Her phone was ringing incessantly, and as Alice managed to walk out of the skate shop with Shane, she recognized the hospital’s number on her caller ID. A dark fear settled in the pit of her stomach, but she tried to will it away. After all, Dana’d been fine when Alice had dropped her off an hour ago. She wasn’t even having anything intensive done, just some blood work and a session with the psychologist her oncologist had recommended. Still, she knew instinctively that it wasn’t good news.

She answered softly, looking directly at Shane as she did. The voice on the other end was gentle and low, and Alice recognized that she was listening to Dr. Shapiro saying these things. Things like "massive coronary infraction" and "caused by chemotherapy side effects" and "tried to get her back, we did everything we could, but…" and it was at about this point that Alice stopped listening.

She vaguely realized that Shane was reaching out to catch her as she fell. She didn’t faint, exactly…it was more like time stopped, colors starting swirling in front of her and her legs just stopped working. She would have hit the concrete facefirst if Shane hadn’t wrapped her in a hug. When she came back to some misguided version of reality much later, Alice would be immensely grateful that Shane already knew, without having to hear it. Alice didn’t think she’d be able to get the words out. Ever. Even to herself.

None of them felt up to driving, and there was really no point to going over to the hospital anyway. Dana wasn’t there.

Alice had no idea how she wound up at the funeral. All she knew was that the swirling colors were back, and she had no fucking desire whatsoever to look at the urn. She didn’t even hear the hymns or the pastor’s sermon, although from the reactions of her friends it wasn’t very good. Alice didn’t give a shit. Nothing was ever going to be good again, so what the hell did a crappy eulogy matter?

She no longer had any rational concept of time. The only thing she could hear was Dana, promising to fight until it got too hard. In the space of an hour, she’d told Alice that she loved her more than anything she’d ever known or imagined in this life. And then she was dead, so it didn’t even matter. The promises they made to each other were bullshit, and Alice couldn’t help but think that somehwere, deep down inside, they’d always known that. The promises were just lies, and the worst part of it was that they hadn’t been lying to each other. They’d been lying to themselves.