Sarah Durst - The Lost

“It’s called ‘found art,’” I say.

“Appropriate.”

“Will you do it? Will you find the Missing Man again? For me? For Claire?”

“I already found him.”

“Again, I mean. I need you to find him again.”

He looks at me as if I’m dense, and he holds up one finger. “You find what will heal the lost.” He holds up a second finger. “You send the found home. One plus one equals... ‘“She can’t do addition. Can you do subtraction? Take a bone from a dog: what remains?” Alice considered. “The bone wouldn’t remain, of course, if I took it—and the dog wouldn’t remain; it would come to bite me—and I’m sure I shouldn’t remain.”’”

“I’m not the Missing Man,” I say.

“‘“Wrong as usual,” said the Red Queen, “the dog’s temper would remain.”’”

I spin the bike wheel, and then I look up at the Rembrandt, Storm on the Sea of Galilee. I love the light on the clouds and on the water. And I understand. I have the same power as the Missing Man. “So all I have to do is click my heels three times and say ‘There’s no place like home’? I can send myself home?”

“No!” He shoots toward me but stops short of touching me. “You can’t! I mean, yes, you can, but you can’t. Lost needs you. The people here need you. You’re what stands between Lost and the void. We are, you and me, Finder and Missing Man. If you leave... You can’t leave.” There’s panic in his voice, fear, real fear.

“I have to. My mother is dying. She needs me. Claire needs me.”

He shakes his head. “You have lives here that depend on you.”

“They need the Missing Man. I’m just...me. I’m not interesting. You know that.”

“You can’t save your mother,” he says bluntly. “You can save the people here.”

His words are like bullets in my gut. “Maybe I can’t save her, but I can be there with her. She shouldn’t have to die alone.” Saying it out loud makes my stomach roll.

Peter looks as if he wants to shake me. “These people will face worse than death without you. They’ll fade. They’ll disappear. You could stop it!”

“I can’t! I have responsibilities that come first.”

“Responsibilities you fled from.”

“And that was a mistake! I shouldn’t have come here...”

“You were meant to be here.” He takes my hand. “Meant to be here with me.” He stares into my eyes and steps closer. I can feel his breath soft on my face. He leans his forehead against mine.

Suddenly, I feel as though I can’t breathe. My hand shakes. It’s still on his arm, and I know he can feel it shaking. My whole body trembles. “You’re only saying that because of these...‘powers’ I have, whatever they are.”

“I went to see the Missing Man to know if you could stay. I couldn’t let myself care about you if I thought you might leave. And here you are, with his powers, still talking about leaving. Can’t you see how much they...how much I... need you? I’m tired of being alone, Lauren. So very tired.”

I feel a lump in my throat. I swallow hard. His voice sounds so raw. His eyes... I want to reassure him. But I can’t. “I’ll come back. When I can. I won’t... I’ll come back and help. But I have to do this first. Please, try to understand.”

He steps back from me. “You won’t come back. You’ll sink into your life again, and you’ll convince yourself this was a dream or hallucination. You’ll assume the Missing Man will take care of it, that it’s not your responsibility. You have your own life, dreams, future. This isn’t real. That’s what you’ll tell yourself. And meanwhile, you will be destroying us. This. Me.”

“My mother needs me. My mother. Has there ever been anyone like that for you?”

He draws his hands away from mine. His expression is unreadable. “No.”

I suck in a breath, but I don’t know what to say to that. “No one?”

“Everyone always leaves me.” He turns his back on me and studies the bike-wheel bear sculpture. He spins it. It looks like a carnival ride, all the bright colors blurring together. “That’s what I’ve lost, Lauren. Everyone. When my parents died, I was alone. So I came here and became the Finder. This town became my family. People I found became my aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, friends. And then one by one, they left. Returned to their real lives. But this is my real life. This is my home. Finding people is who I am and what I do. And leaving me...is what everyone does. I thought you were different. Claire thought you were different.”

“I’ll come back.”

“You won’t.”

“I will.”

“I should have left you in the void. I should have let you fade. He would have stayed here if it weren’t for you. He wouldn’t have—”

“You’re blaming me now?”

“Yes! You’re choosing to leave!”

He isn’t going to understand. “I’m sorry,” I say. I cross my arms and put my hands on my shoulders. It’s the nearest I can come to approximating the Missing Man’s position. I don’t know if that’s essential, or if it’s just the words, but I do it anyway. “You were lost...”

He whips around at my words. His coat billows around him. His eyes are as stormy as the inside of the void, dark and swirling. He looks wild, as feral as the dogs that hunt in the alleyways. “Don’t.”

“You are found,” I finish.

He’s saying words. I can’t hear him. But his mouth shapes the words “Come back.” And then “I love you.”

I look into his eyes as he fades, as the paintings fade, as the walls fade, as everything dims and disintegrates around me into blackness.

Beep, beep, beep...

I can’t breathe.

Oh, God, I can’t breathe! I try to inflate my lungs, but my throat feels stuffed shut. Whoosh, I hear. Air suddenly floods into me, and my chest expands. My eyes fly open.

I am lying on my back looking up at a tiled ceiling. One of the tiles has a water stain. The overhead light holds the shadows of a few dead bugs. Beep, beep, beep. I can’t breathe again. I try to gasp for air. My hands fly to my mouth. I hear a ripping sound and feel a sharp pain in my arm. An alarm wails. My hand touches my mouth. A tube runs into it, filling it. Whoosh, again, and my ribs expand as oxygen is forced into my lungs.

I hear doors fly open, slam against the wall. Footsteps. Faces press over me. Men and women in scrubs. “She’s awake,” one says.

“Calm down,” another says. Her voice is even, a faint hint of a Mexican accent. It’s a musical voice, soothing, as if it has practice calming wild horses. “You’re in a hospital. You’re all right. We’re taking care of you. Steady. That’s it. Steady.”

A hospital. It smells like a hospital. I know this smell—antiseptic. But I’m not supposed to be in a hospital bed. I hear the whirr of equipment around me and the beep...my heart rate, faster than it was. Air again pushes into my lungs with a whoosh.

“You have a breathing tube in you.” The same woman speaks calmly. She holds down my hands so I won’t claw at the tube. “If you try to tear it out, you’ll hurt yourself. Do you understand me?”

There are tears in my eyes, blurring my vision, but I nod. I can’t talk. I feel as though I am gagging. I want to vomit. Whoosh. And then the sound of a bag deflating. I feel air sucking around my mouth as a nurse prods me with what looks like a dentist’s tool. “We’re suctioning the excess secretions so we can remove the tube,” the doctor explains in her soothing voice. “This will pinch.”

It feels like my lungs and intestines are being yanked out my throat. I want to scream but I can’t. Pain radiates through my entire body, blanking out every thought. I inhale a ragged, shaking breath on my own, and I cough so hard that my entire body shakes. The alarms sound again as the IVs shake in my arms. Someone places an oxygen mask over my mouth. I breathe. My lungs hurt. My ribs hurt. I ache everywhere. But I can breathe. I open and shut my mouth, and then I gesture at the oxygen mask. It’s lifted from my face. I breathe again, and I don’t cough this time. My tongue feels thick and dry and swollen. I swish it around in my mouth. I know I should say thank you—but I don’t.