Tobias

When Christina and I approach her room, we slow down and take a deep breath. Blood pounds in my ears and I can barely hear anything that's going on around me. When my ears finally clear up, I hear this: Inside Tris' room, men are yelling back and forth at year other and a machine screams a long, constant beep. Christina and I gasp in horror and then barge in the room.

The doctors are yelling directions at each other. The machine is a heart rate monitor. The line is straight and dead. I can only watch and tremble as these strangers try to shock Tris' heartbeat back. It looks like they're hurting her.

I run next to the bed, determined to at least be holding her in her last moments. If this is truly it, I want to be able to know I was with her until the end.

They decide to try one more shock. If they fail, they will take the time and record it as her time of death. That is all the have left to do now.

"Tris, please don't leave me. I need you. I love you."

And then I realize that those words couldn't be more true.

Although I had made peace with my mother and father, nothing that had done could be changed. My father abused me, my mother abandoned me. Simple facts, that translate into them giving up the right to be considered my family.

But Tris had healed me. Tris was my family now. Which is why I could not lose her so far into the race. She was all I had left, the only one that had stayed. Tris was all I wanted, and needed. I love her.

I'm numb as a doctor pushed me forcefully, I think, out of the way. They give her the last shock.