(Mark)
The apartment was empty again.
The chaos had been sucked out the door—the flashing red lights, the static of the radios, the heavy boots of the EMTs carrying the stretcher.
They had taken her.
I was left standing in the center of the living room. My hands were still shaking. My lips still tasted like the bitter dust of the pills I had tried to breathe out of her lungs.
I looked around. It was exactly as she had left it. Perfect. Clean. Silent.
It felt like a museum exhibit of a life.
Don't be a burden, I thought. That was the feeling in the room. She had scrubbed the baseboards so I wouldn't have to look at dust while I waited for the coroner.
Sick. It was sick and it was heartbreaking.
I needed my keys. I needed to follow the ambulance.
I went to the table near the door. And there it was.
A single sheet of paper. Folded once.
On the front, in her neat, looping handwriting: For those who come after.
I stared at it. The air left the room.
I am the one who comes after.
I picked it up. It felt heavy, like it was made of lead. I didn't open it. I couldn't. Not yet. I shoved it into my pocket, grabbed my keys, and ran.
The drive to the hospital was a blur of red lights and terrifying nausea.
I had to make the call.
I dialed her mother's number. It was 11:15 PM.
"Hello?" Her voice was sleepy. Happy. "Mark? Is everything okay?"
I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. How do you say it? How do you tell a woman that the daughter she spoke to three hours ago, the daughter who promised to visit for a birthday, is currently being bagged and ventilated in the back of an ambulance?
"Mark?" Fear sharpened her voice.
"It's... it's her," I choked out. "You need to come to St. Jude's. The Emergency Room."
"What happened? Is she hurt? Did she have an accident?"
"Just come," I sobbed. "Please, just drive."
The waiting room smelled of antiseptic and stale coffee.
I was pacing. I had blood on my jeans—not hers, maybe mine from biting my lip, or maybe just dirt from the floor. I didn't know.
The automatic doors slid open.
Her parents rushed in.
Her father looked pale, his jacket buttoned wrong. Her mother looked frantic, her eyes darting around the room until they landed on me.
"Mark!" She ran to me. She grabbed my arms. "Where is she? What happened?"
"They're... they're with her now," I said. " The doctors are in there."
"But what happened?" her dad asked, his voice trembling. "Was it a car crash? Was she mugged?"
They were looking for an external enemy. A drunk driver. A thief. Someone they could hate.
I looked at them. I saw the hope in their eyes. They thought this was a fixable thing. They thought she had broken a leg, or maybe had a bad reaction to food.
They were clinging to the conversation they'd had earlier.
"She called me," her mother said, her voice rising in panic. "She called me tonight. She was happy. She was baking a cake next month. She said she was fine!"
The lie. The beautiful, terrible lie.
"She wasn't fine," I whispered.
"What do you mean?" Her mother stepped back. "Mark, you're scaring me. What do you mean?"
I reached into my pocket.
My hand closed around the paper. It crinkled.
I didn't want to give it to them. Giving it to them made it real. Giving it to them was the final betrayal of her secret.
But they needed to know. They needed to stop looking for a villain in the street and realize the villain was in her mind.
I pulled out the letter.
"I found this," I said. "On the table."
Her mother looked at the paper. She saw the handwriting.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
"No," she whimpered. "No, no, no."
"Read it," I said softly.
She took it. Her hands shook so hard the paper rattled. Her father leaned in, reading over her shoulder.
I watched their faces.
I watched them read the apology. I watched them read about the plants. I watched them read about the cat. I watched them read the Rules.
Rule 1: Do Not Be a Burden.Rule 2: Return All Borrowed Things.Rule 3: Kill the Hope.
As they read, the hope drained out of their bodies like blood from a wound. They physically shrank. Her father gripped the back of a plastic chair to stay upright.
Her mother let out a sound I will never forget. It wasn't a scream. It was a low, animal keening. A sound of absolute, total destruction.
The double doors of the ER swung open.
A doctor walked out. He looked tired. He looked at us—the crying mother, the pale father, the boyfriend with the letter.
He didn't have to speak. The look in his eyes said everything. I'm sorry. We tried. It was too late.
The silence in the hallway was deafening.
Her mother lowered the letter. Tears were streaming down her face, dripping onto the paper, smearing the ink of her daughter's final words.
She looked at the doctor, then she looked at the letter again.
She looked at the list of rules her daughter had created to make this "easy" for us. To make it "clean."
"She thought..." Her mother's voice broke. She struggled for breath. "She thought she was following rules. She thought she was being kind."
She looked at me, her eyes burning with a grief so ancient and so deep it felt like it could crack the floor tiles.
"She forgot one," she whispered.
Her knees gave way.
She didn't try to catch herself. She just collapsed, sliding down the front of me until she hit the cold linoleum floor.
"She forgot Rule Number Four," she sobbed into the ground, clutching the letter to her chest.
"No parent... no parent should ever have to bury their child."
I fell down beside her. Her father fell down beside us.
We were a pile of wreckage on the hospital floor.
The "clean" exit. The "organized" leaving.
It was a lie.
She hadn't cleaned up the mess. She had just transferred the chaos from her head into ours.
And now, we were the ones who had to carry it.