"I do, Augustus. I do."
EPILOUGE OF THE FAULT IN OUR STARS FOR TULLY FROM ALYSSA
I stare at his words on the page. They're beautiful, just like he is. Was. I'm suddenly hit with the realization that I will never have him back. I don't think I've felt the full effect of the grief until this point. Augustus is dead. I loved him, and he is dead. He was the grenade, not me. As I stare at his eulogy to me, everything feels more real than it has since I met him. I've grown accustomed to having him in my life. His smiling face, his sarcasm, the feeling of his arms around me. Even as I watched him fade away, as I watched him walk closer and closer to death right before my eyes, I still felt like I had him. Even as I stood in the literal heart of Jesus and read his eulogy, even as I spoke at his funeral, even as I visited him in his grave, he was still alive to me. The words "Augustus" and "dead" just don't fit in my mind. Maybe that's what causes me to break down and completely lose it. Grief washes over me like a tidal wave that destroys an island, leaving nothing but sadness and destruction. Like a grenade that goes off in someone's hands. My body is racked with sobs. I clutch my stomach, letting them come. Tears slowly cascade down my cheeks, then more come, faster, faster, until my face is drenched with them. My lips form his name over and over again, but I make no sound. I don't know how long I suffer from this unexplained, delayed, useless fit of hysteria. At some point, I know I collapsed into a ball on the floor, because that is how I wake up. I cried myself to sleep, images of Augustus tugging at the backs of my eyelids. He is the first thing that I think of when I wake up. The second thing I think of is the lack of oxygen getting to my lungs. I'm not connected to any source of it, and I find myself gasping desperately for air. I feel the familiar pain that is a side effect of cancer, I feel my lungs filling with fluid, I feel the cancer becoming every part of me. But, for a brief second, I don't feel the emotional pain that is a side effect of Augustus, or, should I say, the lack of Augustus. For this reason, I welcome the pain that comes with the cancer that is made of me. I embrace it as a replacement for the pain that comes with the grief that is made of Augustus. I manage to make a sound before I pass out on my bedroom floor, I think. I think I manage a single scream before losing consciousness.
I fade in and out, between the pain of life and the serenity of unconsciousness, for the duration of the trip to the hospital. I heard my parent's footsteps pounding swiftly into my room, I felt myself being carried into the chilly night air, and now I feel my head gently lulling as the car bounces on the road. I think of what a terrible driver he was, and the pain comes again. I can't really tell if it's cancer pain, or Augustus pain. Whatever it is, I want it to go away, so I let myself slip into the dark abyss again.
I think I wake up for a bit. Just long enough to feel my parents' hands holding each of mine, to feel the familiar feeling of a hospital bed underneath me, to feel the sensation of needles and tubes in my body, keeping it alive. My body is being kept alive by these machines and drugs, but it is too late for my soul. My soul belongs to him. I like my choices, and I dislike living in a world without Augustus Waters. I dislike the emotional torture, the hole in my heart, the unbearable pain that is the loss of him. I like my choices, and I thought I chose him. But not really. Not until now. The world isn't a wish-granting factory, but this isn't a wish, this is a choice. I am choosing Augustus. I feel his presence at the back of my mind, at the front of my chest, everywhere in my body. The cancer is just a convenient excuse, because it isn't killing me, not right now. Right now, grief is killing me, and I'm presented with one last choice. I could fight the cancer yet again. I could recover from it, go back home, continue living my life as it was. I could, conceivably, heal from the grief over time. Or, I can follow the light that currently illuminates my thoughts. For, basking in its glow, is Augustus Waters, standing tall, looking completely healthy, smiling that crooked smile, cigarette playing at his lips. He's just the way I remember him from the day we first met. This is my final choice. I let myself slip away from reality, away from the steady beeping of the machines, away from the liquid pumping out of my lungs, away from the hospital bed, away from my parents, away from this earth. I am drawn to him like moths to a flame, like opposite ends of a magnet, like a coil that's been stretched to the limit and is finally springing back in on itself. I make the choice to walk up that glowing path and into his arms. Finally, finally, finally, he is mine again. We embrace, and I feel his lips on mine, and I inhale the scent of him, and when I we break apart I look up into his gleaming eyes. All of the pain is gone, and I feel nothing but an ocean of relief, surrounding us in water and light and happiness.
"I guess you really do like your choices," he says to me.
"I do, Augustus. I do."