The alternative ending starts at chapter 8 and it turned out to be a short chapter.

I'm worse than Rick himself!

Don't kill me.

ALTERNATE CHAPTER 8

I've lost a lot of weight. It's like someone smeared permanent black ink under my eyes. I never really wore much makeup, just some lip balm, concealer and mascara, but I stopped doing that, too. I went to the hospital everyday and lost a lot of sleep, thinking and worrying about him. Percy's still in a coma, and I'm no doctor or biologist, but going without any food or water for a week could kill you. But then again, there have been patients who've been in a coma for years, but woke up and survived. So that gave me a little hope. But barely. It's everyday saying the same things to him: "I miss you", "Please wake up", "Don't die."

I stopped visiting the hospital on April 13. That was the day that I dreaded would happen. That was the day my boyfriend died.

The doctors were doing an operation on him, trying to see if there's some way they could wake him up, then something went wrong. Mrs. Jackson and I were sitting outside until I heard a bunch of yelling and shouting. A few minutes later I could hear, very faintly, the long beep through the door. I saw some other doctors and nurses come out with their shoulders slumped and looking down.

"Is everything alright?" Sally asked.

"I think I'll let you find out yourself," one of them said. Sally went and slowly opened the door. She stood there and started tearing up.

"Mrs. Jackson," I say as I put my hand on her arm. And then I looked at Percy's direction. He was a bloody mess. We slowly took stiff steps toward his corpse. The doctor sat with his head in his arms on the bed.

"We did what we could," he said, still hiding his face. "No one's perfect. Not even the greatest, most professionally trained doctors. I'm so sorry…."

Sally sat down next to the doctor, while I still stood in shock. "No," I say. "No, this...this can't be right. This isn't happening right now. I don't believe it!" I put my hands on my temples and bigger droplets of tears poured out of my eyes.

"This isn't happening!" I shout.

"Annabeth," the doctor said, with his head up. "Look at the heartbeat moniter! Do you see any mountains on that thing? No, it's a flat surface. He's dead!"

That shut me up. And it made me look offended too.

"I'm sorry, okay?" He said softly. "But there's no bringing him back. We did the best we could."

He got up and gave me a hug, with my tears getting his coat wet.

"I miss him," I say quietly.