Augustus reveals his cancer recurrence to Hazel

The morning after their first night together in Amsterdam, the fragile idyll of Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster shattered. In the Kierkegaard room of the Hotel Filosoof, Augustus sat in a dusty paisley chair rather than joining Hazel on the bed, a clear signal that something was terribly wrong. He pulled an unlit cigarette from his pack and placed it between his lips, a gesture that had once been a playful metaphor but now seemed a grim talisman. He told her that just before she had gone into the ICU, he had started to feel an ache in his hip. He went in for a PET scan, and the results were devastating: he lit up like a Christmas tree, with tumors in the lining of his chest, his left hip, his liver, everywhere. The word "everywhere" hung in the air, a verdict that needed no further explanation. Hazel, who had spent years learning to control her own panic, knelt at the base of the chair and put her head in his lap, hugging him by the waist. She whispered that she was sorry, and he apologized for not telling her sooner, admitting it was selfish. But Hazel understood his silence; she had done the same thing, trying to protect him from her own illness. Now that she loved a grenade, she realized the foolishness of trying to save others from her own impending fragmentation. She could not unlove Augustus Waters, and she did not want to. He broke down for a single moment, a sob roaring impotent like a clap of thunder unaccompanied by lightning, before pulling himself together and promising to fight it for her. He said he would find a way to hang around and annoy her for a long time, but even as he spoke, the truth was undeniable. He had started palliative chemo but gave it up to go to Amsterdam, even though his parents were furious. He could tell it wasn't working. Hazel, who had been the experimental pincushion herself, knew what that meant. He confessed that he had kind of conned her into believing she was falling in love with a healthy person, but she shrugged it off, saying she would have done the same to him. He stared at the ceiling and said he liked this world—he liked drinking champagne, he liked not smoking, he liked the sound of Dutch people speaking Dutch—and now he didn't even get a battle. He didn't get a fight. Hazel, hating herself for the cheesy sentiment, told him he would keep fighting, that this was his war now. But he dismissed the idea, pointing out that his cancer was made of him, as surely as his brain and his heart were made of him. It was a civil war with a predetermined winner. He was too smart for the kinds of solace she could offer. He asked her to forget about it and treat him like he wasn't dying, and she agreed, saying she thought he just had a touch of cancer. He smiled, using his old gallows humor, saying he was on a roller coaster that only goes up. She told him it was her privilege and her responsibility to ride all the way up with him. He asked if it would be absolutely ludicrous to try to make out, and she replied that there is no try, there is only do. In that moment, they chose to hold onto each other, knowing that the world was not a wish-granting factory, but that their love, however brief, was real.