The hospital bed feels uncomfortable against your back, digs in all the wrong places, and hurts all over. The headache pounding in your head doesn't help either. You are acutely aware of everything: from your breathing that is in sync with the machine beeping next to you to the hurried words and footsteps outside the closed door. You close your eyes (10, 20, 30, 40, 50 – stop), feeling the air conditioning on your skin and keeping you away from the darkness you can feel lingering at the edges. The boy in front of you is stiff, his shoulder square as he stares at the ceiling, both hands fisted in the sheets. It is only as beautiful as broken people, full of shadows and cracks, where fragility continues to seep through. You want to be him. Eventually, your eyes move from his face to his clenched fists, noticing the bandage wrapped around one of them. His breathing fills your ears: fast and shallow. "Are you OK?" you ask, your voice softer than you remembered, as if dust had accumulated on it from disuse, muffling the sounds. He looks at you in surprise and almost disbelief (stupid question), but after a while the response, “Too tight,” comes crawling out of his mouth. You stand up, putting most of your weight on the car rolling past you. you feel unsteady and your head is too heavy, and you try to concentrate on the cold floor against your feet. You feel his eyes on you but you don't look up, you just watch as your fingers travel slowly and gently over his hands, his skin cold and fingertips blue. The bandage is extremely rough compared to his skin, your fingers untangling it quickly and easily, hands moving just as you reach the end - touching his wrist, feeling... the middle of the paper... gone. to grab his hair, and you can't breathe or think straight and you doubt it's real, because good things never happen to you and this, this is the best that doctors talk about. Adam pulls you away to find your hand has moved from your hip to your wrist, pressing lightly on the padded patch that replaced the bandage. He pushes some hair away from your forehead and doesn't break eye contact. His voice is soft when he says, “Maybe we should try. Just to see." You nod and run your fingers down his arm to intertwine your fingers with his... (You think, maybe, that you would do anything for this guy, and he's ridiculous and illogical and everything else you hate , but you're desperate and the only wisp of willpower that still wants you to live says maybe, you could live for this guy. Just maybe.)