If death were to come for me, bury me on a hill and let me remain in your hearts.

                         ~WritingRo~

                             Romano

I was going to die of fever alone in an old cabin in Marseille. This is not how I would have chosen to die, I would have preferred a gun to the head, but I guess God had to choose the way I die. It's only fair; He never chose how I lived.

I was burning up. The sheet covering my body was wet from sweating. I had no water except the one little bottle I had bought at the airport, which was now over. It's not like I had planned on staying in this hell hole at all. Lying on that bed waiting for death, I had two wishes, that my brothers would forgive me for dying and that Mia was safe wherever she was.

I shivered uncontrollably. My muscles felt like they were on fire, headaches that made me feel like my head was about to come off. It got so bad my hands could barely pull up the sheet to cover my whole body. I was dying; I knew it.

At some time, I must have blacked out, hallucinating because I kept seeing my small brother smiling at something while crunching on 'Matilda' his beloved doll, that was why I knew I was a hallucination. Jamie rarely smiled; I can't even remember him laughing except when he was a toddler. Sickness was what defined his young life. He died in my arms five days after his third birthday, still holding Matilda for dear life. I felt the last breath leave his body, his piercing cries too loud to wake the dead.

I raised Jamie after our mother died few minutes after giving birth to him. I always believed those few minutes were to name him, just a few seconds to bestow her favorite grandfather's name to her son.

He made me a parent overnight. A twelve-year-old boy a year short of teenagehood is still trying to figure himself out. It was the scariest moment of my life when the midwife placed him in my arms. Of course, he should have been my father's responsibility but apparently asking a man whose life was spent from city to city on alcohol, women, and rock and roll was too much to expect. Still, at least his presence made it possible for me to have Jamie and not have him in the system.

Jamie saved my life in so many ways. I don't think I would have had it together after my mom died if it wasn't for him. We raised each other. He taught me responsibility, taught me how to love unconditionally, and gave me a lot of courage. He had a pure heart, he rarely cried, but sometimes I found myself wishing he could so that I would pretend he was like any other baby making a fuss.

But after years, I guess I must have unlearned how to love.

I have made a lot of bad decisions in my life, made countless mistakes, but raising Jamie remains the best thing I have done in my life so far. He loved me too, I knew, probably as much as he loved Matilda. But if I were to be asked, Matilda probably outranked me on that. I thought amusingly. If I had the strength to laugh, I would have at how funny it was, competing for love with a doll.

My mother bought Matilda when a few months after she found out she was pregnant; a fortune-teller told her she was going to have a girl. I'm not really sure what she felt when the midwife announced the baby was a boy, I never got the chance to ask, but whatever it was, I know without a doubt she would have loved him.

When I close my eyes really tight, I can still see him, feel him, smell him, his tiny hand palming my face. The way he looked when I laid him down on the old dirty couch in our living room. I had looked at his lifeless body lying peacefully, tears that had not completely dried even though he was dead, and I broke down. It was the last time I cried.

I walked away from home the day he died, never stayed long enough to bury him. I had said my goodbyes, cut my ties with the family, and with the man who had taken our lives for granted. I didn't have a reason to stay. Everyone I loved was dead.

And from then on, I considered myself alone, without a family, until I met my brothers.

My father was making one of his usual quarterly visits that weekend. Burying Jamie was his only fatherly responsibility he did since his birth. And ironically, that was one of the things he did for me, albeit unknowingly, but still, I was glad he was home. His presence made it possible for me to walk away.

I have lived for more than ten years trying to forget his death. The image of him in death. When I left, I took nothing with me just the clothes I wore and a blue jacket my mother bought me on my twelve birthday, which was already too small for my rangy form.

Maybe I should have stayed so that I would know where he was buried. I guess I had my regrets after all. The irony was, not knowing where he was buried was one of the reasons I walked away before the burial. I never wanted to know; he was dead. I was never going to see him again, and even then, I understood how final death was.

I have never spoken about Jamie to anyone. Not even after father Jose asked why I had so much hatred for God when I was sixteen, or when he asked why I was living like I was angry at the world, neither did I talk of him to the two boys who were beginning to be my friends, probably because I knew in doing so, I would open a floodgate of tears which would have been impossible to stop. Also, I did not want to show any weakness, and crying would have been deemed as a weakness. But most likely, it was because I wanted to forget him.

And forget him I did, until today.

I must have been in and out of consciousness. But in one bout of awareness, I heard Bruno's voice. "Don't you dare die you son of a bitch" Two things occurred to me at the same time, one is that I wasn't dead, which I must say was a relief; God must have changed his mind. The second was that I wasn't going to die; my brothers would make sure of it; I was safe.

I was flown to the hospital, where I stayed for three days. It was the longest I had stayed in hospital since I could remember. When I came around, Bruno was standing by the window smoking, puffing, and letting out so much smoke like a chimney.

"What the fuck are you smoking?" my voice was weak. Bruno didn't speak, neither did he turn to look at me, we stayed in silence, the only sound from outside of my door probably patients moving about.

"Are you giving me the silent treatment?" he turned around then, looking at me angrily. Bruno was rarely emotional none of us were, but his look at that moment was fucking emotional, and I knew he allowed me to see the emotions. It was his way of letting me know he loved me.

"I didn't die" It was all I could say at that moment. Like I was offering him consolation, which he did not appreciate if the glare he gave me was anything to go by. But I honestly didn't know what to say. I didn't.

"Look, man. I'm sorry, okay."

"What the hell were you doing in Marseille anyway? Who shot you and why" His voice was sharp, a scowl on his face, his cigarette forgotten between his fingers.

I had forgotten, albeit for a moment, what I was doing in Marseille, but the moment Bruno asked that question, everything came flooding back in mind.

I wondered whether Mia made it. Was she okay? And most importantly, had she followed my instruction as I had told her?

I wanted to know where she was. Mostly I wished she could get a chance to live her life in her terms. Everyone deserved an opportunity to choose their path.

There was a beauty in knowing someone so completely, you knew when to press something and when not to. Bruno could tell I did not want to talk about it, so he did not ask again, and I appreciated it. I didn't want to talk about Stefano or Mia. Talking about it meant having to answer the most obvious question, why did I risk my life to save a stranger?

"Where the hell is Raph," I asked as I got out of bed, limping to join him at the window. There was not much to look at just buildings, people, and traffic. The weather wasn't exceptional, either.

"Raph will be here soon. He was in a meeting."

"So, what's new?" I was fishing for information.

"Nothing. Why"

"Just asking," I said, leaning at the window, turning my eyes to watch as the sunset and a few lights starting to glare brightly at the fading sunset. We stood there in comfortable silence, both of us lost in our thoughts watching as the city prepared to sleep.

I felt dizzy, but I stayed there with him in some sort of comradeship. Leaning slightly on the window smelling smoke, I cleared my throat while I tried how to figure out how to ask something that had been bugging since I almost died.

"Do you believe in God?" I finally asked, staring at the tip of the burning cigarette hanging on his mouth "And stop smoking so damn much for god's sake," I snapped. He laughed a belly laugh, infectious laugh. He was silent for a moment again before he answered.

"Father Jose swears by Him" He curtly answered. I guess he was still angry with me.

"I didn't ask Father Jose, I asked you." He coughed, touching the edge on his nose, took another cigarette from his shirt, lighting it, and then took time to blow out smoke before he moved his face to mine.

"I don't know, man." I realized, from the sincerity on his voice, that he's never had the chance to think about it. The irony was, we spent part of our teenagehood in the church. We have heard more sermons than most of our ilk.

The irony was a puzzle I couldn't put together. Why were we so determined not to believe in the existence of God? But most importantly, why were we always part of religious rituals if we didn't believe in Him?

"Do you?" His gaze was intense as he asked me the same question, probably from smoking, or maybe he was just curious, but knowing Bruno, it was the former.

"I think I do, not sure. When I thought I was at death's door, I thought of Him. There are times I have thought God is just a higher power created by the moral humans to scare the rest of us, but every time I'm in a fucked up situation, He is the first one I think about.

Bruno said nothing, he just continued smoking, and I stood there with him until I got tired and went back to bed.

As I laid down, I was glad my death had been postponed. If there really was a God up there, I wanted him to know how grateful I was for not letting death claim me. I didn't want to die yet; I was curious about Mia, curious as to whether her hand felt right in mine just like I remembered.