I run into Memorial 20 minutes after I got off the phone with his mother. I stop and pant, completely out of breath due to my lungs failing at being lungs. When I look up, one of Gus's sisters is standing in front of me. "He's awake," she told me, "but he has a very high fever. We don't know how much longer he'll…" she broke off, unable to say any more.
"Can I see him?" I asked. She consented immediately. I couldn't stand the thought of not seeing him one last time, our final moments together before we were in capital S-Something. I walked in with Julie or Martha, I couldn't tell who. By the time we reached the stairs, I felt like my lungs were going to explode.
Julie/Martha looked at me and pressed the button for the elevator. "Are you all right, Hazel?" she asked.
"Fine, just out of breath. Thanks for asking, though." I responded. Internally, I felt like my lungs were collapsing in on themselves. I was drowning in my own fear, I told myself. Augustus would like that metaphor. I was drowning in fear of losing him, in my own anxiety.
When we reached the floor my love was staying on, I moved as fast as my lungs could handle in the direction of Gus's room. I knocked and after hearing a soft "come in", I let myself in.
"Julie," Mrs. Waters was saying, "go get some food. Gus is okay, he's awake and alert. Take care of yourself."
"Fine, Mom. Do you want anything from the cafeteria?"
"Water would be great, sweetie." Julie left the room just as Martha came in.
Augustus looked over at me. "Hazel Grace," he said in his dead sexy voice, "you came." He looked worn out; paler than I had ever seen him, ghoulishly skinny, his lips white. His water blue eyes, however, still held their sparkle.
"Of course I did, Gus." I sat on the edge of the bed, giving us a little privacy from his mother. "Where's your dad?"
"In the cafeteria, eating some dinner. Mom sent him about twenty minutes ago." Suddenly, his face turned green. I grabbed a bucket just in time. I helped him hold the bucket with one hand and rubbed his back with the other while his mom called for a nurse. There was blood in the vomit.
The nurse came in cleaned him up a little, then a doctor came and added another drug into his system. He relaxed visibly and began to drift off. "Hazel… Grace…"
I never heard him speak again.