Broken Soul

Part 3

"Breathe deep." Henry inhaled as he sucked on the tube hoping at least one of the blue balls floats but the only thing he managed to do is vibrated it. He exhaled in tiredness after being forced to do another. "I c-can't-" he says as he breathes through his mouth and swallowed his dry throat together. His mouth gaped apart while he tried to calm his breaths together.

He usually had physical therapy in the morning for his lungs and his casted legs. He didn't understand why today is so difficult for him to lift the damn ball with his own breaths. Last time he managed to lift two of them but today neither. "It's okay, you can try again." The therapist asks him again and he took the curling tube and placed them inside his mouth before he tried to inhale them again.

He coughs few times unable to do what he was told to and the therapy patted his back handing him a paper towel for him to express his cough. After few times he coughs, he could see blood spurted into the tissue and his eyebrow crooked. Seconds later he was handed a glass of water and he gulped them immediately.

"It will take some time but you can not give up." The therapist says and he nodded before he coughs again.

Today was exhausting for Henry. In the morning he had lung therapy and in the evening his leg therapy. They taught him how to use the crutches and how to get up from the bed or from the chair and how to descend or ascend from the stairs. He was fine doing all the physical part but the lungs therapy exhaust him the most.

He was off from the oxygen since he started his therapy few days ago and for three days, he hasn't seen Alex anywhere. He wished he could ask the nurse to call him but he was too afraid to even ask them thinking he wasn't supposed to do so. The nurses knew Alex well since he had been visiting him a lot but ever since Alex offered him a place to stay, he had seem to vanish and Henry didn't see him since.

Maybe he regretted it and was too afraid to say to his face, Henry thoughts. It haunts him in his sleep and when he is awake, he was too tired to even think about this. Every time the door open, the only person he wishes that would come is Alex but for the last three days, Alex didn't come and visit him. Henry exhaled feeling the irony of his life has yet failed him once again. Did he really think life would be this kind to him, to offer him help after everything that he did?

He felt the urge to walk to the bathroom not to use the facility but because it was the only place he could walk too and be alone. His next bed neighbor was an old guy already at his end stage of life and he is called Walter. He is non verbal and vegetable states which Henry glad cause he won't have to entertain his questions of where he came from or why he has no one came and visit. The more he thought, the more he could see how his life would be in the future, like Walter here. Alone in the hospital bed and no one by his bedside to talk to him or cared for him other than the nurses.

Henry sat by the edge of the bed and grabbed his crutches before he lifted himself up and as soon as he stood, a sudden wave of tightness came flooding his chest and he gasped.

He inhaled and exhaled few times clutching on his right chest feeling the dizziness running through his head and once again, he coughs vigorously. He grabbed the tissue paper from his bedside and coughs further into it and saw the splutter of blood on them. He almost loss balanced when he struggled to hold on the crutches and coughs at the same time.

It took him a while before he could actually move again and as he took a step towards the bathroom, the pain came and overcome his visions. A wave dizziness blurred his sight and he could almost feel the floor beneath his feet turned into a slide and he swore he would just let the floor catches him if he did fall.

But as his body slumped, he waited for the cold hard floor to hit his head but the only thing he could feel was actually a warm familiar scent with a muscular arm wrapped around him. Slowly his eyes focused on the room and his side was the guy with dark curls and curling eyelashes batting his brown eyes at him.