I’ve only ever seen a dead body once before that. I was out sleeping in a train yard, back when I was traveling around more. I found a body just lying there in the weeds, dead for some time. Nobody had bothered with it, probably didn’t even know it was there. The smell had been the same as what I was smelling now, but not quite as bad because the body was old and it was cold outside. It was cold in there, but all those bodies piling up must have raised the stink level. I covered my mouth with my sleeve.

We went back to the staircase and made our way down to the lobby. Shining the flashlight before us, we righted some chairs and sat in them. They were still a little soggy from the floodwaters, but it was the least of our troubles. I had some emergency Valium in my pocket. I didn’t want to share, but I figured the twins needed them as much as I did right then. So I offered. They both took one, even though Sebastian doesn’t take a lot of drugs and José never does. I took three. I noticed that Sebastian was shaking.

The twins nodded out, leaving me in the dark room almost alone. I turned off the flashlight and stared into the dark, my eyes wide. I started drifting in and out myself. When I woke up it was always to thoughts of what life would be like without Lux. I tried to stay hard. I had been okay before her, maybe I hadn’t always had someone to share things with, and talk to really deep, late at night, like the two of us did. But I’d survived. I kept trying to tell myself, I’ll survive this. It started repeating it like a mantra. But I kept waking up to tears running down my face.

Then the asshat nurse woke me up. That was when she asked me if Lux even cared about living.

“Yes,” I said immediately, not even able to believe the words were coming out of this shit biscuit’s mouth. “Of course she wants to fucking live. Now do your goddamn job and save her life.”

She looked at me for a long moment, not saying anything. She was judging me as much as anyone ever had. Finally, she spoke.

“We take her out of here on the next helicopter. No waiting. Now why don’t the three of you get the hell out of here?”

“Not until the helicopter takes her away,” I said.

And there we stayed, nodding off and crying, alone in the dark waiting room and huddled together, until the building shook with the copter touching down on the launchpad on the roof.