Page 41 of The Intimacy of Finding You

I heaved into his shoulder, taking in his scent for what I refused to be the last time. “I love you. Don’t leave me.”

“My mockingbird.” His chest shook as he coughed and gasped beneath me. “I love you.”

A long wheeze of an exhale. “No. No, no, no!” Silence. “Papa!” His eyes were still open. We had a chance if they were still open, right? “Help me! Help! He stopped talking.”

Someone had their hand on my shoulder. They were urging me away. Some more people were there, too. My phone wasn’t on a call anymore. The people had a lot of medical equipment. Were these the ambulance people? Someone was talking to me. Everything was muffled. A man was yelling at a woman as he started…started pressing on Papa’s chest. Hard. Fast.

I felt like a little kid. I wanted to curl up on the floor and hide. Papa would find me, right? If I hid. He’d find me, and he’d sing to me, and he’d tuck me into bed. He’d tell me he loved me, and I’d believe him.

“Come on, honey. Follow me, okay?” A woman was right in front of me now, blocking my view. I couldn’t see him anymore. Papa, or the man pressing on his chest.

I followed the woman outside. She sat down with me on the steps. My eyes were still blurry and unfocused, and I still couldn’t feel much of anything. It was supposed to be cold outside, but I wouldn’t know. My hands were numb. My heart was numb. Everything was numb.

I looked up at the sky. “The sun is shining.”

“Yeah, it is.” The woman said.

It was burning my eyes. I didn’t even blink. “Why is it shining? I thought it’d be dark. Maybe rainy.”

“Sometimes, bad things happen in broad daylight. I know it might seem unfair.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do bad things happen when the world is happy?” Silence again. But the wind was howling. And the man working on Papa was still shouting. The door behind us was open, and I could hear it. Hear him. Hear that Papa wasn’t waking up.

“I don’t know, sweetie. We’re doing everything we can, okay?”

“I know.” I closed my eyes, watching the colors float behind my eyelids from staring at the sun for too long.

He’d be okay. He had to be. It’d just be another long hospital stay, and then he’d come home, and everything would be fine. We’d keep pretending, just like Papa had pretended with Grammy. It was all a game. Just a sick, horrible game with a really good ending.

The woman and I sat on the porch in complete silence. I wasn’t totally sure the tongue in my mouth even belonged to me, honestly. Or the hands attached to my arms. Or my feet. The world in front of me looked too fake. Like a dream.

Was this a nightmare?

“Time of death, one thirty-two P.M.”

My eyes unfocused, and it was suddenly so much harder to breathe than before. This was just a nightmare, and I'd wake up any minute now. Papa would wake me up, and he'd hold me and tell me that everything was okay.

The woman looked over her shoulder behind us and nodded. When she wrapped her arms around my shoulders and tugged me into her side, I knew what she was going to say before she'd even said it. “Callum, sweetie. I'm so sorry. They weren't able to bring him back.”

I pulled away, my eyes starting to burn again just as my heart picked up pace. “No. No, you're wrong. He's okay. He has to be okay.” We were just pretending. That was all this was. I needed him still. I still needed him. He was all I had left.

“No, honey.” She frowned, shaking her head. “He isn't okay. I'm so, so sorry.”

My blurry vision suddenly focused. The woman was pretty. She looked older. She had her black hair up in a bun, slicked back with perfection. She looked kind. She looked serious. She didn’t look like she was lying.

My hands hurt. So did my heart. So did my shoulders from hugging Papa so tight. So did my ears because they’d heard his last words. His last breath. My fingertips were tingling because they still had his scent.

This was my body.

This was the real world.

There was no pretending. Papa wasn’t hurt anymore. He was dead.

The tears were cold as they ran down my cheeks. It was like the air hit them and tried to turn them to ice. It didn’t work. Instead, it froze my heart, and then a strong gust pushed it over, making it fall. Right onto the concrete.