The Fault in Our Stars

Eight days after the “prefuneral,” Hazel wakes to a call from Augustus’s mom at three thirty in the morning. He has died in the ICU after being unconscious for several hours. Hazel calls Isaac and sits with her parents until morning, but she can’t call the only person she wants to talk to. She thinks about being in the hospital where they ask you to rate your pain on a 1-10 scale. She always refused to say 10, even when her pain was unbearable; this, she says, is her 10. She looks at the condolence messages posted on Augustus’s Facebook wall by people who barely knew him, imagining how Augustus would critique peoples’ comments. Hazel feels impotently angry at the universe, and she leaves a message, calling Augustus “a victim—as you will be—of the universe’s need to make and unmake all that is possible” (265). The message gets quickly buried by the flood of other condolence messages, and Hazel thinks about Peter Van Houten’s claim that writing can only bury things, not resurrect them. She finally crawls into her mother’s arms and sits with her parents, immobilized by grief.