Chapter 507. |||
Henry’s POV
|"You will have to learn this eventually to save a life one day."
It was on the very few days I went to school, though I was just as high as when at home.
The drugs I loved to take weren’t the ones giving me crazy hallucinations, but just this... artificial peace.
Not ’artificial’ because it came from foreign substances, but because it was something that couldn’t possibly come voluntarily from my body.
Peace was never something I could feel by myself. |
||So when Kenny touched the corpse of my sister, when his heart stopped and his lifeless body fell, I knew what to do.||
|"First lay the person on a flat, hard ground," the teacher said, demonstrating it with a dummy.|
||In the morgue, not wanting it to end so soon, not wanting to win the game without effort, and not wanting him to not suffer, I remembered.||
I placed him on the grass, ignoring the small fire licking at the remains of the plane wreck that had shattered on impact.
I tilted his head and made sure there was nothing obstructing his airway, but the blood in his body had already stopped running.
There could be no new blood clogging his airway.
Just... when there are no thoughts, when your brain shuts down, when the movement of your hands is the only thing you have left, then your body moves strictly according to what had been programmed into it beforehand.
|My younger self, high on unreachable artificial peace, watched the motions of the teacher.
"You have to count loudly. Pressing with proper pressure to reach the heart through the ribcage, five to seven centimeters deep. ONE, TWO, THREE; push hard and fast until you count to thirty."|
||"ONE , TWO, THREE." My own voice rang through the morgue.
Don’t die just yet.
You said you were innocent.
Prove it.
Why did your eye color change?
Why have I never seen that sleazy expression on your face that I knew from the pictures? Why is the tattoo on your back not visible on the USB stick my sister left behind?
If you are guilty, then you will not die here, but by my hands.
I will make sure of it.||
I placed my hands in the right position and pressed down.
"ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE..." The voice that didn’t sound like my own penetrated the absolute stillness.
No thoughts, just my hands moving.
A dead body, resting in peace.
Is this what real peace is?
Or is this hell?
|"After counting to thirty, pinch the patient’s nose, then seal their lips with your own and transfer two breaths."|
||I pinched his nose, breathed in, placed my mouth on his, and breathed out. I saw his ribcage lift and fall. And no matter how strange all the circumstances around him were, I couldn’t shake off the fact that these were the lips my sister had kissed, the lips she had loved. And right now, I was doing the same she had done, right in front of her eyes. ||
Placing my lips above his, I heard my own voice from the past reverberating inside my mind.
"DAMN IT! Punish me later for that." When our lips touched the second time, it was because he was unable to breathe underground.
"Then I’ll do now what I did the last time; I’ll help you out, okay?" Inside the changing room, when he gave his consent for it to happen for the third time.
|"Now back to the compression," the teacher instructed.
I thought of the guy who lost his consciousness after a little overdose and how if someone went into cardiac arrest during our parties, it wasn’t bad to have this knowledge.
Especially if it was my sister, who didn’t know when to stop.
Not that I was any different.|
||"TWENTY-EIGHT, TWENTY-NINE, THIRTY..." Inside the morgue, I pressed my lips against his anew, never having thought I would use this knowledge on the murderer of my sister.
Amidst the countless dead bodies inside here, only he came back to life under my touch.
The still heart that had started to beat because of my actions.
From the clutches of death,
...back to life.||
Back to life!!
You did it back then; YOU CAN DO IT AGAIN!
I continued with the compressions after delivering the two breaths.
He didn’t wake up as fast as in the morgue; the motionless body stayed still, and with each time I pressed against his ribcage, reality started to set in.
My thoughts and emotions came back, and they did so with a horrifying force.
"TWENTY-EIGHT, TWENTY-NINE, THIRTY!"
I pinched his nose, brought my lips against the cooling body, and closed my eyes.
With my hand resting on his chest, I felt how my breath was transmitted, how the life inside me traveled to him.
But it didn’t bring him back; instead, it evaporated into nothingness.
"Come here and give me a kiss," He motioning for me.
Him grabbing my hair or the back of my head to pull me to him.
Our lips meeting.
The lips smirking, smiling, laughing, curving, and pressing against mine.
Two breaths, then more compressions.
|"Look closely; at least five centimeters, or 2 inches deep. You will have to reach the heart and animate it—coax it back into motion."|
BEATBEATBEATBEATBEATBEATBEATBEAT!
Thirty compressions, then more breaths.
|"Transfer the oxygen and watch the ribcage rise. And again. Deep breaths; watch it rise and fall."|
BREATHEBREATHEBREATHEBREATHEBREATHE!
Back to compressions.
It doesn’t matter; it’s good; it’s alright.
You can die. If you insist on dying, then do it, but you have to bring me with you.
One
Die with me; don’t leave me behind—not for a moment, not for a second.
Two
Or you could just...
"BEAT!" I brought my hands down with more force.
Three.
You could just...
"BREATHE!!" I brought my lips down.
Four.
You could just...
"LIVE!!"
Five.
You could just...
"STAY!!!"
Six.
You could just...
"COME BACK!!!"
Seven.
We could stay...
"TOGETHER!"
Eight.
We could live...
"FOREVER!"
Nine.
You could build me a house...
"BEAT!"
Ten.
I could get the furniture...
"BREATHE!"
Eleven.
We can make it a home...
"LIVE!"
Twelve.
Sleeping and waking up together...
"STAY!"
Thirteen.
I could hunt the game...
"COME BACK!"
Fourteen.
You could show me how to cook...
"BEAT!"
Fifteen.
Watching the world go to hell...
"BREATHE!"
Sixteen.
Loving each other to death ...
"LIVE!"
Seventeen.
Laughing at your jokes...
"STAY!"
Eighteen.
Hiding in your arms...
"COME BACK!"
Nineteen.
BEATBREATHELIVESTAYCOMEBACKBEATBREATHELIVESTAYCOMEBACK!
Twenty.
"PLEASE!!!"
Twenty-one.
"I AM BEGGING YOU!!!"
Twenty-two.
GOD, PLEASE HEAR MY PRAYER!
Twenty-three.
"COME BACK TO ME!!"
Twenty-four.
"TAKE ME WITH YOU!"
Twenty-five.
"BEAT!"
Twenty-six.
"BREATHE!"
Twenty-seven.
"LIVE!"
Twenty-eight.
"STAY!"
Twenty-nine.
"COME BACK!"
Thirty.
I pinched his nose and lowered my head to seal his lips.
I breathed air, life, and prayers into him.
Once, then twice.
"ONE—" After pressing down once again, there was a slight movement—a soft stutter under my palm.
I froze in place.
From my world ending to my world halting, time and stillness intertwined in wait.
Eventually, I placed my ear against his chest...
and confirmed it.
Thump, thump, thump...
What started as slow and stuttering turned into steady and strong.
I listened for a long while, trying to assure myself that I wasn’t imagining it.
Then I groaned, yelled, and cried, unable to cope with this, unable to survive this fright.
"HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME??" I cried into his shirt, grabbing the fabric and ripping it all while writhing like a worm.
"HOW, HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?!" I yelled and screamed, as if throwing a fit.
A sudden fatigue eventually forced me to place my ear against his chest yet again, listening to the steady breaths, the strong thumping, the lullaby that would bring me the most—the only—peace.
And while my mind was slowly and continuously soothed, my body was not.
Ice-cold sweat was still dripping down my back, and my limbs trembled as if something was trying to break out of me.
Partly leaning on Kenny, partly supporting myself with my arms so as not to displease the newfound movement under me, I watched what my view from atop of Kenny’s chest offered to me.
"Thank you..." My voice broke, my tears never stopping.
The remains of the plane wreck were gone, the grass was gone, and the trees were gone on this mountain where we had crashed.
Everything was gone besides the shadowy energy that was still spreading, roaming in a circle outwards—with us in the middle—to devour everything besides the charred earth left behind.
"...for coming back to me..."
Seeing the destruction around me, much grander and much more impactful than the plane crash had been, I found it only natural.
If Kenny had died, it would have been only fitting for everything and everyone to die with him.