Wow, positive feedback on Finn! I'm shocked (he's Bellarke kryptonite, after all). But dang. Oh, and I'm thinking of titling this something different because it really is nothing like the film. It was loosely inspired by it. Very, very loosely.

Everything was the same, like I'd been here before. I had been here before. The sirens. The flashing lights. The voices speaking to and around me. The interior of the ambulance.

"Charge to three hundred!" One of the paramedics ordered, placing the defibrillator paddles over Finn's chest. It was as if this entire year had dissolved. The picture flickered and I felt like I was seeing someone else.

"He's crashing. Push one of epi! Charge to two hundred!"

It was a replay of the worst day of my life.

The ambulance moved beneath me, its insides a flurry of activity and I think I was prattling off what little I knew. The paramedics charged the paddles again, and Finn's chest lurched upward. The sight was sickening, but I couldn't look anywhere else, other than at my hands, still red with his blood.

They didn't call it, even when I knew he was gone. They maxed out of epi. Out of every drug they could shoot him up with to keep his heart beating. I didn't even feel it when the ambulance stopped in the back of the hospital and loaded him out. I didn't feel it as one of the paramedics grabbed one of my bloodied hands and tried to get me to step down. I didn't feel it as I was taken inside.

My eyes were on the ground, and I watched as it changed from the grey pavement into the white linoleum of the hospital.

"Clarke?" Someone said and it took me a second to register my mother's voice floating to me through the haze. Of course she was here. Why wouldn't she be? She worked here, after all.

"Clarke, Honey." Her face appeared in front of me, amber eyes staring into mine. She cradled my face in her hands, like she was waiting for me to break so she could catch the pieces. That's how it happened last time.

But I just stared, not seeing anything, but knowing it all the same. "He's dead," I whispered. I didn't even give it the courtesy by making it a question. I didn't want to give myself that hope when I already knew. I'd known it from the moment he'd looked up at the stars.

My Mom pursed her lips—the doctor façade splintering some as she tried unsuccessfully to avoid the inevitable. "Yes," she finally said. "He is."

I knew she was waiting for some kind of reaction. Denial, maybe. Anger. But that didn't come. What came was just a terrible silence that dragged on and on and on.

I took it back. The worst day wasn't the day of the accident, it was the day I believed it happened. Coming home, stepping inside my house and feeling angry that it still looked the same. It was like the world not taking notice of an earthquake. How did everything just . . . go on like nothing had happened?

I stepped into the entry hall, my eyes still on my hands. Still red. I didn't say anything as I rushed up the stairs, ignoring my Mom's call behind me. I raced into the bathroom and slammed the door shut. I turned on the faucet, as hot as the water could go before sticking my hands under. It burned, but I didn't care. I liked the pain. It was better than the silence and I scrubbed at the blood, staining the water pink. I scrubbed and scrubbed, until my skin flamed and swelled.

I dug out the dry blood from under my nails, not wanting any bit of it left on me. Only when I looked up into the mirror did I see the front of my shirt painted in it, too. So I went over to the shower and stepped inside, not even bothering to undress before turning it on. This time, I made the water cold. As cold as possible, letting it spill out onto my head and douse every inch of me. It felt like ice and I let my body shake, lowering myself to the floor of the bathtub. But I didn't cry, not when the shower was shedding enough tears for the both of us.

You'd think it was the sight of him bleeding on the ground that would've made it all feel real to me. For the truth to really sink in, but it wasn't. Reality didn't really come screaming back until the morning after, when I opened my phone messages to find my inbox flooded with texts and missed calls. They were from Thalia and a bunch of other people, probably from school.

But none from Finn.

And then I remembered. For a good minute after waking, It was like the previous night had never happened. But it only took me opening my inbox to find nothing from who I really needed to speak with for it all to seem suddenly, horribly, real.

The police wanted a report, but Mom didn't have to drag me down to the station. They sent an officer to the house, and he sat across from me in the living room, his badge gleaming on his chest. Light eyes placed on narrow bones studied me. He was too young to be considered old, but old enough to show off the right emotions. Empathy. Understanding. All the post-loss feelings I was so intimately familiar with.

He had some folder in his hand and flipped it open, glancing between it and me. "I appreciate your time, Clarke," he said softly. "I'll make this as quick as possible."

I sighed, waiting. This wasn't the first report I'd ever given, and I was almost glad I wasn't speaking to the same officer again.

"Can you tell me what the man who shot Finn Collins looked like?"

I internally flinched at the word, but looked at the officer, his name embellished on the tag. Officer Hindley. He and I both knew I wouldn't forget that name.

"He was . . . taller than Finn," I said, recalling the image of him. "Blonde. Mid-thirties. Maybe younger." I used the smallest words I could. They were easier.

Officer Hindley jotted it down. "Clothing?"

"Black sweatshirt. It might've been a dark blue."

"Do you think you'd be able to recognize him from a picture?"

I thought so, and he pulled a couple sheets of paper out, lined in thumbnail photos of men I didn't know. He spread them out on the coffee table. "Do you think any of these men are him?"

I looked at them carefully, gaze switching from picture to picture. A tinny voice spoke the same thing over and over with each new face I looked at. Was it you? Was it you?

But halfway through the third sheet, I stopped on someone, and that question turned into a different one.

Why?

I pointed at the image, the man's blue eyes staring straight at me.

"Are you sure that's him?" Officer Hindley asked, gauging me carefully.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm sure."

Thalia came over some time after that. I was curled up on the couch, staring at the TV when she took the seat beside me, eyes puffy with mascara streaking down her cheeks. I didn't really want the reminder and shut my eyes like that would block out the words I knew would be coming next.

"I'm sorry, Clarke. I can't believe . . . "

"I'm sorry about your Dad. I can't believe he's gone."

Maybe she thought I'd cry; join in on her hiccups. But I just gave a curt nod and pulled the blankets over my head.

The following afternoon, Mom pushed open my door, carrying something in her arms. It took me a second to realize it was the pile of books I'd bought with Finn, just a few days earlier. She stood under the frame of the door, gazing at me with a sad look. "The police collected these for you. Do you. . ." She sighed. "Do you want me to throw them away?"

I stared at the books, half expecting them to be drenched in blood. But they were untouched by the horror of that night.

I shook my head. "No, I'll take them." For some reason, I couldn't bear the thought of Finn's book on neoelectronics being tossed in the trash.

My Mom handed them to me before leaving. She shut the door.

I sat on the carpet and skimmed the first book, the one on social services I'd got. Then I turned to the rest. Though I couldn't throw away Finn's book, I couldn't look at it either and I set it aside, leaving just the books on child psychology and medicine.

"A doctor, huh?" he chided, bopping his shoulder with mine. He nodded approvingly. "That's kind of funny; I like fixing things, and you like fixing people." Finn grinned at me. "Sounds like we're a good match."

I stared down at these books, my eyes wandering to the piles of them scattered around my room. So many textbooks. I'd prided myself over knowing so much before med school, actually believing that it would make a difference. I'd tried so hard to learn everything I could. To do everything that would make me a better doctor. My dad's death had prompted me to read more, that maybe if I knew all I could, I'd be able to save someone. That maybe I could've done something to keep him from dying and could now prevent it from ever happening again.

But Finn was proof that I couldn't save anyone, and something hot suddenly ignited inside of me.

I gripped the paperback cover of the psychology book and, without hesitating, tore it right through the center. Then I moved to the next one. And the next. I couldn't rip off the covers to the textbook, so I settled for the pages instead.

I was wrong. I had been naïve, thinking I was capable of holding someone's life in my hands. That I was capable of saving someone.

But I wasn't. I'd just been a dreamer. A fantasist.

And now it was time to wake up.