One More Spoon of Cough Syrup [Zayn Malik FanFiction]

Chapter 14

 "I don't know where it is, I don't know when, but I want you around." - 'She Is' by The Fray.

"How long is this going to last?" Liam groaned, gazing down at Zayn's weak figure.

Zayn had woken up this morning with nausea - kind of like the flu. The boys thought this was just a bug from the change in atmosphere, but I knew better - this was a withdrawal symptom from his cigarettes. We'd decided not to tell them about Zayn quitting yet since I thought that questions would arise, like why Zayn was doing it now. Like I said before, I knew that his smoking and cutting were linked.

"About a week," I replied calmly, keeping my eyes on Zayn.

He lay flat on his bed, breathing heavily sounding like he had broncitis. Every once in a while he'd let out a sneeze which would trigger his immidete reaction of picking up one of the wrinkled tissues that surrounded him and blowing his nose. His eyes were bloodshot from the numerious amount of tears that leaked from his eyes whenever he coughed. His throat was sore and he barely spoke because of it.

"Won't be too hard," I continued. "Just stock up on soda, he's going to need a lot." Liam stared into mid-air thoughtfully. "I mean now. Dude, go!"

"What? Oh, yeah, right."

I waited for Liam to go before I shut the door and began clearing the used tissues and replacing them with new ones. "Withdarwal symptom," I grunted. "There's a lot, but not everyone gets everything. First one's nausea - we'll have to wait to see what comes next, no telling now."

"Great," he slurred. "so how long are the symtoms gonna last?"

"It's different for evreryone," I said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "Hard to say, but it won't exactly last a few weeks. Five or six months, more or less. How's the leg?"

Another withdrawal symptom.

"Aches," he grunted.

"Just...don't move," I suggested. 

He sighed and suddenly began coughing again.

Zayn's nausea lasted six days exactly - on the seventh, the two of us scavenged his bed looking for any old tissues and crushed soda cans. Usually, he was pretty tidy, but the symtom had a large effect on his cleanliness. His leg was a lot better and it helped that he only moved if he needed to.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long before his next symptom came: hoarseness. This wasn't too bad in a sense that Zayn wasn't really coughing all the time and he didn't feel dizzy everytime he moved and his bed wasn't a human version of a pig-sty. Thing is, he couldn't talk, let alone sing and the symptom could last up to several months - hopefully getting better as time progressed.

"Here, you need this," I pushed another cup of tea into his lukewarm hands. It was his fourth one today. "How you feeling?"

"Better," he managed. "As in I can actually talk without my throat burning."

"That's good," I smiled. "Your throat's just regenirating its tissues, nothing too complex."

"That's coming from someone whose studying this stuff," he whispered.

"Shut up and suck on your lozenger."

It wasn't only his symptoms that occured - it was his dreams as well, which were only figments of his personal guilt.

I didn't really want Zayn to fall asleep again - I couldn't handle the image of the lines of discomfort on his forehead, or how he shifts around, moaning the same thing: 'I didn't mean to.' I was usually a heavy sleeper, but when Zayn had mentioned that he'd had dreams of some sort, I'd tried to stay awake for longer. At night, I could hear him talk in his sleep.