At Death's Door
It was the last day of work at The Cat’s Paw before Avery moved back to her hometown with Landry. Their shifts were almost over, and they were excited to help each other pack things, cuddle, and watch movies for the whole night.
“Oh my god!” Finley beamed, “Last day on the job!” She pointed her phone at the two of them.
“Yep,” Landry replied. He hunched down and put an arm around Avery’s shoulder, preparing for the inevitable picture that Finley would post to the internet.
Avery smiled wide as the flash of the camera blurred her vision. Then she pet a few of the nearby cats. Hashbrowns was rather affectionate today. “It’s going to be hard not going to work here every day.”
Landry only replied with a nod. He seemed to be distracted, staring into the wide unknown as though he were trying to grasp a thought he couldn’t quite reach.
“Is something the matter?” Avery looked up at him. He was really tall. Taller than everyone else at the café, even Graves. That only made him even more beautiful in her eyes.
“I’m just thinking.” Landry sighed. “Our life is about to change. It will never be the same again.”
“Yeah,” Avery nodded, “Hopefully for the better, right?”
He smiled. “Hopefully.”
“Let’s get back to my apartment. I’ll order us some pizza. They already know my order, so it’ll be fast.”
Landry dusted nothing off, stood up, and walked toward the door. “I’m ready when you are.”
After saying a full round of final goodbyes, Avery followed him to the door, staring out the window into the roads beyond. “Ugh, why did we have to get off on five o’ clock traffic?”
“Bad luck, I suppose.” Landry opened the door, beckoning Avery to go.
As they were walking, Avery mostly kept focusing ahead, but out of the corner of her eye, she could see Landry focusing on something. They were silent for a time, but Avery couldn’t help but steal glances over at Landry. He was tall—very tall—and she couldn’t help but look up at his face, gentle and curious. Soon he noticed her staring, and she looked away bashfully.
“What?” he playfully asked.
Avery chuckled, “Nothing. Just seeing how cute you are.”
“Well, you’re cute too,” he replied with a beaming smile that could likely cure cancer. His voice echoed through her, melting like tasting a well made chocolate candy.
“I’m glad you agreed to come back to see my parents,” Avery commented.
“What? And miss time with you?” he sounded almost offended, “of course I want to meet your parents. I loved working at the Cat’s Paw, but I’m glad to finally go somewhere out of the way... somewhere quiet.”
“Yeah,” she sighed dreamily. “Oh! I can see the apartment just ahead!” she pointed across the road.
Avery never really looked after herself very well. She rarely ate well, she slept poorly, and, most of all, she had a distinct lack of self preservation. Thus, when it comes time to cross the road, she rarely does it on the best of circumstances. There really wasn’t a crosswalk in the route Landry and her were taking that day. So, most of the time, she would just wait for a opportune moment and cross quickly to avoid oncoming traffic. This time was no different, at least for her. Landry waited, paused, looked both ways. Then he set his first foot on the road. Then the second. One after the other just like anyone else.
Avery noticed the truck first. “Landry!” She screamed, almost lunging toward him—toward the road.
Tires squealed and horns blared, and before Landry could even see what was coming, it hit him.
Avery’s eyes went wide with horror, her body froze in place. The truck screeched, skidded, and pulled over to the other side of the road from Avery. She couldn’t react. What good would it do? Her mind was blank, and time moved so fast she almost couldn’t blink.
The world moved around her, but there was nothing. Nothing but the shock and the barely breathing body of Landry twisted and broken on the pavement, blood pooling underneath him. Nothing but the blare of an ambulance and the gurney clinking on pavement. Nothing but her breathing, and his gasping for air. Nothing.
“Avery? Avery!”
Next thing Avery knew, she was sitting in a hospital room, and Finley was grasping her shoulders.
“You need to focus, Avery!” Finley looked over at the hospital bed, “the doctors are coming in to tell us what’s going on!”
Avery just nodded, barely present in the moment. All she could see was the hospital bed, the truck, and the pool of blood. Avery’s clothes didn’t have blood on them, but she felt as if they were. The stain of the moment on her mind would be just as hard to wash out as if it were on a white t-shirt or her favorite pair of underwear.
A doctor entered, staring at Landry. “I’m going to be honest with you two. It doesn’t look good.”
Avery didn’t respond. Neither did Finley.
“Normally we would only let immediate family come into such a critical patient’s room, but since we couldn’t contact any family members, and because he left you, Miss Avery was it? In his advance directive, it was important that you be here to make decisions on his behalf, considering the situation.”
Avery did not know he put her on that document, or even that he had that document in the first place. “What now?” she asked.
“We need to know how we will proceed. We will keep him on life support, though the likelihood of ever waking from this coma is slim.” The doctor looked up at Avery from their clipboard. “We need to know whether to keep him on life support.”
Avery felt a brick drop in her chest.
Finley silently stared at her. It was the quietest Avery ever saw Finley.
Avery paused, thinking over her options. There was Landry, in a coma on the hospital bed, alive by a thread. He was on life support, tubes and machines hooked up to every possible way to keep him alive. There he was, just out of reach. But yet, some part of
Avery wondered if there was a way to get him back. She didn’t want him to die—of course— but there was a part of her that ached at the thought of him suffering.
“What did his advance directive say we do?” Avery mustered up the courage to say, knowing she may not like the answer.
“It sated that he would not like to be kept on life support,” the doctor replied, “but he gave final authority to you as his proxy.”
Avery couldn’t help but feel a tear stream down her cheek. It was likely going to be the first of many. Landry didn’t want to live in pain. He didn’t want to be fed iv food and have a chance of waking up when it would risk the rest of his life being pain and misery.
Avery knew that. Yet she still wanted him back, but she knew the answer she had to make.
She swallowed a lump in her throat. “Then we respect his wishes.”
The doctor nodded.
Finley put an arm around Avery. When Avery finally looked up at Finley, she noticed that she was crying too. “This is hard. But, if it’s what he’d want, than you should follow his wishes.”
“Doesn’t make it any easier.” the words barely left Avery’s mouth through the almost choking sensation of crying.
Finley hugged her. “I know.”
Avery and Finley walked out of the hospital room just as the doctor was working on something Avery didn’t care to ponder. In the waiting area was Reece, Mason, Hayes, and Graves. They all had grave looks on their faces, all standing up when they saw Finley and
Avery exit the hospital room and enter the waiting area.
“So?” Mason stared at them with the cold, concerned look that she’s had for the time being.
Avery couldn’t speak. Her voice closed up, her eyes went blurry, and she couldn’t take it anymore. She stumbled to the ground, and Finley caught her before she could crumple on to the cold floor.
“He’s not going to make it,” Finley finally said.
“Damn it!” Reece blurted, smacking a fist onto the side table.
Mason walked over to Avery then swung her into a hug.
Graves didn’t respond. It was probably because there wasn’t anything he could say to make the situation better.
Hayes didn’t say anything either, instead opting to quietly fidget with his shirt.
“Why did he have to go and die like that!” Reece continued, “That dumb ass got—”
“Not now,” Mason interrupted, glaring daggers at Reece and holding Avery in that hug.
“I can’t—I mean—I want to go home,” Avery stuttered out, “I want to wake up from this awful nightmare!”
“I know,” Finley replied, “We all do.”
The next few days happened in a blur. Avery was in the hospital room when time of death was announced. She was in the room when they hauled her first love off to some unknown place to be likely embalmed or cremated or something. She didn’t care. The world spun around her as preparations for a funeral were in order.
It was a dark, too quiet night when Avery was sitting in her bed, crying. She broke her rule to not use magic again and made some trash friends to keep her company. The apartment was a mess—more than usual. Mochi was passed out at this late of the night, but Avery couldn’t sleep.
As the night progressed, something was breaking the silence. A few pizza boxes stumbled to the ground. The air grew stagnant. Avery felt the hairs on the back of her head stand on end.
The sound of boxes and trash flying around was enough to break Avery from her crying session, so she moved out of her bedroom into the main room. Mochi was sleeping on the cat tree, and there was seemingly nothing there. The pizza boxes were, as Avery remembered, securely on the table last she knew, so there was a very low chance they could have fallen. Yet there they were, on the floor, splayed out and scattered.
A voice whispered through the wind, and Avery couldn’t quite pick up what it was saying. However, she knew that voice anywhere.
“Landry?” she asked, and then promptly stopped herself, thinking about how crazy her new train of thought went.
“Avery?” the voice replied, “Avery, is that you?”
“Yes! Yes, it’s me!” Avery could not believe her ears. For whatever reason, Landry’s voice was responding to her. There was a sudden glimmer of hope for her, a small light at the deep pit of her soul.
“Avery!” the voice continued, and soon, it materialized in her apartment into a translucent form of Landry, tussled hair and all. He didn’t have twisted limbs or blood stained clothes. He was just there.
Despite being translucent and strange looking, Avery launched herself at Landry, but when she went to embrace him, she instead stumbled through him onto the floor, landing with a thud. Then she realized. Right. He’s dead.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She looked up at him with tear stained eyes. Of course she wasn’t okay. He died. Then she stood up. “I’ll be fine.”
“Avery, I’m glad to see you’re alright. I was worried when—”
“No,” she interrupted, “please don’t remind me. Your funeral is tomorrow and I don’t have the bandwidth to work through that right now.”
“It’s okay,” he said, “things like this happen, it’s going to be—”
“No!” she screamed, “Things are not okay! You are not okay! I am not okay! You got hit by a truck, and you died, and nothing will be okay anymore because we have to go see my parents and be together, but we can’t because that stupid truck had to hit you!”
Avery’s face felt hot, and more tears fell.
Landry looked at her with the most concern she’d ever imagine seeing on him.
“And nothing else will matter because even if I see you right now we can’t touch and it’s all—”
“No.” Landry stepped closer to her, leaning down to her crumpled form. “I know what you’re going to say. It’s not your fault.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she whimpered, “You’re dead either way.”
Landry paused, staring at her. She didn’t see his face through the tears, but she knew. She knew that he was quietly thinking about what to say next, how to comfort her in the situation. Finally, he said, “I can’t fix this situation, but what I can say is that you will be okay. You can live beyond our time together. I love you.”
His words stung through her icy heart, and she tried to look up at him before she couldn’t take the sight of him anymore and went back to staring at the ground. “Why are you here? Why did you come back as this... thing?”
“I came here because I can’t move on. I have to do something, and I need your help to do it.”
“How am I supposed to help?” she pleaded.
“I need you to move on. I can’t go to the afterlife without your blessing,” he stood to his full height, and Avery couldn’t even bother to look anywhere but his feet.
“What?” Avery didn’t have a chance to think about her words, “Why are you trapped by my actions?”
His feet shifted a little. “You are holding me back, and I cannot move on until I know that you are safe.”
“But—”
“I need you to tell me that you will be alright. You will be okay, but you need to give me that closure before I can go.”
“But I don’t want you to go!” she choked out, “Can’t you stay, even if like this forever?”
“You know as well as I that would not work,” he replied.
For the first time since she tried to embrace him, she stood.”You’re probably right.”
He simply nodded. “I know you’ll be alright, but I am afraid you don’t. I know you have it in you. All you need to do is grieve and move on. Go see your parents without me, go live your life. I will wait for you. I promise.”
“Okay,” her tears began falling anew, “I trust you.”
“I’ll see you on the other side. Don’t follow me too early, now. Keep me waiting. I love you, Avery.”
“I love you, too, Landry.” She couldn’t keep the tears back.
And just as soon as he appeared, a flash of light came and took him away.