ALL THE WORDS WE COULDN'T SAY

Like an addict craving another fix, I couldn't help myself. What began as something slow and gentle suddenly became turbulent and wild. It was as if our bodies were trying to mould into one. Bursts of bright heat sparked in my lower stomach as Killian's hands gripped my lower back and held it tight against his pelvis.

But then it was gone. He pulled back as if my body was electrocuting him. I saw the look of fear in his eyes and my heart dropped. I thought he was having a panic attack as he grabbed the section of his shirt that rested over his heart in a tight fist. He gasped for air before taking a clumsy step back and knocking over his nightstand.

"Killian!" I tried to hold him steady but when he fell back onto his bed, the flicker of his eyes almost made my bladder let loose. It hit me hard, like a bullet train that seemed so far away a few seconds ago but suddenly caught up to me, he wasn't having a panic attack. Small, foamy bubbles surfaced at the entrance of his mouth and his eyes began to roll back.

He was overdosing.

It all felt like a blur, like trying to recall a dream you had two days ago. It felt a lot like the night Killian shut me down at that party five years ago, where mere fragments come to mind but nothing clear enough to know for sure it even happened. All I know was my throat was killing me by the time the ambulance came. Probably from screaming in horror.

Two men stayed with me as Killian's body was taken away on a stretcher. I could hear the gasps of students in Flat Mary as they opened their doors and witnessed the same thing.

One of the men scrunched his nose from the smell of Killian's vomit that had dampened my clothes. The other tried his best not to physically recoil as they asked me questions about what had happened.

I was amazed at how my heart was still beating when it felt like it had been crushed by a hydraulic press. So much had happened in the space of just fifteen minutes that it gave me motion sickness. My skin buzzed with aftershocks of the terrorising feeling that I might've just watched Killian Hayes die in front of me.

It dawned on me that I couldn't even comprehend what life would be like if he did. That time would continue as it always had, and space would expand, and the sun would come up, and stars would still glow as the night arrives. People would still wake up the next morning. Professors would continue to teach. Students will drink at The Barrel after classes were over and invest themselves in ordinary chit-chat. And me? What would I do? Would I also carry on like everyone and everything else? Could I? How? How could I let myself live as Killian's body would decay in some grave? Who would be there to fuel my urge to keep on going? Who's soul was mine to be tied to if Killian's was floating aimlessly in the murky waters of the afterlife?

I didn't move from my seat. I couldn't. Not without knowing if I would ever be able to see those deep, sapphire eyes look back at me again. It was a few hours but it felt like years. Every tick of the obnoxiously loud clock in the hospital's waiting room felt like a jagged razor etching horrific doubt against my brain. 'How much longer?', I'd try to ask myself but while the suspense of not knowing was torturing me quite well enough, the fear of the words 'I'm sorry' that might leave the doctor's mouth as they try to gently break it to me that Killian didn't make it made me wish for the seconds to pass by even slower.

Sofia and Nathan arrived but I was unable to say anything to them. I buried my head between my kneecaps and for the first time ever, I prayed. I prayed to whoever or whatever was listening. It's a very strange phenomenon, how one's desperation reaches a completely new, almost animalistic, level for someone else. I'd never even thought of the concept of a higher being before this, even at my most helpless moments. Probably because those moments centred around me and I had deemed myself not worthy enough to be prayed for. But in that waiting room, as the life of Killian Hayes danced like a tossed coin in mid-air, this new, undiscovered part of me broke free. A part of me that desperately wanted to grab that coin and flip it to the side I called out, but couldn't. So the next best thing was to pray for whoever had tossed that coin to show me the side I wanted to see, that I needed desperately to see.

Finally, and yet dreadfully, the doctor came out, his face unreadable. The coin still hadn't landed and I feared I might just throw up if it did. It was like I was seeing a pair of arm scales moving up and down, toying with the inevitable truth in front of me.

Heads or Tails?

Prayer didn't feel like enough preparation for this. And so, in the last few seconds before the doctor reached us, I silently whispered,

"I forgive you, Killian. For everything."