For future reference, hospitals are not a good place to be when your brother just died. The whole place is filled with the dying and echoes of sobbing. The whole thing just made me more and more depressed. And doctors kept prodding me with sticks and stethoscopes, trying to get me to answer questions but I never did. Everyone's words seemed to be muffled and distant, as if they were trying to talk to me through a pane of glass. Those couple of days in that hospital all felt like a blur. It didn't seem real, even while it was happening. I felt like it was happening to someone else, or like I was watching a movie. Not that they would ever put something this realistic in a damned movie; movies were meant for stupid people trying to waste time. No, this was much too real. To make things worse, I kept seeing Allie everywhere. I kept seeing glimpses of red hair in the corner of my eye, and I would whip around but there would be no one there— boy was I going mad. During the hours that my family wasn't visiting me in the hospital, which was most of the time, I found myself wandering the hospital, which you aren't really supposed to do, but I honestly did not care. Hospitals aren't very interesting; they're filled with sick people, pregnant women, and long boring hallways. In the main lobby of the hospital there was a lady playing this piano. The whole lobby was empty and she was just sitting there, playing to no one and it was the strangest sight I ever saw. She was wearing this green dress, and she didn't even have sheet music— she just played. And boy could she play. She played like nothing I've ever heard. I sat and listened for a while, but the idea of her just playing to herself made me feel depressed again, so I decided to leave her with her piano.

After wandering around some more, I came to the conclusion that everyone's missing someone. Humanity is just a bunch of crying messes. I decided this after seeing all the crying families and lonely old people throughout the hospital. This thought, however, didn't make me feel any better; it in fact made me feel worse. It made me feel even more alone, I didn't even know why.

During the 10th hour of the second day, D. B. showed up.

"Hey buddy how you hangin'?" I just shrugged. He patted me on the back reassuringly. He told me about the funeral and who was there, he told me about our aunts and uncles, and what stories were told, but I wasn't listening. I couldn't listen. It hurt too much. D. B. noticed I wasn't responding so he stopped talking. He opened his bag and handed me a stack of papers.

"Here, I wrote you a story, I thought it might make you feel better." I mutely took the papers and flipped through them. I wanted to say thank you, but I couldn't. My throat felt swollen shut— I didn't think I would be able to utter a word. After a while D. B. left and I thumbed through the pages, but I couldn't bring myself to read it. I decided I couldn't read it because it would ruin it for me. If I read it now I would never be able to read it again without feeling sad. I decided I would read it when I stopped feeling sad, which was something I couldn't imagine. But people do stop feeling sad... right? People don't just live their lives in constant state of perpetual sadness do they? Thinking about not being sad made me feel all guilty, as if I stopped being sad it would mean I stopped caring or thinking about Allie, which felt like betrayal. Thinking about that made me start thinking about the time I didn't let him go BB gun hunting with me, and that made me start thinking how he probably never forgave me and he will never have a chance to go now and it was all my fault, and all of it was my fault.