A Separate Peace
Alternative Ending
"We were standing on a limb, I a little farther out than Finny. I turned to say something else, some stalling remark, something to delay even a few seconds more, and then I realized that in turning I had begun to lose my balance. There was a moment of total, impersonal panic, and then Finny's hand shot out and grabbed my arm, and with my balance restored, the panic immediately disappeared. I turned back toward the river, moved a few more steps along the limb, sprang far out and fell into the deep water. Finny also made a good jump, and the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session was officially established."
Page 31
I really hate hospitals. I know a lot of people don't like the smell of antiseptics and the coldness of the place, but it's more than that. A hospital is like a morgue, a place where people go to slowly die away and only a few ever escape. Hopefully, he will be able to wake up from his coma, preferably if it happens this week since it has been over a year since we've arrived here. His mother is talking to the Doctors, trying to convince them to keep him for a while longer. I can hear her right now; I think she's having a breakdown.
"Please," I can hear her sobbing, definitely breaking down. "My husband is fighting in the war, I have no other relatives, no one else to live for, please, help save my son. I beg you."
I ignore her, it doesn't matter, doesn't change anything, even if you do wake up. They say that you only have a 70 chance of total recovery in your legs, and even then you'd probably go through life in a wheelchair. You head was heavily injured too, so there is a strong possibility of amnesia, mental diseases, and change of personality. I don't want you to change, damn; I want us to be like before, young fifteen year old boys in school with not a care in the world.
God, I sound like a girl don't I. But then, what else can I do while my best friend is just lying here wasting away, practically a vegetable. Remember when we would study together and argue over Caesar and Rome and Latin and useless garbage like that? And then after awhile, one of your friends would come over, telling us that we were psychotic and gradually you two would drift away into your own conversation and usually, I don't get a thing that you would talk about. You're surprised that I said your friends instead of ours aren't you. I always knew that you thought they were my friends, but they're really not, I mean, I'm the one who introduces every one and the first to be known but everyone would just gradually gravitate toward you.
It's because I was selfish and wanted us to be each other's one and only best friends that something like this had happened. I should have never encouraged you to jump from that tree. Thinking back, I should not have told anyone that we had named our game the Super Suicide Society either, but then again, that is one of the reasons that they won't let me enlist in the war and how I can stay by you till the end.
Speaking of the war, did you know that Brinker, not surprisingly, was the first person to enlist in our class, but what was really surprising was that Leper had enlisted with him too, though they didn't last so long. I heard that Leper went crazy the first day that they arrived at the training camp so the officials forced him and Brinker back, after of course reading about us. Seems that they decided that any Devon School boy from our class should not be enlisted since, so far, they had seen two suicidal boys, one of which is in a coma, and another boy, a life loving naturalist whom just went crazy.
I bet if you were one of the generals, though, you wouldn't care a damn thing about sanity and tell every one to get a gun, fight, and win. Well, either that, or you would spend a couple of hours looking through peace treaties, writing new ones, and then suddenly settle everything. Okay, so I'm exaggerating, but what would anyone expect, I've been sitting with you for practically everyday that you've been in here trying to convince you to wake up. Suddenly your mother bursts in.
"Oh God…Gene…Phineas, he's going to cut the power," your mother really should see a psychiatrist you know, she's blabbering again. "The doctors say that they don't have enough power to run the f—cking damn thing so they're gonna cut off the power. NO, my baby, don't leave me."
Your mother falls asleep sobbing into your chest and I can see that they are systematically shutting down all of your machines, your life. Well, I guess that this is good-bye.
"Phineas?"
The End
An Alternative Ending Pt.2
God, it's so dark. Where am I? Oh, god, Phineas, the tree, his surgery. I am