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When the end comes, it is quick. Eli owes him that. She hopes it isn't painful, but the only person who could have told her is lying, icy cold and still, in her arms.
Oskar wouldn't have been like Hakan, needy and ineffectual. She knows he would have been a good companion and would have helped her, wanting nothing from her but friendship. They could have been happy.
Of course Eli knows that humans don't last forever. However, she had expected Oskar to have been around for longer - at least until his body started to wither from age. But Oskar's mortality had struck home much earlier than that.
He was fifteen when she first smelled the poison in his blood. For months Eli said nothing, respecting Oskar's privacy and his autonomy. She didn't know where he went in the daytime and it didn't matter; Oskar's days were his own. For all Eli knew, he could have been seeing a doctor.
But he wasn't. He didn't even know. Eli watched the colour of his skin grow paler and the weight slither off him. She saw the dark bruises that didn't fade and the way that he slumped in his seat and slept longer and longer.
Eli cradled Oskar's head as he dozed on the couch, opening her mouth and tasting death on her tongue. Oskar was fading and she couldn't let him suffer. So she gave him the last gift that she could, biting deep into his jugular and then holding him as the blood gushed out of his body.
She didn't drink from him; she wanted him to go faster than that, and besides, his blood had gone bad. Instead Eli held Oskar tight as his blood streaked the walls and soaked into her clothes. She held on to him for hours, clutching his body as it stiffened and then relaxed again, feeling the cold settle upon him.
Oskar had been her friend and Eli was going to miss him.