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He made it through the building and into the parking lot with out noticing where he stepped. He jostled couples and spilled drinks, knocked into tables and over chairs, but his eyes and his heart were too blurred with tears to care. Rose's soft, beautiful voice echoed through his head. Please leave me alone. Please leave me alone. Do you really want that? Yes. YES. Please leave me alone.

Brian sank down onto the curb. A light rain had started to fall, and his dress pants soaked up the muddy water, but he didn't care. He rested his head in his hands, and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the image of Rose's face, that seemed to swarm across the landscape. Her little nose, so cute and innocent, that always made him smile. Her wide, curious eyes that reminded him of a child's. Her smile, so rare and coveted, the smile that kept him awake at night, tossing and turning in his bed, wondering when he could see it again. "Damn it." He said aloud, passionatly. "I love her."

The words tasted strange in his mouth. He'd said them before, many times, but they'd never seemed as. . . real as they did now. It seemed suddenly that there was a weight lifted from his shoulders. He felt strangely as though he'd been carrying around a burden, and it had been suddenly lifted from his shoulders. He loved her. He loved her. And now, all he had to do was find Rose, and tell her how much he loved her. And he could take him into his arms, and-

His train of thought crashed. Rose didn't love him. She couldn't. If she'd loved him, she wouldn't have spat those cold, heartless words at him. Please leave me alone. Brian felt a strong pain shoot through his body. Rose didn't love him. He was in love, for the first time, really, and she didn't love him back. "Rose." He whispered, tears coming to his eyes. "I love her." And with his proclimation, it all went black.

He vaguely remembered snatches of the ambulance ride, of the medicines, and the EMTs. He could hear someone in his memory yelling, "stand back! Give him room!" And later: "He'll make it. He's okay. Don't worry."
He remembered a feeling of panic rushing through him when he realized that he was sick again. He was laying somewhere, in an ambulance, or on a hospital bed, he wasn't sure which, and he was too drugged up to open his eyes. "ROSE!" He yelled as loudly as he could, but no sound came out. He was too sick to move. He waited a minute, to see if she'd come, but the world was black again before she could have reached him.

"I've killed him." Rose told her reflection. "I've killed him. He's dead. He's dead." The image of Brian, laying sprawled on the sidewalk, soaked to the bone with water and mud, was permanetly imprinted in her mind. "I've killed him." She was like a broken record.

The walls of her room began to swim before her eyes, and she sank down onto her bed. She'd killed Brian. She was sure of it. He couldn't still be alive, not after lying in on the cold, wet pavement in freezing weather for over an hour before anyone found him. And with his heart trouble, his recent surgery, how could she even possibally think that he might have made it?

She didn't know what happened to him after they put him in the ambulance. She knew she could go to the desk and ask, but she was terrified. In her head, she could see herself inquiring about him, and she could hear the nurse, that sausage-fingered nurse, telling her in her sugar-coated voice that 'singing-dancing boy' was dead. And it was all her, Rose's, fault.

Her head sank into her hands, and the tears began to flow. "I'm so sorry." She said outloud, not completely sure who she was talking to. It had been years since she'd prayed, years since she believed there was anything to pray to. But now, with all her heart, she was wishing that someone was hearing her. "I didn't mean to hurt him. I'm so scared. I think- I think I love him. I've never loved before, not like this." She was silent for a moment, and then the tears burst from her eyes with a new venom. "You took my parents away from me before I could love them! And I lived my whole life in a fucking group home, because you wanted to keep the only two people who really cared for me out of my life! You can't take Brian away from me! You can't!"

She twisted her body around so she was laying down, and burried her head deep in her pillow. Her tears were soaking through the case, but she didn't care. Pictures of Brian's face swarmed behind her eyes. Her mind carried her back to the first day they met, in the library. He still had her charm, the one she'd found so long ago. A tiny glimmer of hope poked it's way into her gloom. Maybe he'd make it. The charm hadn't ever failed her. Maybe it had enough magic left in it to help him pull through this. "Please." She said aloud. "Please."

A fresh set of tears began to fall, but they were interupted. There was a knock on her door.