I got the call sometime between my calculus class and history the following Monday.
"Hello?" I asked.
I saw the number on my phone. The caller ID showed up. It was the hospital.
"Is this Israel Taylor?" a calm voice on the other end asked.
My hands were trembling. My feet turned numb. "Yes, yes it is."
"Mr. Taylor, this is Emma McKenzie's doctor. You are on the list of people to be immediately notified when, well, when the time is closing in."
I stayed silent.
"I would recommend coming to the hospital now as we aren't sure how much time is left."
I managed to choke out an, "mhm," as I hung up the phone.
I tried to walk again but grabbed onto the wall for balance. My legs weren't working. My heart was racing.
There were no calls, no telling a teacher, not even a trip to my locker.
I just walked out of school.
My car was silent as it drove me down the cold, grey streets. I wasn't thinking about where I was going or how I was going to get there. I just made turns whenever my arms made them for me. I didn't press the gas, my legs just did whatever they felt was right.
I didn't do anything. I wasn't there. I was only some consciousness crammed inside a body that moved on its own.
Eventually, I found the right parking lot and I walked inside. I passed by Emma's parent's car and stumbled through the sliding glass doors.
"Excuse me, sir, who are you going to see?"
"Emma," I said under my breath.
"Excuse me, but Emma who?"
"McKenzie," I wimpered out. "Please," I added for good measure.
"I have you in the system, thank you."
I turned and walked to the elevator and pressed floor three.
I walked down the same hallway I had been walking down for the past two weeks, months, years, or however long I had been doing it. I tried to snap myself out of this limbo I was in. This wasn't about me, this was about her.
It felt better to think about her. I took a deep breath and slowly opened the door to her room. Her parents held their tissues close to their bodies as if they were hiding them from Emma as she lay with her eyes closed.
"Oh Israel, honey, welcome," Mrs. McKenzie said to me.
"Hi, Mrs. McKenzie. How is she?" I looked at her. Why isn't she looking back at me?
"Oh, she's been resting for a bit now. We don't know what happened, really, she just had a really rough night."
"How much longer does she have?" I asked, the tears building up.
"We don't know," Dave added in, his face ghost white. "Should be today, might be tomorrow, but it's probably not going to be after that." He said it monotonously as if he didn't even believe it himself.
"Okay, okay," I said, more to myself than to anyone else. "Is she still conscious? Like, can she still, ya know, hear me?"
her mom blew her nose and dabbed her eyes. "We think she can still hear. She's really gotten weak the past couple of hours, so she hasn't talked."
"Oh," I said. "Should I, uh, just talk to her?" My throat caught every word as it struggled out.
"I think she'd love that. We can give you the room if you want," she said.
I knelt down by Emma's side as they left. Her breaths were long and labored, but she looked peaceful.
"It's snowing today," I choked out. And then I mumbled, "You told me one time you liked it when it snowed."
I didn't know what to say. Each breath she drew without talking back broke me a little bit more.
I felt so stupid for not staying longer last night. I felt stupid for not saying more to her.
I felt so unbelievably stupid.
I looked over to the side table and saw my diary. I wondered if she read the whole thing.
"You really snuck up on me, you know? I didn't expect anyone to come into my life during my senior year. I thought things would end, not begin."
I waited for her to wake up and say something sarcastic, but nothing filled the silence I left.
I cleared my throat again, trying to talk through my tears. "You turned my world into something I never thought it could be," I said, my teardrops falling on her bedsheets. "Before you, I was lost. I didn't see how anyone could love the world for the chaos it is. I thought the world was nothing other than a black and white blob I was trying to paint by myself. But you... you showed me that beauty isn't just something I need to create, it's something I can find."
I picked up her hand and held it close as she labored through more breaths.
I tried to cough out the catch I had in my throat, but that just made it worse. "You changed my life. You uprooted and obliterated everything I thought I knew and I can't thank you enough for it." The tears kept falling as I tried to keep my composure.
I wanted to act like Emma would have wanted me to act. I wanted to say what Emma would want me to say.
"We are not our last words," I choked out. "But still, I wish there wasn't so much pressure to make them sound right. To be honest, I can't think of anything to say that would do us justice. From the time you came up to me while I was walking through the science wing to now, we have somehow lived a lifetime for each other in a few short months, and I love you for that. I love you more than you can imagine.
"I don't know how to finish this in a way that would accurately encompass you or our time together. And I guess that's a good thing because I don't regret any of it. If I could go back in time with everything I know now, I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't change the way I fell in love with you, or the you made my life a paradise. You were worth it... But I guess I have to choose some words to be my last, so I'll just say this: I love you, everything is going to be okay... and you have a really nice butt."
And it wasn't much
but I swear that when I said those words
I saw her smile.
I stood up and let her parents come back into the room. Her blood pressure dropped more and her heart rate was slowing down.
A doctor followed them in and checked Emma's vitals. He looked around the room and plainly said, "I'd like to talk to all of you outside if you would please."
I followed Emily's family out the door, the doctor trailing behind us.
"Okay," he said, rechecking his clipboard, "if the signs she is showing are in-line with what we have seen in the past, then she should pass before the end of today." No one batted an eye. Not even me.
"Now," he continued, "it is only noon right now and I don't imagine it will happen in the next hour or two. If you would like to order food, settle in, or even go for a walk, all of that is normal and healthy behavior. Normally, the passing member will feel more comfortable moving on if the spotlight is away from them. Remember, we have every reason to believe she can still listen. I would suggest trying to keep the conversation light and, if you feel comfortable, let her know that it is okay for her to pass on. Especially at this young age, she might feel her spirit clinging to life while her body is telling her otherwise. But you can make sure she knows that it's okay for her to pass on."
I thought about the words pass on. Death had a finality to it but if she's just passing then there's something she's passing to.
I know it's just a trick used by doctors to make families feel better, but it oddly worked.
We walked back in and Emma's parents started talking about their plans for the weekend. They asked me what I've been learning in school over the past couple of weeks. They ordered food from a burger joint and had it delivered in the next half-hour.
We ate as they asked me questions about college and I asked them questions about their life before and leading up to adopting Emma.
"Oh when we saw her in the agency, it was like love at first sight," her mom cooed
"She only says that because she thought Emma looked like her," her dad joked.
"Exactly, she was beautiful. And she grew into just the most amazing, strong, independent, and quick-witted woman. She was like our sunshine on a cloudy day," her voice cracked through her tears. "Every time she came downstairs for breakfast she would have a new way she wanted to decorate her room or have a new podcast about being happy. Every day she worked to make our lives brighter."
"It's wonderful to see how she got that way."
"Oh I would love to take credit for it, but I'd be flattering myself too much," her mom said with a smile. "I like to think it was all built into her. It was her armor when people in foster care would pick on her or when her life would get tough. She was always thinking about making life magical. That was the main reason why we didn't try to stop her when she wanted to do her road trip."
The liquid in Emma's lungs affected her breathing. Her breaths were getting harsher as the heart rate monitor started slowing down
Her mom kneeled next to her. "Emma... it's okay," she said.
The beeps got slower.
"Emma, my darling," her dad choked out, "you have nothing to worry about. We will always be here for you. But, if you feel like you need to go, for now, we're all okay with that."
They both looked back at me. "Israel," her mom said, "do you want to say anything."
"Ya know," I struggled out, surprised at how frail my voice was, "we kind of already said our last goodbyes... I think if I tried to say any more she might, ya know, stay alive just to spite me."
This is where you say something sarcastic, I thought.
Please?
I looked at her. Eyes closed, beautiful brown hair covering most of her chest. Her skin was pale and her chest rose and fell ever so slightly with every passing couple of seconds.
This isn't the end, don't you remember? It's never the end with us. Once you get to heaven, we'll just go long-distance.
The next thing happened, like everything else with her, almost perfectly on cue.
Her chest fell one last time. Her heart monitor stopped beeping.
And for what seemed like an eternity, only sound in my life was that one, long, fucking beep.
My jaw dropped. Time stopped. I kept looking at her, her face now crowded by the screams and wails of her mother.
I held my hand to my mouth as I started crying. My back was shaking, my mouth was trembling, and I had nowhere to go. I was lost. I got up and reached my arm out to her.
After grabbing nothing but air, I turned around, looking for something in the room.
Her soul was the only thing that tethered me to the ground, and without it I couldn't keep my balance.
I saw the door so I ran for it. Before I could get to it, doctors and nurses burst in and crowded the corner, reading her machines aloud.
I left out the door they came in and ran into the hallway. I looked around frantically. Nurses and patients saw me. They understood what happened, I could see it. Some of them started making signs of the cross to the backdrop of Emma's mom's continued screams.
I stumbled through the hallway until I saw a set of doors with stained glass on them. I burst into the room and jerked my head around, making sure I was alone. My eyes focused on the only other guy in the room with me: Him. Strung up on a cross, looking down at the ground as if he couldn't look me in the eyes. I walked up to the kneeler in front of the main altar and grabbed onto it.
I flexed my hands, arms, chest, heart. A terrible, agonizing scream left my chest. I screamed through the pain, the unfairness, the loss, and, above all, the hollowness.
My god, how hollow I felt.
I screamed as my tear drops hit the altar and as I punched the wood I was kneeling on. I screamed as I shattered on the floor, my arms and legs quivering under the weight of the world.
There was nothing left inside of me. Nothing. Everything I had was either given to her when she was alive or ripped from me as she died.
I looked back up to him, sitting on that granite cross. I fell further to the floor and hung my head in between my knees. I didn't know if I wanted to talk to him, myself, Emma, or someone else, but I had something I needed to say.
"I just don't understand it," I said. "Things you expect aren't supposed to catch you this off-guard."
Tears fell from my cheeks onto the floor. I felt tiny and worthless, sheltered in the chapel with color fleeing out of every object I laid eyes on.
"She was my everything," I choked out.
When I broke down again, it wasn't violent. It wasn't angry or intense, it was just me. It was a guy sitting in an empty chapel, crying to someone who couldn't comfort him anymore.
After some time, I walked out of the chapel. I didn't quite know where to go. I looked back in the hospital room and saw more commotion, more people, more noise, and the body of my girlfriend.
Her body. Nothing more.
This was their time and I didn't want to intrude on it anymore. So I left. I walked through the doors, walked past the receptionist asking me to check out, walked to my car, turned it on, and drove home.
I walked in through the door and my dad almost met me there.
"What the hell were you thinking, skipping school? You can't just-" he stopped dead as I made eye contact with him.
"Please don't make me say it," I said. Anger shed off his face as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and took me into the living room.
Eventually, my mom got home and my dad stopped her at the door to tell her the news. It was awkward to hear him talk about me when I was still in earshot, but it was better than me having to do it myself. She walked into the living room where I was and, without saying much, sat down and gave me a hug. "I know you probably don't want to talk yet, but I am here whenever you are," she said softly.
She got up and they both went into the kitchen. I checked my watch and the day was almost over.
All I did was walk up to my room as I heard them make dinner, brush my teeth, turn off my lights, and go to bed.