Uncovering You 10: The Finale (36 page)

Atticus nods, but he doesn’t
hear
. “She’s getting worse,” he says.

I don’t pick up a shred of pity or remorse in his voice.
Hard
, I think.
Hard and cold, just as I used to be.

But now? I look at my trembling hands. They’re clenched into fists, yet still they tremble. Still they shake.

Such weakness—such weakness used to disgust me. Now, it has become a vital part of my existence.

What else can there be when all the lights have gone out?

“We have no choice,” Atticus says. “The barbiturates will induce a coma. That will give us more time. While she’s out, we can IV feed her.”

“No!” I swear and surge to my feet, ripping out of my brother’s grasp. All the anger, all the frustration, comes boiling to the surface. “No! I am
not
losing her again!”

“Look at her.” Atticus motions to the video screen. He speaks with patience, with a distant calm. “She is starving. She is dying. If we don’t do it, she
will
die. You know it.”

“I believe in her.” I grind my teeth together. “She can overcome!”

“No.” Atticus takes a step toward me. “Look in my eyes, brother. I know you love her. I’ve seen it. I also know what she’s been through. Doing this now is a mercy. There is a chance—there still might be a chance—that she’ll emerge.”

“Bullshit,” I accuse.

Atticus avoids looking at me. He avoids answering directly. Instead, he says, “It’s better than no chance at all.”

I look at the screen again, where my precious Lilly-Flower is barely recognizable.

“She will die of dehydration if we do nothing.”

I sneer. It’s a mocking sort of sneer. “I know you wouldn’t allow that.”

“No,” my brother hedges. “But I would rather have your permission than go against your wishes. We are in this together.”

I turn away. I can feel tears forming behind my eyelids, and I refuse to let my brother see me cry. Never, since my mother’s death, have I truly cried.

But now, faced with the prospect of losing another woman who owns my heart, my defenses have broken.

I
have broken.

“Then do it,” I say, choking on the words. “But let me see her first.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

December 21
st
, 2014

I gasp, startled by the voice. It pierces through the all-encompassing nothingness of my mind.

I look up. My vision does not work as well as it used to. I have trouble lifting my head. My body feels shriveled, shrunken. Small. Thirst and hunger have long since disappeared. In fact, I feel almost nothing. I see almost nothing.

Nothing but the wonderful prospect of death.

It does not frighten me. In fact, it’s calming. In death, I will be released. In death, I will be no slave to evil Stonehart. In death, the visions will not come—

A startling thought. I tug on my braid.
Visions? What visions? I’m already blind…

“Lilly…please. Come back to me, my love. I know you’re in there. I know you can hear me. I know you can see.”

The voice… the voice is so familiar. Whose is it? I cannot tell. It’s familiar, but it’s also
different
, choked on emotions that have never been there before.

Someone takes my hand. “Come back to me.” Fingers stroke my knuckles. “Please. Come back to me. Please.”

Warmth creeps up my arm from that touch. But whose touch is it? Why do I feel like I shouldn’t ignore it, like I should embrace it? Why do I feel that the warmth can pull me out of the darkness—

In an instant, my vision clears. I see
him
, that vile, evil, horrible man, sitting on the bed beside me.

“Lilly…” Stonehart says.

No,
I think.

In my final act of defiance, I close my eyes and let death take hold.

Chapter Forty-Nine

“Lilly. Lilly, wake up.”

No answer.

“Lilly.” A hushed command. “Goddamn you, Lilly, get up!”

No answer.

“Don’t leave me. Don’t do this. Not now. Not now.
GET UP!
”

No answer.

The End.

Epilogue

One year later: December 2015.

“Jeremy? She wouldn’t want to live like this.”

I hear the words, but they barely register. They bounce around in some distant part of my mind. My brain refused to assign them meaning.

Just like it refuses to assign meaning to anything that’s happened in the last twelve months.

Three months after Lilly’s medically-induced coma, Atticus had come to me and announced he’d done it: he’d found a permanent counteragent to the poison. Lilly would be saved. She would have to be operated on, and then allowed to rest. With her unconscious, that was not a big concern.

I approved the procedure. I watched from the waiting room as my brother injected her with the agent that would purge the poisonous residue consuming her mind.

“She needs to heal now,” Atticus had told me in the aftermath. “Now we just wait for her to heal.”

That we did. That
I
did. I stayed by her side every day. Every single day, since that moment, I stayed beside the barely-breathing figure that would be my wife.

Such hope filled me those first few days
. Oh, how little I knew…

My Lilly did heal. Bless her soul, her brainwaves normalized. The poison had been leached out of her. She was whole again.

But she would not wake.

Time
, I thought back then.
We need to give her time. She’ll come to on her on
.

That, we did too. We gave her time. A week passed. I did not sleep. A month passed. I barely ate. Two months.
Three
.

She was healed, goddammit, why wouldn’t she wake
?

In a fit of rage I shook her. Screamed at her. Begged her and pleaded with her to come back to me. I took her hand and whispered all the things we would do together as husband and wife. I told her of the places we’d go. The things we would see. The grand ceremony of our wedding, our honeymoon, everything.

She did not stir.

I spoke of the children we’d have. Children I never wanted before. I spoke of growing old together, of living our lives in full together. How weak my voice seemed then.

“Just wake,” I begged her.

She did not stir.

Then I promised her, as I held her hand, as I whispered in her ear, that we would one day look back on this and laugh.

Three and a half weeks later, my brother came in and spoke to me in earnest.

“The IV is the only thing keeping her alive
,” he’d said.
“I’m sorry, Jeremy. I cannot give you false hope. She is brain dead.”

But like an idiot, like a deranged fool, I refused to believe. She was right there! My Lilly was right there, dammit, and damn her fragility! It did not matter! She was right there and she was breathing and she was
healed
! Why didn’t anyone see? She would open her eyes any moment now and see me as I see her, she would see me as Jeremy again, not as Stonehart, never as Stonehart, and we would live all the hopes and dreams of our lives out together.

I was giving in to some of my own hysteria, then.

I became desperate. I called Lilly’s mother and told her what happened. I asked her to come. I thought, prayed, hoped, that maybe hearing a second familiar voice would help Lilly rise.

Still, she did not stir.

More long, desperate months passed. Every day, Lilly looked more and more like a preserved corpse. He skin was ghostly white. Her breathing, so delicate, so thin, it did not look like she drew breath at all. And her heart! How I hated that weak, feeble, deceptive beat of her heart.

One night, delirious from lack of sleep, I yelled at her.

“You’re stronger than this,” I began. It was a cold, stormy winter night outside. “Lilly. I know you’re there. Give me a sign. Give me anything. Lift a finger. Just one. That’s all I need. That’s all I need, my precious Lilly-Flower. Please. I love you. Let me know you’re still in there. Let me know you’re still alive. I healed you. GODDAMMIT,
I HEALED YOU LIKE I SAID I WOULD
!”

I was shaking her, then. A team of nurses had to rush in to pry me off.

Still she did not stir.

“Jeremy?” The voice interrupts my contemplations. “It’s time. We need to pull the plug.”

I turn my head and see Renee. How she can be so strong when faced with her daughter like this, I do not know. I have lost the strength eons ago.

Tears sting my eyes. I look at Renee like a man lost.
I cannot let her go, never, I can never let her go
.

“She’s gone,” Renee whispers.

I shake my head. I rub my face with both hands. I stare at the floor.

Renee takes my head and holds me to her stomach. She strokes my hair. I let her.

I’ve long since given up on appearances, or facades of strength, or acting immune. None of it matters without
her
.

“I know,” I finally whisper.

Renee tilts my head up. Our eyes meet. Hers are dry. She’s long since accepted her daughter’s fate.

“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she says.

The hollow sound of the door closing breaks the peace of the room.

I look down at the love of my life for the final time. “Lilly,” I say. My voice quavers. “I did not deserve you.” I lean in to kiss her eyelid. “I never deserved you.” I kiss the other one. “Goodbye, my sweet Lilly-flower.” I press my lips to her warm-yet-icy-lips. “Goodbye, my love.”

Then I turn away and reach for the plug.
One small tug
.

My fingers curl around the cord.
One quick pull, that’s all it takes
.

I take a deep breath, the deepest of my life, delaying the inevitable moment for just a little longer.

Then, with all my muscles tense, I begin the motion that will end her life.

But just as I do, some force, some instinct, makes me turn back. And my hand stops cold, because I see…

An eyelid flutter.

The Actual End.