𝐒𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐲

Chapter 97

Nice to see you all again! Thanks so much for 500k !

— Chapter 97 —
All the Strings Cut

=||=||=

E L L I O T

He's dead.

The first time I heard those words, I'd only just come up for air.

Another splash had split the horizon. A body, familiar at that, plunging off the side of a burning ship. Kicking against the currents, I'd waded out into the inky depths until I'd found him. With one arm hooked into black fabric, I'd dragged us both towards the shore. It was no easier the second time around.

I first heard those words with my frigid body splayed across solid ground. I heard them as my lungs wrestled for oxygen. I heard them as my brain exploded in pain and my nails buried into soaked gravel.

There'd still been water in my ears, and I wasn't sure I'd heard things correctly.

He's dead.

Even after gathering my senses, it'd taken me long enough to recognize Han's garbled voice—speaking those words into reality, instilling my thoughts with the worst horrors they could provoke.

It took me longer to realize that he wasn't talking about Noah.

He's dead.

Midas. I killed him.

...

Three days had passed since that night.

"Thought I'd find you up here again."

Angela's voice was a gentle ripple through the early-morning breeze.

On the rooftop terrace of the hospital, the two of us were the only souls in sight. It was my hiding place—the same spot Noah nearly died, and the same spot he first told me that he loved me.

Coincidentally, it also happened to be where all the nurses in residency went for their smoke breaks.

Angela happened to be one of them, except she only came up here for the express purpose of finding fresh air. She wasn't quite used to the hospital smell yet—something I found out when she first discovered me up here two days ago.

Closing the stairwell door behind her, Angela tilted her head towards where I was bundled up on the ground.

She sighed.

"Still not talking to anyone, huh?" A flash of pity crossed her tone. "Maria's been asking about you. Chains, too. He says you've been avoiding them all like the plague." She slowly murmured, "It's been three days, Elliot."

Three days since Noah died.

He bled out within an inch of his life and then he died. Right here, in the hospital. On the operating table. Surrounded by a mass of desensitized surgeons with their scalpels and their defibrillators. Surrounded by strangers who didn't even know his name. Surrounded by people who couldn't save him.

He died.

"Here." Pushing a steaming styrofoam cup into my peripheral vision, she explained, "I made you tea. It's from the waiting room table, so don't expect anything fancy, but... I guess it's better than nothing."

I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since that night. Nothing that stayed down, at least. Still, I unfurled the nails out of my ragged palms and took the cup from her—if only to warm my perpetually shaky hands.