December 3, 2004

"Do you believe that everything rights itself in the end?"

His voice sounded strangely normal, as if he weren't lying helplessly on an operating table, bleeding to death internally. Somehow, the normalcy of his tone added to the vulnerability of his situation.

"You have twenty-six minutes to live," she said. "Are you sure this is how you want to use them?"

"I'm not afraid," he replied. "I'm not going to die."

"You're not." Her tone was flatly incredulous.

"I have too many things to straighten out," he said, and chuckled softly. "Like them, I suppose."

"This isn't a book, Ben," she said. "In real life you don't always get to make things right."

"I was thinking," he said. "Maybe for the next book club meeting we could read Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. After you get back from your trip to the mainland."

"Don't play games with me," she entreated him. "Not now. Not still."

"I'm dying," he said. "Not abstractly, not in the future, I am dying as we speak. What reason would I have to lie to you?"

As the first tear ran down her cheek, she was acutely aware of Jack staring down at them. She turned away from the window to compose herself.

"What do you want, Ben?"

"'Books ain't no good,'" he began.

"Ben."

"Lots of things."

In the brief pause that ensued, she thought about how many times in the past few months she had fantasized about this moment—the moment when this man was dying. She remembered Edmund. The same mistake….

"I need your help, Juliet."

She stiffened, holding herself together, not breaking down. Not in front of him, not ever again.

"You know they need to live. I need…I want…to live."

"Okay." She brushed her hand across her eyes quickly and stood up.

"Jules?"

She stopped, her breath snagging in her throat at his use of the familiar nickname. She hadn't heard it in months. " Don't," she warned.

"Will you…."

She looked down at him, this man who had complicated her life beyond anything she could have ever imagined, this man whose life she now held in her hands, and she made a choice.

"There's always hope." Her voice was cool, clinical. "Even in Stephen King."