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I could barely creak out a "Hello?"

I waited for the sound of a parent’s annihilated voice

"Hazel Grace," Augustus said weakly

"Oh, thank God it’s you Hi Hi, I love you"

"Hazel Grace, I’otta help hty-sixth and Ditch I did soure it out and--"

"I’ nine-one-one," I said

"No no no no no, they’ll take me to a hospital Hazel, listen to ive you don’t please just coodda I don’t want one Please I have the et it in Please" He was crying I’d never heard him sob like this except from outside his house before Amsterdam

"Okay," I said "I’ now"

I took the BiPAP off and connected en tank, lifted the tank into o with my pink cotton pajainally been Gus’s I grabbed the keys from the kitchen drahere Mom kept theone

Went to check on Gus It’s important Sorry

Love, H

As I drove the couple h to wonder why Gus had left the house in the , or his otten the better of hi too fast partly to reach hiiveboyfriend was stuck outside of a gas station with aG-tube But no cop showed up to make my decision for me

There were only two cars in the lot I pulled up next to his I opened the door The interior lights caustus sat in the driver’s seat, covered in his own vomit, his hands pressed to his belly where the G-tube went in "Hi," he et you to a hospital"

"Please just look at it" I gagged from the smell but bent forward to inspect the place above his belly button where they’d surgically installed the tube The skin of his abdo’s infected I can’t fix this Why are you here? Why aren’t you at hoy to turn his mouth away from his lap "Oh, sweetie," I said

"I wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes," he mumbled "I lost my pack Or they took it away froet me another one, but I wantedto do it ht ahead Quietly, I pulled out lanced down to dial 911

"I’ency? "Hi, I’hty-sixth and Ditch, and I need an a G-tube"

He looked up at ustus Waters of the crooked sone, replaced by this desperate hu there beneath me

"This is it I can’t even not smoke anymore"

"Gus, I love you"

"Where is my chance to be so wheel weakly, the car honking as he cried He leaned his head back, looking up "I hate ustdie"

According to the conventions of the genre, Augustus Waters kept his sense of hue, and his spirit soared like an indole until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul

But this was the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screa, poisoned by an infected G-tube that kept hirabbed his face in my hands and knelt down close to him so that I could see his eyes, which still lived "I’m sorry I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans"

"Me too," he said

"But it isn’t," I said

"I know," he said

"There are no bad guys"

"Yeah"

"Even cancer isn’t a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive"

"Yeah"

"You’re okay," I told hi consciousness

"Gus, you have to proarettes, okay?" He looked at me His eyes swam in their sockets "You have to promise"

He nodded a little and then his eyes closed, his head swiveling on his neck

"Gus," I said "Stay with oddaht past us So while I waited for them to turn around and find us, I recited the only poe to mind, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Willialazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens

Williams was a doctor It seemed to me like a doctor’s poe away froustus, upon a blue sky cut open by the branches of the trees above So ut of the blue-lipped boy So much depends upon this observer of the universe

Half conscious, he glanced over at me and mumbled, "And you say you don’t write poetry"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

He came home from the hospital a few days later, finally and irrevocably robbed of his ambitions It took more medication to remove him from the pain He moved upstairs per room

These were days of pajas and requests and hi on his behalf One afternoon, he pointed vaguely toward a laundry basket in a corner of the room and asked me, "What’s that?"

"That laundry basket?"

"No, next to it"

"I don’t see anything next to it"

"It’s nity It’s very small"