Page 181 of Wallflower

Or do I go?

What will I face by returning? How hard will the road to recovery be? Would it be worth it? Or will my existence be near-vegetative, a burden on my love? Could I stand to live like that?

I know the answer.

Wiping my tears, I cautiously approach my corpse.

It can’t be as simple as a touch. Can it?

“Ripley…” Bucky says, getting to his feet, as I crouch in the pool of my own blood. “It’s time to let her go. She’s gone.”

“No, no, no,” he says like a plea. Dropping to his knees, he crawls to my body.

Phoebe looks to him, destroyed beyond repair. “One more time, Harvey,” she murmurs to the first responder. The paramedic nods, lifting his hands as the bolt of power rips through me.

Immediately, Harvey starts CPR. He doesn’t miss a beat, doesn’t falter once. His rhythm is perfect, precise, as his hands force my blood to move through my empty veins.

Reaching out, my fingers graze my cold arm. Pain shoots through my back, breath suctioning in and out of the wound. All of the agony comes roaring back as I rip my hand away.

I have to let it in, feel it all over again, to rejoin my body.

Ripley wails a sorrowful sob, uncontrollably falling through his emotions.

Taking a deep breath on this side of the veil, I wrap my fingers around my wrist on the side of the living. The pain’s so acute it steals everything, my breath, my words, my consciousness.

With asnap, I’m no longer divided. I’ve been stuffed back into my limp, useless body on this side of the world.

“Ripley, calm down!” Bucky shouts as something crashes. “Stop!”

An anguished scream reverberates through the house, guttural, raw, and broken.

“Rip, don’t do this. It’s not what she would want.”

“What I want,” he growls, “is to be with her. I’ll follow her wherever she goes.”

“Ripley! Rip, stop!”

“We’ve got a pulse!” Phoebe calls out, but no one can hear her, hear my first full intake of breath in an eternity.

Bang!

I’m slow to lift my eyelids, though I’m as alert as I could possibly be. After experiencing something like that, how could I not be? Breathing deep, I try to calm my racing heart, push away the panic holding me hostage.

My palm frantically searches between the sheets for the body that should be there but isn’t. I want so desperately to tug Rose into my sweaty frame, have the smell of her fill me until there’s no room for this petrifying residue left behind.

Her spot is empty—cold. The claws of the nightmare are firmly lodged beneath my ribs, threatening to shred me apart from the inside because Rose isn’t next to me. My eyes fly open as I shoot up like a missile, tangled in the blanket. My flower’swater bottle isn’t on the nightstand next to a book, and her clothes aren’t scattered across the floor.

I scramble from the bed, racing down the hall, hoping to find her passed out in front of the TV with a plate of half-eaten toast on her lap.

She’s not there.

Neither is her flying saucer blanket with the floating cow encircled in a green cone of light.

My pulse climbs to a dangerous rhythm, realization making my knees tremble.

I cast my sights over the area. Not a trace of her presence remains.

It’s like she never existed at all.