. My throat felt like it was closing up at the thought of what I was about to do.
“You can.” She patted my hand and then walked with me, pulling the privacy curtain aside and allowing me to enter the room.
“Oh, My My.” The words flew out of my mouth in a half sigh, half sob. I thought I would run to his bed as soon as I saw him, but instead, I walked slowly. He looked like himself except for the breathing tube shoved down his throat and taped to his mouth. I stood next to his bed for a few long moments, just forcing myself to breathe. In and out. In and out. Tentatively, I reached out and took hold of his hand. It was warm. It felt alive. Like suddenly he would squeeze it, sit up, and this would all be over like a bad dream. But I knew he wouldn’t.
What was the last thing I had said to him? I racked my brain. I had told him to go get more tarts and that I loved him. “I know, I love you too,” he had said back. They were good last words, I told myself. Solid last words if one had to choose.
I curled my hand around his and watched as hot, heavy tears fell from my eyes into his palm. I wiped them away with the blanket.
“I can’t sleep without hearing you snore, My,” I whispered angrily. How dare he leave me? My brain was mad at his addiction, not him—I knew this, but it didn’t matter because now I was alone.
“You left me all alone,” I choked out, blinded once again by the veil of tears.
“You are not alone,” I heard Kian say from behind me. I crumbled against the bed, lying on Myles’s chest, heaving with sobs.
“Come back,” I begged. “Don’t go.” I could hear his heart beating beneath my ear . I need you to have no hope , the doctor's voice sounded in my brain. Hope, the only thing stronger than fear. Fear whose cousin was grief. Grief who was now me. I encompassed it. I breathed it. I was grieving because I could know nothing else when the only thing keeping my brother's heart beating was a machine.
Without even thinking, I crawled onto the bed to lie down next to Myles. I curled my body around him the way I had through so many cold nights when I tried to keep him warm. I brushed the hair off his forehead. I could feel his chest rise and fall, and I pressed a kiss to his cheek and then laid my head on the pillow next to him. I began to hum, singing to him, rubbing his cheek gently, willing myself not to cry, if only for a moment.
I heard Kian’s voice rumble something to someone. I didn’t know who, and seconds later, the lights dimmed. I heard him walking around the room, but I kept my eyes closed as I kept singing the song, “You Are My Sunshine”, that my mother used to sing to us, especially on the nights after Myles’s dad would rail on him.
Myles used to make fun of me for being off tune when I sang, but he always sang it back to me, gently, quietly, but he would sing it with me. Now, here I was, singing our song by myself. The bubble of pain in my heart threatened to burst. I swallowed to keep it from exploding out of me.
I opened my eyes and saw that Kian had placed electric candles all over the room casting a calm, gentle ambiance in what was the worst room I had ever been in. They flickered and danced before my eyes, and I felt the tears break free once more.
“Baby.” The entire collar of my sweatshirt was now soaked through from the tears flowing down my face and finding their way to my neck. I was a mess. A swollen-faced mess. I felt Kian next to me, and I looked over at him.
“He deserves to go peacefully. Not lying on the ground in a back alley. He’ll go here. With the people who love him.” Kian’s voice was shaking, and I felt my love for him detonate in my chest, breaking me into fragments and piecing me back together.
“He can’t sing it back.” I spoke quietly because it hurt to talk.
“What?” Kian peered down at me, his face glowing in the fake candlelight.
“I would sing our song, and he would sing with me,” I explained hoarsely. Kian took my hand, then held onto Myles’s other hand and began to sing. His voice was piercing and ethereal. We sang together. Me off tune, him gorgeous and flowing. As I sang, I stroked his face again.
“Don’t take my sunshine!” I wasn’t singing anymore. I was sobbing, screaming, crying. Again. Grasping onto his hospital gown and trying to fathom how I could ever figure out how to exist with this pain overwhelming me. Taking over me. Eating me alive. I wailed. I called for him. I begged, and all the while, Kian sang. My one flickering light at the end of this miserable tunnel.
I must have fallen asleep because it was hours later when I woke up to the voice of a nurse insisting that it was time and then Kian snapping back at her that I would take as long as I damn well needed. I was jealous of my sleeping self because, for that time, I wasn’t Jessa who knew that Myles was dead. Or close to it. Sleeping Jessa hadn’t known. Sleeping Jessa didn’t feel like someone had torn her chest open and stolen her heart. I groaned, and Kian was back at my side in a second.
“Jessamine?”
“Why him?” I croaked out. “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not,” Kian agreed. I thought of wispy Rose and his little baby, and I felt the knot in my throat tighten up once more. I heard a rap on the door as someone knocked. Kian squeezed my hand.
“I’ll be right back.”
When he returned, he was followed by a short, freckled man. A boy, really.
“Jessa, this is Riley. He works for a company called Afterlife Memoires Would it be okay if he works quickly to gather up some items for you to keep as memories?” Kian asked gently. I shrugged.
“Do I need to move?” I asked.
“You can stay right where you are,” Riley assured me. I breathed a sigh of relief and laid my head back down on Myles’s chest.
“Gather away,” I acquiesced weakly.
Riley explained what he was doing as he did it. He took Myles’s fingerprint so I could memorialize it. He said some people transferred it onto a necklace, and others would choose to tattoo it. He snipped a small chunk of his hair for a shadow box, and he got a recording of Myles’s heartbeat to turn into a song that he would put inside a heart charm necklace that I could wear. It had a button on it that I could press and hear his heart song. Lastly, he took a scan of our hands, clasped together for the last time, that he would turn into a physical 3D printout.
“I am incredibly sorry for your pain,” Riley told me as he left.
“I am too,” I whispered. “I am too.” I turned my face so it rested in the crook of my brother's neck.
“I am so sorry I couldn’t save you.” I could barely get the words out. “Please forgive me.”
“He knew, you know.” I heard Kian from above me. I opened my eyes. His were shiny with tears.
“He knew what?”
Kian hummed the tune of the song we had been singing, and then said, “He knew how much you loved him.”
I took in a shaky breath and nodded.
“He knew.” I wiped my eyes and then told the biggest lie of my life.
“I’m ready.”
I was not ready. I would never be ready to return my twenty-four-year-old brother to the wind. But it had to happen, and I was too weak to drag it out any longer. Goodbye had come and gone, and I was just holding onto the vapor of him at this point. It was time to let him go.
The doctor let me keep the lights low and the candles flickering. She didn’t make me move from where I was pressed to Myles. I watched as she gently peeled the medical tape from his mouth, but I turned away when she removed the tube.
“It’ll be soon,” she promised.
Was that good? How could that be good ? my brain screamed. I wanted to go back in time. I would figure out a way for it to go differently. But in the back of my mind, I knew that every scenario I could come up with would have ended the same way. He had played with fire for so long that it only made sense that, eventually, it burned him.
I was relieved that at least it had happened where people knew who he was, and he hadn’t ended up as some John Doe face down in the park. We lay there for what felt like an eternity and a matter of seconds at the same time. I memorized the feeling of the rise and fall of his chest. I traced the shape of his face. I imprinted the feeling of his hair under my palm. I tried to recall the sound of his voice. I felt it all running through my fingers like sand, and the harder I tried to hold on, the faster it fell. At one point, I felt his chest shudder, and a weird gurgling sound came from his throat.
“He’s not in pain, right?” I asked frantically. The doctor assured me that he wasn’t. I curled back up next to him. My tears had dried momentarily.
“It’s okay, My My.” I ran my fingers down his cheek again. “You are free now. I love you. I love you. But you can go. Tell Mom I say hi. And when it’s my turn, you better be waiting for me.” I spoke to him gently. Trying to stay strong for him. “You can go.” I kissed his face, held his hand, and finally, excruciatingly, I felt him take his last breath. He breathed out and never breathed back in.
“Time of death…” I heard the doctor announce the time softly. Kian was crying somewhere nearby. After what felt like forever waiting for him to breathe back in, I finally sat up, kissed my brother's forehead, and climbed off the bed.
“I’m ready to go home,” I told Kian. My brother was no longer in this room, so there was no point in staying here without him. I wanted to go curl up in his bed, surrounded by his smell, his favorite books, the water bottle on his night table that he hadn’t finished, the half-empty pack of cigarettes left on his dresser, and the lingering feeling that maybe he had just gone on a trip and would be home soon. In his bed, I could pretend, but in this room, his death slapped me in the face, and I couldn’t take one more second of it.
Goodbye, my brother , I thought as we left the room, I’ll see you later . I made it five steps out of the room when I saw that Gordon, Mika, Adara, Nile, and, shockingly, Eric and Alanna were all sitting in the waiting room adjacent to the hallway that I had just come from. I took one look at their faces and collapsed. Kian had to carry me out of the hospital as my grief had officially taken over, and I couldn’t take one more step.