He makes a pained sound in the bed and tries shifting even with one arm in a cast, and his eyes are burning red and tearing me open. I can’t stand the way he’s looking at me. The way his eyes claw into me. Destroy me.
Hot tears continue trickling down my cheeks as I yield to the reckless impulse and go to him. I touch his free hand and bend my head to his chest as I lift his fingers and kiss his knuckles feverishly, aware that I’m getting them wet with my tears, but I can’t stop because it’s the last time I’m going to kiss this hand and it hurts.
He groans as he awkwardly places the hand of his casted arm on the back of my head and heavily strokes my hair. His throat is tubed, but when I wipe my tears and look up at him, his eyes are screaming things at me that I can’t bear to listen to. I stand, acting as cowardly as Mel says, and he grabs my hand and won’t let go. I don’t want him to, but I need him to. I pull my hand free with force and grab his forehead and set a kiss at the very center, a kiss that I hope he will feel all the way down to his soul, because that’s from where it’s coming from inside me. He makes a rough sound and starts pulling at the tube on his throat, and the machine makes a beeping noise when he starts succeeding in yanking off all the strings attached to him.
“Remy, don’t, don’t!” I plead, and when his efforts only intensify and he growls in anger, then I open the door and yell for a nurse. “Nurse! Please!”
A nurse rushes into the room, and I feel such pain as she shoots some sort of tranquilizer up his IUV, that it’s like there is nothing else for me to feel except this knot of pain that has become me. I can’t believe I’m going to do this to him, that I’m as cowardly, as worthless, as everyone else. But when the nurse settles him down and adjusts his respirator, I stare at him from the door, his appearance calmer now as he gazes back at me, and I smile, a smile that is fake and that trembles horribly on my face, and I leave. I hate that he will wake up again with his beautiful blue eyes and might not remember what I said, or where I am, or what happened to me. But I just can’t stay.
I find Riley at the cafeteria and show him an envelope I’d acquired from one of the nurses several days ago. “I’m leaving, Riley. My contract was over several days ago. Just … say goodbye to Pete and please…” I hand him the envelope with Remington’s name, watching it tremble violently in the air, “give this to him when his eyes are blue again.”
That night, I’m flying to Seattle, slumped in my seat, feeling as heavy and empty as an abandoned building, and I wonder as I stare unseeingly out the window if he’s already back to blue, and if he’s already reading my letter. I’ve read it a thousand times in my head, and read it a thousand times when I wrote it the third night at the hospital, when I knew I was not going to stay.
Dear Remington, The very first moment I laid eyes on you, I think you had me. And I think you knew. How could you possibly not know? That my floor was shaking under my feet. It was. You made it move. You colored my life again. And when you came after me and kissed me, I just knew somewhere deep inside me, my life would forever be touched and changed by you. It has. I have had the most amazing, incredible, beautiful moments of my life with you. You and your team became my new family, and never for one second did I really plan to leave. Not them, but most of all, not you. Every day I spent with you only makes me crave more of you. All I wanted for days was to be closer. It hurts to be close and not to touch you, and I wanted to spend every waking moment with you and every sleeping moment in your arms. So many times now, I wanted to tell you all the ways you make me feel, but I wanted to hear you say it first. My pride is gone now. I have no room for it, and I don’t want to regret not telling you. I love you, Remy. With all my heart. You are the most beautifully complicated, gentle fighter I’ve ever known. You have made me deliriously happy. You challenge and delight me, and make me feel like a kid inside, with all the amazing things to look forward to, just because I was looking at the future and thinking of sharing it all with you. I’ve never felt so safe as when I am with you, and I want you to know I am completely in love with every part of you, even the one that just broke my heart. But I can’t stay anymore, Remy. I can’t watch you hurt yourself, because when you do, you’re hurting me in ways I never thought anybody could hurt me, and I’m afraid of breaking and never being right again. Please never, ever, let anyone hurt you like this. You are the fighter everyone wants to be, and this is why everyone in the world loves you. Even when you screw up, you get back up fighting again. Thank you, Remy, for opening your world to me. For sharing yourself with me. For my job, and for every time you smiled at me. I want to tell you to get well soon, but I know that you will. I know you will be blue-eyed and cocky and fighting again, and I’ll be in your past, like all the things you’ve overcome before me. Just please know that I will never hear “Iris” again, without thinking of you.