I took a few deep breaths and went back to the page. "I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."
Eight days after Gus' prefuneral, I had a tight feeling in my chest. I was wondering if my heart was telling me something, and grabbed my cell from the bedside table. I called Gus. "Hello?" A croaky voice answered. "Oh my God! Gus! Thank God! I thought you had died!" There were tears streaming down my face. "Hazel Grace," He said after a moment, and I just knew he was smiling, his Augustus Waters crooked smile was definitely on his face. "Why on Earth would I do a thing like that?" I rolled onto my back, laughing, tears still flowing down my cheeks. I hung up the phone, still laughing, and forgot about my aching chest.
I woke up screaming at 3am. Mom and Dad came running in, both still in their pyjamas. "Hazel, honey, what's wrong?" Mom was frantic, but I couldn't tell her, I just kept screaming, I was in too much pain. "Call nine-one-one! Now!" Mom shouted at Dad, and Dad quickly ran off. Mom sat with my head on her lap, stroking my hair.
When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I'd been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early on when I couldn't get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my body, my parents took me to the ER. A nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn't even speak, so I held up nine fingers. Later, after they'd given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my hand while she took my blood pressure and she said, "You know how I know you're a fighter? You called a ten a nine."
But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming into me again and again as I lay screaming and sobbing as I was rushed into the ER. A nurse asked me to rate my pain, and I didn't stop screaming, or sobbing. I just used it. I used my ten. I held up ten fingers.