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The end, when it comes, is not unexpected; we have all been waiting for it.

Last week, on Sunday, two days after our grand dinner in my hospital room, I had a relapse. I was talking to Olivia about her present, pressing my infinity charm into her palm, telling her its story. There were tears in her eyes, and she was saying something, telling me that I didn't need to give this to her. But I said that it was important, that she was important. That, like Beth, I had found someone I loved enough to give it to. That she needed it just as much as I did, all those years ago.

She took my hand and opened her mouth to say something back. And then everything collapsed. The world turned black. I felt nothing.

Apparently, I had a seizure. The tumour in my head was pressing against my brain; that's what the doctor said when I discovered I couldn't speak. They were able to bring me back, but some part of me had been damaged. They asked me if I was alright, if I understood. I nodded. They said sorry, and I opened and closed my mouth, searching for some way to respond.

Lance looked at me for a long moment, rage and pain warring in his eyes as I struggled to find some way to tell them, any way to communicate. And then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, and held it up in front of me. I smiled at him and tapped at the buttons, and he read it out for me when I was done. "She says that a voice isn't a requirement for life," Lance said. They smiled, and then they left.

My parents cried. Olivia cried. Tom looked at me sadly, and Marc leaned against the wall, looking as if someone had punched him in the stomach. Lance left and came back with bleeding, skinned knuckles. Mum looked at him for a moment, and then walked him away, and when they came back his hand was bandaged. He sat beside me, and I ran my fingers over the bandage.

Hannah visited and said she was sorry, a day later, and then left the room with tears shining in her eyes, as if she didn't want anyone to see her cry. Tatiana held my hand, and introduced me to her friend from down the hall, and talked enough for the both of us.

I remember that, now. All of them.

In death, I am small.

But I guess it isn't such a bad feeling. There are some things in the world that have the power to make you feel small, and death is one of them. Death I will feel small in the face of, but not because I am afraid. But I am. And it is strange, this not-ness of the feeling. For I am afraid yet I am not, and I do not know what to do with the seeming lack of emotion.

Death is cold. I can still feel my body and see above me, but I know I am dying. I know I haven't got long.

Mum and dad sit in chairs by my bedside. Mum is trying to smile, but dad has tears running down his face; he was never one for facades. He knows, too.

Beside them is Tom, and then Olivia, and then Marcus. And they are all bunched together on the one side of my bed that is not filled with machinery.

I listen to the steady beep that reads my heartbeat. I stare at the ceiling. I swallow, and it doesn't hurt anymore, and I don't know whether that is good or bad.

Olivia rests her hand on my leg, but I don't feel it, I don't feel it anymore, and when I smile at her wanly she collapses into sobbing tears on Marc's shoulder. She wraps one arm around his neck and reaches her free hand blindly towards Tom, and he takes it and holds it, sweeps his thumb across the back of her hand, smiling slightly at me, but the smile is empty.

And then the door opens, and I know who is there because this, this I am still capable of feeling.

Dad coughs and gets to his feet, wipes his face on his sleeve. Dad, I want to say, but I can't. I raise my hand, and he gives a firm shake of his head and a watery smile. Mum grips his hand so tightly that their knuckles are white, a bundle of bloodless fingers.

"We'll be right back, Syl," he says, and then he chokes on the words and walks from the room, resting his hand on Lance's shoulder as he leaves, mum at his side.

Lance comes over and takes mum's chair. He looks at me for a moment, and for that second I feel as if I will break, because never has he been unsure, and I don't want these tubes and my death hovering between us before I go, not now, not ever.

I needn't have worried.

He settles into the chair and then leans forwards, undaunted by the tubing and machines, and he takes my hand and bows his head over it. I have always been pale and small, but my hand in his looks papery, almost translucent, as if the slightest breeze could take it away.

He turns my hand over in his grip and kisses my wrist softly, and I feel it down to my toes, though I know I don't, really, because I haven't felt my feet in hours.

I smile, and lift my hand, and it is shaking. But I persist, and I trace the birthmark beneath his eye with my fingertips, and he closes his eyes and sighs as if he has been waiting for me to touch him like that, as if this is all he could ever want. And then he opens his eyes and I know he wants more, he wants more than we could ever have, but I am leaving and I cannot give it to him. So I try to smile and my hand drops to the bed beside me, and I squeeze his hand to let him know that I understand. And he takes a shuddering breath and bows his head over my hand again, and I know that he is crying because his shoulders shake and shudder and his tears spread over my fingers and patter to the sheets. I want to hold him. I want to be strong enough to wrap my arms around his neck and hug him as tightly as I can, and now even the paltry facsimile of strength I had before seems like more than I could ever hope for.

Tom reaches over with the hand that Olive does not hold, and he rests it on Lance's shoulder, and I could not be more grateful to him in that moment than I am, and I try to tell him this through a small smile. He just looks at me, looks me in the eyes in a way that says, I know, and I squeeze Lance's hand and force my other hand to rise, to run over his cheek and back over his neck, and I make it stay there though it hurts, because he is more important than the pain. He is everything.

A few hours later, and everyone is gone. To get coffee, to go to the bathroom, to walk around the hospital. Mum and dad do not go, though. They stay by my side. Until the machines stop beeping, and the doctors rush in. Until I am gasping for breath and my eyelids are fluttering. Until I am gone.

Death waits for no one. I do not get to say goodbye. I do not get to say anything at all, because my voice was taken from me a long time ago. It is not like it is in the movies: where the dying person gets to say goodbye to everyone who matters, where they get to tell the people they love that they do, in fact, love them, a stupid statement because the people know, regardless. But still, I would have liked to say it. Would have liked to let them know one last time. I do not get that time. Not even a second.

This is not a movie. This is life.

And I am no longer a part of it.