He Begged Me To Stay After I Had Already Left Chapter 05

He Begged Me To Stay After I Had Already Left Chapter 05

The instant Chase lunged toward me, my body dissolved completely into the air.

He crashed hard onto the polished marble floor.

All he caught was empty air.

“Nina!”

A broken, desperate howl tore out of him and echoed through the terminal.

Travelers all around him turned to stare as if he had lost his mind.

Chase dropped to his knees and clawed wildly at the air in front of him.

“Come out! Nina, come out!”

“This isn’t real. This has to be some kind of magic. It’s another trick you used to fool me!”

He lurched to his feet and grabbed a TSA agent nearby.

“Did you see her? She was right here. Where did she go?”

The agent recoiled in fright and wrenched free from his grip.

“Sir, calm down. There’s no one here matching who you’re describing.”

Like a man who had lost his soul, Chase ran through the airport, stumbling as he went.

He searched every corner, every restroom, every waiting area, and every boarding gate.

He found nothing.

There was nothing anywhere.

Nina had vanished like a drop of water into thin air, leaving behind not even the slightest trace.

His phone rang again.

It was Sophie.

“Chase, where are you? I’m scared…”

The moment he heard her voice, his eyes flooded red with rage.

He crushed the phone in his grip until his knuckles turned white.

“Sophie, where are you?”

His voice was so cold it sounded like something dragged up from hell.

“I… I’m in the school nurse’s office. I slipped and fell…”

“Stay there.”

He hung up and stormed out of the airport like a hurricane.

When he got back to school, he didn’t go to the nurse’s office. He went straight to the storage room.

He tore through locker after locker like a mad dog.

At last, in the very back corner, he found a cardboard box covered in dust.

A shipping label was stuck to it, and his name was written on the recipient line.

With trembling hands, Chase ripped the tape open.

Inside was a thick stack of medical records and an unsealed letter.

He picked up the records. On the very first page, in stark print, it read:

[Patient: Nina Hayes]

[Diagnosis: World-Rejection Syndrome, end-stage multi-organ failure.]

His head rang as though he had been hit with a sledgehammer.

It was end-stage?

Her organs were failing?

She hadn’t been faking it? The blood she coughed up had been real?

Breathing became almost impossible. His hands shook as he unfolded the letter.

[Chase,

By the time you read this, I’ll probably be gone.

Don’t look for me. You won’t find me.

There’s something I never told you. I’m not from this world.

I came here to save someone, my brother. He has cancer.

All of you were just characters in the script I was living through.

I got sick with something this world can’t cure. But once I go back, I’ll get better.

So don’t worry about me.

I don’t blame you. Because I know that wasn’t who you really were. Someone made you become that

way.

I’ve gone home, back to the people who truly love me.

I hope you find happiness.

-Nina Hayes]

Chase sank to his knees on the dusty floor, and the letter slipped from his hands.

“Characters in a script?”

“Not from this world?”

He grabbed his own hair and let out a strangled, agonized sound.

He remembered every time he had shoved her away and every insult he had hurled at her.

He remembered her pale face and the blood at the corner of her mouth.

And all he had done was accuse her of playing the victim and call her disgusting.

“What have I done…”

“What the hell have I done?”