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He was stroking my hair. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” he said, his voice calm. “Your mom must know. The way she looked at me. My mom must’ve just told her or something. I should’ve told you. It was stupid. Selfish.”
I knew why he hadn’t said anything, of course: the same reason I hadn’t wanted him to see me in the ICU. I couldn’t be mad at him for even a moment, and only now that I loved a grenade did I understand the foolishness of trying to save others from my own impending fragmentation: I couldn’t unlove Augustus Waters. And I didn’t want to.
“It’s not fair,” I said. “It’s just so goddamned unfair.”
“The world,” he said, “is not a wish-granting factory,” and then he broke down, just for one moment, his sob roaring impotent like a clap of thunder unaccompanied by lightning, the terrible ferocity that amateurs in the field of suffering might mistake for weakness. Then he pulled me to him and, his face inches from mine, resolved, “I’ll fight it. I’ll fight it for you. Don’t you worry about me, Hazel Grace. I’m okay. I’ll find a way to hang around and annoy you for a long time.”
I was crying. But even then he was strong, holding me tight so that I could see the sinewy muscles of his arms wrapped around me as he said, “I’m sorry. You’ll be okay. It’ll be okay. I promise,” and smiled his crooked smile.
He kissed my forehead, and then I felt his powerful chest deflate just a little. “I guess I had a hamartia after all.”
After a while, I pulled him over to the bed and we lay there together as he told me they’d started palliative chemo, but he gave it up to go to Amsterdam, even though his parents were furious. They’d tried to stop him right up until that morning, when I heard him screaming that his body belonged to him. “We could have rescheduled,” I said.
“No, we couldn’t have,” he answered. “Anyway, it wasn’t working. I could tell it wasn’t working, you know?”
I nodded. “It’s just bullshit, the whole thing,” I said.
“They’ll try something else when I get home. They’ve always got a new idea.”
“Yeah,” I said, having been the experimental pincushion myself.
“I kind of conned you into believing you were falling in love with a healthy person,” he said.
I shrugged. “I’d have done the same to you.”
“No, you wouldn’t’ve, but we can’t all be as awesome as you.” He kissed me, then grimaced.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
“No. Just.” He stared at the ceiling for a long time before saying, “I like this world. I like drinking champagne. I like not smoking. I like the sound of Dutch people speaking Dutch. And now . . . I don’t even get a battle. I don’t get a fight.”
“You get to battle cancer,” I said. “That is your battle. And you’ll keep fighting,” I told him. I hated it when people tried to build me up to prepare for battle, but I did it to him, anyway. “You’ll . . . you’ll . . . live your best life today. This is your war now.” I despised myself for the cheesy sentiment, but what else did I have?
“Some war,” he said dismissively. “What am I at war with? My cancer. And what is my cancer? My cancer is me. The tumors are made of me. They’re made of me as surely as my brain and my heart are made of me. It is a civil war, Hazel Grace, with a predetermined winner.”
“Gus,” I said. I couldn’t say anything else. He was too smart for the kinds of solace I could offer.
“Okay,” he said. But it wasn’t. After a moment, he said, “If you go to the Rijksmuseum, which I really wanted to do—but who are we kidding, neither of us can walk through a museum. But anyway, I looked at the collection online before we left. If you were to go, and hopefully someday you will, you would see a lot of paintings of dead people. You’d see Jesus on the cross, and you’d see a dude getting stabbed in the neck, and you’d see people dying at sea and in battle and a parade of martyrs. But Not. One. Single. Cancer. Kid. Nobody biting it from the plague or smallpox or yellow fever or whatever, because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.”
