The hospital room was colder than usual, and the silence wasn't just empty today.
It never was empty.
But today, it felt scaringly hungrier, like it seemed to be waiting for the right chance to just swallow me whole.
I dragged my trembling fingers over my blanket until I found my hand.
It looked too wrong, completely bare. The crystallized ring wasn't where it should have been, and neither was the heart shaped silver bracelet brushing my wrist like it did. Seventy-nine days ago.
I'd been hoping I hadn't lost them too.
I couldn't afford to let the world forget another part of him, this easily.
I couldn't afford to let myself, forget a bit more of him.
Any of him.
Outside the door, voices mumbled, seeping into my room like the rain that crawled down the window draped in thin threads.
And some of them I could hear. A bit too clearly.
"Her condition hasn't improved in months, Mrs. Hale—" Maris' firm tone carried a softness which seemed to be compelled into steel. "We should consider psychiatric care if she doesn't respond to Dr Elen soon."
My mother's voice cut through her, a little fragile but sharp at the edges, and I was sure it was threaded with tears she couldn't bare to hide any longer.
"But that means no contact, no visitors. . .she'll become even lonelier."
"It's the only way left to help her speak again. We're doing everything, but she isn't—"
A hush.
Maybe Maris stepped away.
But I still heard my mother's quiet sobbing.
I turned my head a little to the side.
Each muscle screeching in protest, as I stared out at the washed-out sky.
The rain hadn't stopped for months, maybe longer.
It used to be my favourite thing.
Now it felt like a never-ending punishment I never knew I was being sentenced for.
The rain had always been our thing. Zane loved it.
Now it was just mine.
Something which only came at my window screaming his name. I wonder if he gets the same treatment, where ever he is. I hope he knows how wretched breathing is without him.
My entire existence was just mine — and I hated it more than I ever was scared of death itself.
"Lena?" My mother's voice trembled as she stepped in, the hem of a deep crimson hoodie clutched to her chest like it might save me.
"Baby, please. . ." She sat by my bed, smoothing my hair back with trembling fingers. "Please try . . if you help yourself, I promise you can have all of Zane's things. I won't keep anything from you, I swear. But please. . . help Mommy, help yourself hmm?"
Her voice cracked on that last word, Mommy. Like saying it like that might just remind me who I was before everything.
I wished I could ask her: If I get better, does he come back too?
Do I get to breathe in a world which welcomed him too equally, if not in an even grander way?
But I couldn't make it out.
No breath felt strong enough to say what my wrecked sabotaged self kept chanting: What good is healing in a world that doesn't harbour him anymore?
***
Later, the afternoon sank behind the grey sky, tucking the room in a bruised hush.
My untouched lunch stared back at me, bunny-shaped apple slices I couldn't force past my teeth.
My eyes drifted to the hoodie on the chair. With arms which felt as stiff as a gigantic stone, I tried forcing my fingers to move. Inch by inch, I tugged it into my chest.
Deep.
The second the fabric featherly brushed my nose, his scent bloomed in my skull, musky wood, something bittersweetly clean, something heartbreakingly him.
I clutched it tighter. My knuckles whitened around it. With something wet burning behind my eyes.
It smells so much like him. Exactly like him. Faint, like a dream I can't wake up from.
Somewhere under my ribs, my heart coiled tight. Knitting into knots I'd never be able to undo.
I don't remember closing my eyes. I only know I woke from a dream. Or maybe I never slept at all.
Zane was there, so clear, too clear. A dark T-shirt clinging to him, rain dripping from his hair onto his lashes. He looked alive enough to kill me all over again.
"Is it raining again?" I heard myself ask. My voice was perfect here.
Not broken.
Not gone.
He almost smiled.
Half a pledge.
Half an atonement.
He didn't answer.
He never really did.
But he ever so slightly stepped closer, imprints of water trailing behind him like a ghost.
"Do you remember the promise we made that night?" he murmured, his voice softer than the rain tapping the glass behind him.
I tried to nod.
Tried to speak.
My lips moved, but the world stayed mute.
Exasperatedly mute.
Frustration clawing up my throat. Like a session of endless screams all trapped tight into a coffin.
He came closer still. Cold lips touching my forehead, that, gentle kiss that used to pull me back every time I felt the world crumbling down on me. The kiss burned and froze at once.
"Thank you, Lena. . ." His breath tasted like a rush of remembrances, warm and forever out of reach. Accompanied by the deep smell of musk and something woody. "You were the only light I had when there was none left. You. . . you saved me more than I ever deserved saving."
My breath rattled, shallow, my fingers digging into the hoodie like a lifeline. He looked at me, and all I wanted was to perish away, right there.
"Remember how we promised that we'd fight? Together. No matter what?" His eyes searched mine for an answer I couldn't give.
A flicker crossed his face.
Something sad?
And I hated absolutely how much it felt like. . . something, like goodbye.
He leaned in closer, one more kiss to my forehead, wet and cold and gone too fast before I could taste all the him in it.
"Keep fighting for me. Even now. Even if you hate me for it. . ." His whisper cracked, like a record scratched by time. "I never wanted to leave you alone, love. Never. You have to believe that."
How do I tell him how unable I am in the current pathetically helpless state to even assure him that it's not him I hate?
How I could never hate him even if I tried to, someday?
But that it was me whom I loathe the most for everything. For having survived, breathing here in a world where he isn't so much near me anymore.
He brushed my hair back, just the way he used to when I would fall asleep on his chest after crying.
His thumb traced my cheek, and an echo of profound warmth rang through me.
***
When I opened my eyes, the rain still crawled down the window. My hand must have been clutching the hoodie too tight, that now my knuckles ached.
I looked up and blinked at the ceiling a couple of times, until my vision cleared.
The silence in the room buzzed.
Not empty, never empty.
My eyelids fluttered open to the stale hospital air.
No rain dripping from his hair now. No warm mouth pressing silent promises to my forehead. No, him anywhere.
Just the cold weight of the hoodie in my fists, and the phone hidden underneath it, its corners digging into my ribs like a heartbeat I couldn't bear to lose.
Outside, I heard my mother's soft voice begging Maris not to take my phone away.
My throat burned with words that wouldn't come — Don't. Please don't. It's all I have left.
I wish I could scream out loud.
Yell so loud that they would finally hear.
Finally acknowledge that I have my feelings too.
My thumb fumbled across the cracked screen.
My breath rattled out of me in a single shiver.
Please. . . just his voice. Let me have him for a moment longer.
I pressed play.
It was his voice, real this time, not my mind's desperate trick.
"Hey, love," he breathed into the old recording. He sounded shy, the way he only did when the world felt too soft to deserve him. "If you're hearing this, you're probably mad at me for leaving this on your day. . ."
A wet laugh — Lord knows just, how much i missed that laugh.
"I just wanted. . . just wanted to say thank you. For not letting me drown when I didn't even know how to swim. For loving a mess like me. For. . . everything, everything you have done and have been doing and still do, love."
The static clicked — his breath caught, the sound crackled as if the phone trembled in his pocket.
Then —
"If anything ever happens to me, Lena, I need you to—"
Silence.
Just silence, abrupt and merciless.
My heart rammed itself against my ribs, harder, harder, like it would break out just to follow where his voice went.
"Zane. . ."
I tried.
And tried.
My mouth parted, and a distorted, shapeless word hid somewhere behind my tongue.
Nothing. No sound. No answer.
Tears blurred the cracked screen. His voice was gone, swallowed by the same rain that had taken everything else.
I pressed the phone harder to my ear as if my pulse alone could force him back.
"Please…"
But my lips barely moved. My throat stayed empty.
Zane, can you hear me?
The room stared back at me.
Still.
Silent.
Unmoved.
My mouth stayed open, frozen around words I'd never get out.
The last thing I felt was the phone slipping from my fingertips — the hoodie catching it halfway, like a grave too soft to hurt me more than I already was.
I let my eyes drift shut again.
Zane, can you hear me?
Somewhere deep inside, I swear he did.
And in that coffin-quiet room, I realised, I was the only living thing left here.
And not even my voice remembered how to save me.