Chapter 6.
Dedicated to Lucy white for putting up with me and being such a good friend and listener.
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I opened my eyes to see an unfamiliar snow white celling. I still couldn't hear properly but I could hear a beeping machine and two people, a boy and a girl, arguing although what about I wasn't sure of yet. I turned my head slightly and saw a small bed-side table with a glass of water and a half full jug sitting next to it. My hearing was coming back now and I recognised the voices. It wasn't my Mum and Dad because they would still be on their way here, where ever here is. It was Alice and Alec but what were they doing here? The door opened and I saw some feet, they looked like size 12s so I guessed they belonged to a male doctor. The smart black shoes were followed by an pair of old but still white and pink trainers with grey tracksuit bottoms tucked into them, Alice's of course. Those were then followed by the shoes I'd been dreading, the black converse all stars that belonged to Alec, part of me wanted to see him just so he could hold me and tell me everything would be OK, but the other part of me realised that now I would have to tell him everything and that he would just worry. But hold on, there was another pair of shoes, new football boots, these were the shoes that confused me and forced me to look up. It was Jack, What was he doing here? I wanted to ask him first before I said anything else, but i knew that if the first word out of my mouth was Jack then I would push Alec away, and I knew that I needed him a lot more than I needed Jack.
"Alec?" i whispered as I turned my head towards them them. alec came running over to my side, he sat on the edge of the bed and grabed my hand.
"I'm here babe, don't worry." Alec had clearly been crying, his eyes were blood shocked and his cheeks were red.
"Elle I'm Dr Law and I'm going to be your doctor while you're here. Your parents are on their way back from London, but your friends can stay here until then." Dr Law was a tall, thin, dark haired man. He was very well spoken and couldn't have been more than 30. I nodded because I was so tired that I didn't have the energy to talk.
"Now I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. but I think I should wait until your family gets here." Dr law kept looking down at my chart and then looking back at me as if he couldn't believe what he was seeing. I had to build up the strength to say something because I would rather hear it with Alec by my side than my Mum and Dad.
"I...I... Can you tell me now?" I wasn't quite sure where I was going with this but I was going to try.
"Well I can, but are you sure you don't want to wait for your family to get here?" Dr Law didn't sound very sure of himself but I wanted to know what was wrong with me.
"my friends are just as good as my family if not better so I want you to tell me." As I said that Alice walked around the bed and sat on the opposite side of the bed to Alec, she found my hand and gripped it as hard as she knew she could without hurting me. Jack just stood with his baggy jeans half way down his bottom, staring at me and all of the tubes and machines that surrounded me.
"Well we knew that your symotoms would worsen but we thoguht it would be years before we saw you in here after passing out, not days." He sounded scared, almost as if they had no idea what was going on.
"But what does it mean?" A small timid voice came from the doorway where Jack was standing.
"Well the disease that we thought you have and Charlotte had doesn't do this. We think that you have a new disease called Lucks Disease and therefore it is very hard to predict how long you have to live." Dr Law then said. "I'm very sorry. I'll give you a few minutes." He put my chart back on the end of the bed and walked out. Jack followed shortly behind him, I squeezed Alice's hand and she knew that I wanted her to follow Jack, and so she left. Once she'd gone I moved up to give Alec some more room. He put his legs up on the bed and lay-ed down next to me. I started crying and so turned away from him, he wrapped his arms around me and put his head right next to mine.
"I'm sorry." I sobbed still not able to turn around and look him in the eye.
"For what?" Alec said lifting his head up. I turned around and Alec wipped the tears away from my face.
"I should have told you but I didn't want you to worry" I could feel myself getting tired but I so wanted to stay talking to Alec as long as i could.
"No you didn't have to it was fine and you were right I would have just worried." Alec just put his head back on the pillow and stroked the hair out of my face. he gave me a kiss " Now get some sleep, I can tell you're tired."
"No I don't want to leave you I want to stay awake." I sounded determined but i think Alec detected the quiver in my voice.
" Elle, if you don't sleep now you'll make yourself even more ill and then you'll be stuck in here even longer. I promise I'll stay with you until you wake up just please get some sleep." Alec always did have a way of making me do what he told me but this time I wasn't going to argue. I closed my eyes and slowly drifted off. I felt Alec tighten his grip and right then I knew everything would be OK.
