“Dannon?”

I continued to stare straight forward, my hands curled into tight fists as they rested on my legs.  I’d been sitting here for what felt like forever.  Had it been hours, minutes, days?  How long had I been in this chair, in this room?  How long had I been staring unseeingly in the direction of the bed in front of me?

How long had it been since this unending torture began?

“Dannon, how long have you been here?”

I felt myself shrug, but my mind didn’t actually register me doing so.  It seemed like all I could do was stare, stare, stare.  I wasn’t even quite sure that I blinked.  “I don’t know,” I whispered, my voice rusty with disuse.  It’d been so long since I talked.  It took all the strength I had to talk now.

“Did you go home last night?”

With more energy than I honestly had, I blinked and craned my head in the direction of the voice.  Oliver stood there, his thumbs hooked in his jeans as he stared at me with deep concern clear in his eyes.  He was beyond the sympathetic glances.  No, now he was scared for me.  And who could blame him?  I was kind of scared for me, too.  “No,” I mumbled before twisting back to face the bed.

“This isn’t healthy, Dannon,” Oliver told me, hitching his foot around one of the hospital chairs and pulling it toward him, falling into it.  I could see the dismay on his face without even looking at him.  “This isn’t what Brianne would want and you know it.”

I felt my eyes burn with tears.  I blinked them away, and suddenly my gaze wasn’t unseeing anymore.  I could see the scene in front of me, could see it perfectly.  Brianne was in the hospital bed, tubes in her nose and around her face.  There was an IV in her arm, but she didn’t seem to notice.  Brianne, the girl who would squirm and yelp at the sight of a needle didn’t notice an IV in her arm.  That all in itself made my stomach tighten.  She was completely oblivious to what was going on around her.  And why?

Because she was in a coma.

“Please,” I whispered, my voice thick with the tears I was trying so hard to keep away.  “Please don’t do that to me.”

Oliver placed a hand on my shoulder.  It was meant to comfort me, but it didn’t.  Not really.  Nothing seemed to be able to comfort me anymore.  Not for over three months.  Not since the car crash ruined everything.  Everything.  “You remember what you told her after you went into a coma, don’t you?  What you felt when you woke up and found out she wouldn’t smile?”

I frowned.  At the time I’d felt guilty that I’d brought so much pain, so much agony to the people that I loved.  But now I knew what it felt like.  I couldn’t smile.  I couldn’t laugh.  I couldn’t really do anything.  All I could do was stare and feel dead inside.  “I know what I said,” I muttered, a tear slipping down my cheek.  “But now I get it.  I really get it.”

Oliver was silent for a moment.  He was trying to think of something to say, of something that could possibly pull me out of this state of utter nothingness that I seemed to be trapped in.  But he wouldn’t find anything.  Because there was nothing—nothing—that could make me happy anymore.  Well, unless there was some magical way to bring Brianne back to life.

I knew better than anyone that Brianne was gone.  She may have been breathing like she was here, but she was gone.  I could feel it deep inside.  And it killed me to know that—to know that she wasn’t coming back no matter how long I sat here and waited for her.  I knew that Brianne had felt this way to an extent when I was in a coma.  But this feeling was so deep, so utterly heart wrenching, that I knew there was absolutely no hope.  Brianne wasn’t coming back.  The only reason she was still breathing at all was because of the machines keeping her heart going.

Brianne was gone.  So how the hell was I supposed to smile and act like everything was okay?

“Oliver,” I murmured, my voice devoid of emotion.  “Brianne is gone and she’s not coming back.”

Oliver blinked.  “Dannon—”

I felt my eyes water again as I glared.  “So please tell me how I’m supposed to smile.  How am I supposed to laugh, to act happy, when the love of my life is gone?”

Oliver bit his lip.  I could see that this was hurting him.  It pained him to see me in this state.  It pained everyone.  Shelley, Garner, Paula, Meghan, Garrett, Julie, Stan, my dad.  My dad.  I could barely look at him these days.  There was so much pain in his eyes.  When I was around my dad all I wanted to do was curl in on myself and disappear.  It killed him that I couldn’t smile.  It killed him.

“Brianne said the same thing,” said Oliver after a while.  I watched as he let a breath of air out through his teeth.  “She said that no matter how hard she tried to smile, she couldn’t.  Everything reminded her of you.”

I brought a hand to my stomach as I suddenly felt like throwing up.  I knew that Oliver was only trying to make me see that I was reacting exactly like Brianne had when I’d gone into a coma; he was only trying to make me see so that I could figure out how to move past this.  Brianne had kicked herself for weeks after I woke up for acting how she did.  I hadn’t blamed her, and I still didn’t.  Now, though, I truly understood what she was going through.  Back then I had sympathized.  Now I empathized.

I wiped feverishly at the tears forming in the corner of my eyes.  I hated crying.  I hated it so much. The only person I ever really let see me cry was Brianne.  “What would you do if Kyla went into a coma?”  I asked.

Oliver stared at me blankly.  I could see that he was deep inside his thoughts, attempting to visualize what exactly he would do.  We both knew that he wouldn’t be like he was now—upset but strong.  He’d be distraught just like me, like Brianne had been.  “I. . . .”

“Exactly.”  I stood up, crossing my arms over my chest.  “You’d be exactly like this, wouldn’t you?”

Oliver’s eyes followed me as I moved toward the door.  This was my first time leaving the room in what was probably days.  “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home,” I replied simply.  “I need to see my dad.”

And with that I left the room, the door closing firmly behind me.

†

My dad dropped his cup on the floor when he saw me walk through the door.  In an instant he was in front of me, wrapping his arms tightly around me.  I hugged him back firmly, hiding my face in his shoulder.  My dad and I had always been close, and I’d never really been one to hold back when it came to hugging and telling the man that I loved him.  Why hold back when your days are numbered?  And even now that my cancer was gone, I still treated him the same way.  It was who I was. 

“Dannon,” my dad murmured.  “You came home.”

I nodded, feeling tears dripping down my cheeks before I could stop them.  “I can’t,” I whispered thickly.  “I can’t do this, Dad.”

My dad held me out at arm’s length, his eyes searching my face.  I could see a distant emotion in his eyes, as though he felt like he was repeating the past except in an altered sort of way.  I was suddenly struck with the realization that he had hugged Brianne while I was in a coma, that she had told him about how much she missed me.  “Yes,” my dad replied.  “You can.”

I shook my head, more tears leaking out into the open.  I could remember sobbing about my fear of dying with Brianne.  She had wiped my tears from my cheeks and told me that the only one she’d ever love was me.  And, even though I’d known that would only bring her pain, that had made me happier than I could describe.  I knew then that the only one I could ever love was her.

And now I was the one falling apart.

“I can’t live in a world without her in it.”  I choked down at a sob.  “I miss her so much.”

My dad pulled me to him again, holding me as I wept.  I could feel myself tumbling deeper into a depression, deeper into losing myself completely.  The boy who smiled at everyone and everything was gone—gone with Brianne.  I felt like all of me had been ripped away, replaced with this person that no one could recognize.  No one ever thought that anything could bring me down.  They’d all assumed that I’d smile through even the hardest times.  I was strong, they said.  I was so, so strong.

I’d never felt more weak in my life.

“Dannon,” my dad murmured, pushing me out at arm’s length again.  There was a new sadness in his eyes now.  One that had not been there before.  “Julie called.”

I stared.  “What?” I asked, my voice trembling with the remaining tears I wanted to shed.  But I couldn’t shed them now.  My dad had something important to say.  “Why?”

“She’s been trying to get ahold of you, but you wouldn’t answer your cellphone,” he said softly.  “You haven’t been answering anyone’s phone calls, Dannon.”

I nodded stiffly.  “What did she want?”

The look on my dad’s face told me that it was about Brianne.  And why wouldn’t it be?  Why else would Julie call?  Though she thought of me as her own son, she never called unless it was important.  Otherwise Garrett would have called.  “Julie and Stan have decided that it’s time.”

I felt my stomach drop and ice slithered its way through my veins.  “What?” I demanded, my voice shaking more now.  No.  No, no, no. No. . . .

“They’ve decided that it’s time to let Brianne go.”  My dad’s fingers dug into my shoulders as his eyes pleaded with me to make it through this.  But I couldn’t.  I couldn’t.  I couldn’t.  “I’m so sorry, Dannon.  I’m so, so sorry.”

I pushed my dad away from me, suddenly teetering off balance.  I collapsed to the ground and stayed there, tears streaming down my face in waves.  I couldn’t breathe as I moaned and sobbed, muttering the same word over and over under my breath.  “No, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

Even though I knew Brianne was gone, the fact that her family was giving up on her made me want to rip the entire world apart.  They of all people should be clinging to the small hope that Brianne could still be in there somewhere.  They were supposed to have faith.  I knew it was terrible, but at least she was breathing.  The thought of making it official, the thought of actually putting her in the ground. . . .

“No!” I shouted, my voice echoing around me.  “No, no, no!”

“Dannon!”

My eyes opened and I sat up, gasping desperately for air.  I blinked, my head twisting around as my eyes scraped my surroundings.  I wasn’t outside my dad’s house.  I was in darkness, in my bedroom—our bedroom.  I fell back into my pillows, breathing deeply.  Just a dream, just a dream. . . .

But was it?

My eyes shot to the right, pleading with the darkness to show me at least the outline of the girl I loved.  And Brianne was there, her eye wide as she stared at me.  “Dannon,” she whispered.  “Hon, you’re crying.”

I shook my head, letting out a muffled cry before grabbing her and pulling her toward me, my arms wrapping tightly around her.  Brianne, obviously confused, wrapped her arms around me just as tightly, bringing a hand comfortingly through my hair.  “Oh my god, Brianne,” I managed to say in a stifled voice.

“Damn,” Brianne said, her tone attempting to be light.  “You must have been having a hell of a nightmare.

I pulled away just enough so that I could see her face.  I placed my hands on her cheeks and kissed her three times swiftly on the lips before wrapping my arms around her again.  “Just don’t die on me—ever,” I ordered, breathing deeply.  “Ever.”

I could feel Brianne laugh more than hear her.  “All right,” she mused.  “I’ll just go get some supernatural creature to turn me immortal.  Sound good?”

I nodded, closing my eyes.  “Yes.  That sounds perfect."