The Post-Terrestrial Third Space

Augustus Waters died eight days after his prefuneral, at Memorial, in the ICU, when the cancer, which was made of him, finally stopped his heart, which was also made of him. 

He was with his mom and dad and sisters. His mom called me at three thirty in the morning. I’d known, of course, that he was going. I’d
talked to his dad before going to bed, and he told me, “It could be tonight,” but still, when I grabbed the phone from the bedside table and

saw Gus’s Mom on the caller ID, everything inside of me collapsed. She was just crying on the other end of the line, and she told me she was
sorry, and I said I was sorry, too, and she told me that he was unconscious for a couple hours before he died.

My parents came in then, looking expectant, and I just nodded and they fell into each other, feeling, I’m sure, the harmonic terror that
would in time come for them directly.

I called Isaac, who cursed life and the universe and God Himself and who said where are the goddamned trophies to break when you
need them, and then I realized there was no one else to call, which was the saddest thing.

The only person I really wanted to talk to about
Augustus Waters’s death was Augustus Waters.

My parents stayed in my room forever until it was morning and finally Dad said, “Do you want to be alone?” and I nodded and Mom said,
 “We’ll be right outside the door,” me thinking, I don’t doubt it. 

It was unbearable. The whole thing. Every second worse than the last. I just kept thinking about calling him, wondering what would happen,
if anyone would answer. In the last weeks, we’d been reduced to spending our time together in recollection, but that was not nothing: The
pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-
rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before.

* * *

When you go into the ER, one of the first things they ask you to do is to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten, and from there they decide
which drugs to use and how quickly to use them. I’d been asked this question hundreds of times over the years, and I remember once early
on when I couldn’t get my breath and it felt like my chest was on fire, flames licking the inside of my ribs fighting for a way to burn out of my
body, my parents took me to the ER. A nurse asked me about the pain, and I couldn’t even speak, so I held up nine fingers.

Later, after they’d given me something, the nurse came in and she was kind of stroking my hand while she took my blood pressure and
she said, “You know how I know you’re a fighter? You called a ten a nine.”

But that wasn’t quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten.

And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again
and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned. 

Finally I did call him. His phone rang five times and then went to voice mail. “You’ve reached the voice mail of Augustus Waters,” he said,
the clarion voice I’d fallen for. “Leave a message.” It beeped. The dead air on the line was so eerie.

 

I just wanted to go back to that secret
post-terrestrial third space with him that we visited when we talked on the phone. I waited for that feeling, but it never came.

 

The dead air on
the line was no comfort, and finally I hung up.

'The Fault In Our Stars'

-John Green

Excerpts #4 

Digital Art Done By: Austin Simon