We know full well there's just time,

So is it wrong to dance this line?

If your heart is full of love,

Could you give it up?

...

How unfair, it's just our love,

Found something real that's out of touch.

But if you searched the whole wide world,

Would you dare to let it go?

...

What about, what about angels?

They will come, they will go, make us special.

Don't give me up.

Don't give me up.

- Birdy

Hazel Grace Lancaster

I slip in and out of consciousness over the next few hours. Night falls and it starts to rain hard, the drops pattering against the window. It's the only thing that punctures my awareness. The pain drives deep and I use the distraction of the rain patterns on the windows to absorb me while I wait for it to subside.

The next morning, my vision blurs and doesn't refocus. The doctors told me last night that they received the results of all my tests and it's confirmed; the cancer has spread. I lit up like a Christmas tree. It's everywhere. I am cancer and my cancer is me.

I blink slowly, not used to the hazy eyesight. That's when I notice the commotion outside. I spot my parents and Augustus' parents. They all clutch each other, my parents dry-eyed, Augustus' hysterical. I watch them with the air of someone who watches ants build their nest – vaguely interested but not so. I guess that's a side effect of dying – disinterest.

Eventually, I see a doctor try and separate Mr. and Mrs. Waters away from Mum and Dad, dragging them down the corridor. My parents talk outside my room, their heads bent together, whispering. Their eyes flicker to me a lot and I wonder what they're talking about. They're stressed – maybe there was something unexpected in my results. After a small while, they enter my room, shutting the door with a heavy, wearied sigh. Mum turns to me first and she closes her eyes, but not before I see the flash of regret, the expression of a mother who has to tell her daughter some bad news.

"What?" I ask, my throat dry. I haven't spoken to anyone since Gus left last night. "What's happened?"

"Honey," Mum sits down beside my bed and clutches my hand. I watch her, confused.

"Fran," says Dad, and there's something of a warning in his tone. My gaze switches to him and I bite my lip, a feeling of alarm washing through me. Something's changed. Something's different.

"What's happened?" I say again, more urgently this time. "Tell me."

"Hazel, sweetheart," Dad says, as he approaches my bed warily, as though he is approaching a tiger. "There's been an accident."

A weight drops in my stomach and my head tips back. I hear ringing and the sound of screaming deep within me. "No."

"Augustus trespassed the theme park, last night." Mum says quietly. I know what's coming. I don't want to hear it. "You told me before that he likes to think in the Ferris Wheel, right?"

"No." I say again. "No, no, this isn't happening."

A tear slips down her face. "We weren't going to tell you, Hazel. We didn't want you to...die...distressed."

"Where is he?" I ask, searching for the answer in their faces. "How hurt is he?"

"Hazel," Dad starts, "he fell from a great height."

"How hurt is he?"

I turn to face Mum, watch her tears slide down her face. "I'm so sorry, Hazel," she whispers, "he's dead."

I am defeated.

The rest of their words fade away as I sag against the bed, all the fight, all the energy drained from me. Raining. Slippery. He fell. Ferris Wheel. Ten stories high. Head injury. Found this morning. Pronounced dead at the scene. Suspected suicide.

I can't think through the gathering of noise.

I'm quiet but I put my hands against my ears. I'm quiet, but it's the calm of the storm before it hits. The tears roll down my face unchecked and my heart thuds in my chest. I wish it would thud faster, thud the rest of my life away.

"That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt." I say as though no one can hear me. I suppose no one can. No one else can feel the pain I feel now. "I was supposed to die."

"Hazel..."

I close my eyes and my shoulders slump. "Go away. Please." My voice cracks and I turn away from them.

I see them hesitate but then they get up and head for the door. My Dad squeezes my shoulder but I pull away from him. No amount of comfort is going to make this okay. My soul is dying. My body is dying.

"We'll check on you in ten minutes, Hazel." Mum says, but I know what she really says. Don't do anything stupid.

All I see is darkness now. Darkness and disbelief.

When they close the door behind them, I swing my legs over my bed and mess with the wires and tubes that attach to me. Some of them are too fiddly and I grow impatient. I yank them out, howling with pain, watching as the blood drips from the open wounds and run down my arms and chest. My eyes hurt. My chest hurts more. My heart hurts most.

"It wasn't supposed to be him!" I wail as I yank on another tube, splashing blood onto my hospital gown and knocking the machine over. "It was supposed to be me!" I'm hysterical, an uncontrollable mass of pain. I thought it wasn't possible to feel more agony than I felt last night, but I was wrong. This is agony. A tsunami of dread and panic and fear, battering me with its force, until I feel like I'm drowning in my own turmoil of suffering.

Augustus Waters is gone from the world. There's no life left for him to live.

"He didn't kill himself!" I shout, my lungs screaming in protest. I don't know who I am shouting to – I suppose to whoever listens. If anyone, at all. "I know Augustus Waters. He would never kill himself."

He gripped onto life too much; shone too brightly to be extinguished by his own grief. He fell. It was an unintended disaster and not a design wielded by his pain. He did not kill himself.

I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void and that oblivion is inevitable...

I love you and will always love you...

I will love you when I grow old and die...

Even if oblivion faces me, I will not stop loving you...

"It's not fair!" Beside myself in a fit of rage so potent it burns, I pick up a vase from my bedside and launch it at the wall. It shatters, leaving a damp stain on the wallpaper, the plants – dying, like all of us – collected in a heap on the floor. I stalk over, ignoring the pain of my lungs, and crouch down. I have no oxygen connected to me. My body is failing and I find I do not care.

I pick up the shards of glass, watching as they dig deep in my hands, slicing through skin. Blood wells. I press the ruins against my head, feeling the bite of broken china jab into my scalp. I yank at my hair, pulling clumps of lank strands out viciously. Any physical pain is a reprieve from the anguish inside. Distantly, I can hear the sound of screaming. And feel the drips of blood fall from my hand to my leg.

"Augustus..." I say brokenly, the sound like the screech of nails against a chalkboard. "Come back to me. Why'd you leave me? I love you, Gus, I love you, I love you, I love you."

I crawl into a ball, feeling the pain settle somewhere in my stomach, and the rush of my blood fill my thoughts as my body tries desperately to recuperate. I have no oxygen. I'm dying. I feel the sting of pain everywhere; my chest, my stomach, my legs, my head, my heart. I hurt. I am Pain personified.

"Don't be dead." I whisper over and over again. "Please, for me. Don't. Be. Dead. Live. Live for the both of us. For me. Don't be dead."

Please.

Something is dying within me. It is not calm, like all the stories. It is ugly and aggressive, burning a hole inside.

I hear, vaguely, the door crash open and someone shout for help, but I don't process it. I see a flash of black hair as a girl lunges for the alarm button at the side of my bed. I watch her, but barely. My vision is still blurred, inhibited by my cancer and my tears. I think it is Kaitlyn, but I cannot be sure. I cannot be sure of anything anymore.

Life throws death. I've already guessed that's true. Life throws death and it matters not who it aims for because it takes everyone anyway. No one is spared.

"You're taking me. Take my body." I say, and I feel my eyelids drop. I'm so tired. "Isn't that enough for now, Death? You have me. You didn't need to take Gus, too."

"Hazel," I hear the girl try and talk to me. "Stay awake, okay? Don't go to sleep. Shit, what have you done?" She tries to pull me up to the bed, but I'm sprawled here on the floor and it's comfortable and I can feel the pain is not so bad here, after all. I resist, mumbling unintelligibly, pushing her away. I think she drags a machine over to me and tries to fumble with my tubing – she wants to save me. I cannot be saved.

"Kaitlyn," I whisper. "He's dead. I'm dead. We're all dying."

"You're not dead yet, girl." She says, and I hear a thin lace of panic in her voice, feel one of her tears drip on my hand, merging with the blood. The last shred of soul within me breaks. Kaitlyn never cries. "So hold on for me, okay?"

"What's the point?" I slur, and I feel the pain alleviate as my consciousness abates. "I need to go. To find Gus."

Look at us all. A disarray. Only shadows of the people we used to be. Cancer doesn't just take the victim. It takes everyone. Cancer has taken me. It's taken Gus. It's taken Mum and Dad and Kaitlyn. It's taken Mr. and Mrs. Waters. Cancer takes us all and spares no one. Pretending otherwise is foolish and useless.

"Stay awake, Hazel." Kaitlyn warns. "Please, stay awake. I can't lose you yet!"

"You never had me." I mutter, feeling the cold of the floor against my cheek. Everything dims. My vision, my heartbeat, my thoughts. "Death had me."

"Hazel..." she shakes my arm but I barely feel it. Distantly, I hear the agonized cry of my mother, the cry of a parent when they lose their child. I see a swarm of doctors and nurses rush through the door. I see it all, but I don't. My eyes close as peace settles over me, pushing the pain away. "Hazel!"

My last thought is of him. He's the last person I see.

My name is Hazel. Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without dissolving into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because - like all real love stories – it will die with us, as it should.

I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about Math. I am not a Mathematician, but I know this: there are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Augustus Waters than he got. But, Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me forever within the numbered days, and I am grateful.

Okay?

I don't get an answer. In oblivion, I never do.

#####

It's been a wonderful journey, readers, but now it is over. So I thank you. Thank you for being wonderful people and following this story so passionately. I couldn't have done it without you. Each and every one of you is perfect. Remember that, always. Peace, friends.