Page 69 of Stay With Me

Samantha

Dying took far longer than Samantha had expected.

Just her luck that her death wouldn’t be a quick, painless one.

Of course, it would be as slow and agonizing as possible.

She sat, clutching her throbbing, furnace of an arm, forehead still resting on Nick’s, for a long time. She didn’t bother trying to keep track of time. It was pointless—just like everything else in this situation.

The only time she moved was every few minutes when she got the urge to vomit. After two or three times, she stopped trying to run for the opposite side of the canyon. It wasn’t like she had anything left in her stomach for her body to reject anyway. When her insides lurched, she simply shifted around, away from Nick’s body, and waited for it to pass.

On the upside—or maybe it was a cleverly disguised downside—the nausea had diminished any desire in her to drink water. The thought of consuming water was now something more akin to swallowing acid.

She had begun to feel more exhausted. Dying was probably an incredibly draining process. The human body doesn’t want to die, she knew that, and it will fight tooth and nail to stave it off as long as possible. Especially if you’re dying of snake venom. Her body was most assuredly freaking the heck out, wondering how to get rid of the stuff, which would explain the relentless nausea. And then it probably resigned to the fact that it—like Samantha herself—had no idea what to do about it, and resorted to the tremors.

She’d been forced to cut back her caffeine intake recently because it was starting to make her hands shake a little, which was frustrating because it’s hard to do anything when your hands have a bit of a shake. At this current moment, they had a huge amount of shake, as if her body was infuriated at its losing battle and all it could do was tremble. In fear. In anger. In desperation. Everything Samantha was experiencing psychologically, her body was experiencing physically. And the combination of it made her so tired that she just wanted to lie down on the stone slab next to Nick and let herself go.

For the next span of time, that’s all she thought about. Weighing the pros and cons of lying down to die.

Still leaning over his face, she had a sudden strange awareness of two things. The first being a curious sense that her body and mind were becoming two separate entities. That would explain why she felt as if the experience of her body was somehow disconnected from the experience of her mind, in a weird duality of sorts.

She decided this was the next phase of the dying process, and—surprisingly—she felt quite calm about it.

The second awareness was how unbearably cold she’d become—which was kind of amazing, given that her arm was radiating enough warmth to seemingly heat the entire canyon. It was as if the intermittent gusts of wind were a frigid liquid that had seeped into her bones and internal organs, and ultimately caused her body itself to be the source of the cold.

Nick’s body still seemed to be a relatively normal temperature, which, compared to her own, began to seem extremely inviting. Unrelentingly seductive. So much that she involuntarily made her decision and abruptly let herself drop to the ground next to him.

She curled into a question mark against his side, arms wrapped around his arm, and head pressed into his shoulder.

Her gaze drifted toward the stars again.

She felt warmer already.

The persistent noises of the desert night seemed to fade as her ears honed in on the faint sounds of his breathing.

This isn’t such a bad way to go.

It probably wouldn’t be much longer now.

After a while, she felt steadier, the tremors having subsided slightly. Her mind became as still and quiet as her surroundings. She thought of absolutely nothing for a long time until she thought of her mom.

The last time she’d seen her mom was on Sunday morning. After breakfast, they’d all sat around the pool, watching her dad and Andrew play with Ava and Justice in the water. Jenna was reclined on a chair. Lizzy sat in Mom’s lap, and Mom wore a delighted expression.

Mom loved being a grandmother more than anything so it seemed like the perfect final memory of her.

Samantha’s mind displayed a brief snippet of her mom’s reaction to receiving the news of her death. She imagined her sitting on the couch clutching her head as she sobbed, her dad holding her shoulders in a feeble attempt to offer comfort.

The mental scene caused a searing fire in her chest, one that mirrored the sensation in her arm, and a violent sob choked out of her throat.

There was no point in trying to stifle it or be brave anymore so she allowed herself to cry openly. She buried her face into Nick’s shoulder as if his lifeless body could possibly provide some kind of comfort in the midst the realization that she’d never see her family again. That she’d die alone in the desert. That she’d never had the chance to do anything with her life, never get married, or never see her mom make that enchanted face while holding one of Samantha’s children.

She wept until the well of tears ran dry, then drew in her breath and exhaled deeply, as she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of Nick’s T-shirt.

“You want to hear something funny?” she asked him, a bit startled at how raspy her voice sounded.

She knew he wasn’t going to respond, but she continued anyway.

“I thought … I mean.”