She was in the elevator, he told himself.
He was going to do the jump, he’d done it more times than he could remember. It was nothing to him, he just had to catch his breath. The only problem was he’d been trying to do that for the last three minutes, and his breaths couldn’t come fast enough. He was pushing too hard, and he knew it. He hadn’t eaten or had anything to drink since he’d been outside.
Spots twinkled in his vision. He felt dizzy. The possibility crossed his mind that he could pass out and fall to his death, so he jumped. Will’s heels hit the roof of the elevator car and he fell to his knees. He still couldn’t catch his breath, but now he realized the air was hardly coming through the filter. Something was wrong with his mask.
The filter had to be clogged. It felt like he was underwater, breathing through a hundred-foot drinking straw. He crawled for the elevator hatch. Lucy might be inside. He was only getting air in little sips, and his exhales were bubbling. On his knees he lifted the hatch to the elevator. The exertion made his vision gray out and his head feel filled with helium. Will’s muscles quit and he fell forward, straight through the hatch, and into the elevator.
His back slapped the linoleum floor, and his head followed with a crack. By the dim emergency lights, he could see the cold truth. Lucy wasn’t here. He was alone in an empty box.
He sucked in empty breaths like a dying frog. He’d been dreaming, thinking Lucy would be here. He stared at the fallen shelves he and David had put up. This was crazy. He was dying fast. He had only a trickle of air coming through, and he wasn’t sure if he was imagining it. He fumbled with the front of his mask, tugging at things that wouldn’t budge, trying to figure out what could be clogging his air, but it was too late. Panic was crushing his throat. His lungs were spinning, confused and hating him for not giving them air. Will ached to yank his mask off now. What was a better way to die? Silent and choking or red and explosive? He didn’t have the guts to go out big. He wriggled in pain and slapped the wall with fading strength.
Time slowed, and Will realized he couldn’t stop it. He became weirdly serene. His mind drifted to Lucy and the future they wouldn’t have together. He saw his son. The boy looked more like Will than Lucy. Although he could see a little of her in his eyes and his hair. Will had forgotten about the natural color of Lucy’s hair. It was a deep gold with traces of brown like the grain of lacquered pine. He hadn’t seen her hair like that since the first day of school. The boy’s golden bangs kept falling into his eyes and he couldn’t be bothered with clearing them out of his way. That was just like Will. He knew in his heart, that boy would be wild.
He saw them living in a modest Pale Ridge house, a fixer-upper, with THORPE hand-painted on the mailbox. Lucy was good at that kind of thing. And Will had gotten good at fixing gutters and replacing windows. Even though it wasn’t how he would have wanted to spend his weekends after working a boring job all week, he found joy in it, because it was his house he’d bought with his wife. He supposed that was what love was.
Every moment was precious. Will sent his son to his room for acting out, then he and Lucy chuckled about it as soon as the little rascal was gone, because the boy was just like his old man. The three of them never missed a dinner together. They’d go back for seconds and thirds of Lucy’s famous cooking. They’d talk about dream vacations. They’d joke and laugh and gossip about any relative that wasn’t within earshot, mainly Uncle David. Maybe Lucy would make rhubarb pie on Will’s birthday. He loved rhubarb pie.
Will felt a twinge of sadness. He remembered he was dying. It wasn’t fair. His life could have been so good. He would have treasured every minute. He wanted to age. He wanted to lose his hair. He wanted to lose his looks. He wanted to watch Lucy gain weight over the years. He wanted a life. But it all faded away, and for his final moments, no matter how hard he tried to wish himself back to his dream life, Will stared at the dirty, speckled elevator floor. He closed his eyes.
A heavy thump vibrated the floor.
Will’s eyelids widened. His vision was murky but he saw someone in a gas mask on the floor next to him. David.
Will couldn’t trust it. It had to be a dream. He watched David kneel at his side.
“Don’t breathe,” David said.
Don’t worry, Will thought.
“Nod that you understand me.”
Will managed to blink rather than nod. It seemed to be enough for David. He grabbed Will by the head and nimbly undid the filter off the front of his mask. Less than a second passed before David shoved a new one in. It locked on to the front of his mask with a plastic click.
Air. It flowed into Will’s mask like a breeze. Will sucked in a breath so big he thought he would bust a rib. If his lungs had taste buds, he bet that first breath would have tasted like a banana split.
“You okay?” David said.
Will managed to nod. David kicked him in the liver.
“What the fuck were you thinking?” David yelled. His voice came out distorted through the small speaker by the chin of his mask.
“Hey!” Will shouted between pained breaths.
David kicked him again, this time in the shoulder.
“Cut it out!”
“Do you ever think? Is there anything in that fucking head of yours?”
David was leaning so far over him that he had to slide up the wall to get to his feet. David speared his finger into Will’s face shield as he yelled.
“Answer me!”
Will knew he’d put his brother in a horrible position. He knew David had just saved his life. But David’s finger was in his face, and Will found it so infuriating that neither of those facts seemed important.
“Go fuck yourself,” Will said.
Will saw anger in David’s eyes that he’d never seen before, and then David hurled his fist at Will’s face. Knuckles crashed into Will’s mask. Will dropped to the floor and stared in horror at the face shield to his mask.
There was a giant vertical crack in it.
“Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” David said and dropped down beside Will.
Will couldn’t move. The crack in front of his eyes was his entire world. It traveled down the plastic like a lightning bolt, angling left to right.
“I didn’t mean to …,” David said as he dug through his backpack. “I’m sorry—don’t … just little breaths, okay?”