dance for you ~fransykes~

23

The hospital lights were obnoxiously bright for so late at night, and the air was too hot, sticky and sterile. The colour white had never seemed so plain until you've spent hours surrounded by nothing but it. I sighed, heavy and tired as I looked down at Sienna who was asleep in the uncomfortable, cheap chair opposite me. The hallway was pretty quite, the midnight silence taking over it as the outside world slept peacefully.

It had been hours since we had heard anything about Oliver, the last news we received was when my dad went home just after they had snapped the bone of his foot back into place. He would be fine, the doctors reassured us, but they didn't know how much Oliver's future relied on his foot being okay like we did. If he couldn't dance again, it would destroy him. Dancing was his light, the one thing that ignited his soul and strung his personality together. Without dance, Oliver simply wasn't himself. And that sacred me, because I had grown to love the side of Oliver that shone when he was preforming. No, I wasn't in love with him, that sort of thing took time, but I definitely loved certain aspects of him.

Fuck, it was only four weeks until the auditions too, and his routine still was only half way choreographed. I didn't know much about ballet, but one thing I did know was that his routine was still far from perfect and still needed tonnes of practice.

It's funny, isn't it? That one minute everything's fine and normal, and then in the blink of an eye everything can come crashing to the ground. You never really know what you have until it's gone, and by that point it's too late. You never see the beauty in what you already have, only what you haven't got yet. The grass is always greener in someone else's garden, and all that bullshit.

One minute Oliver was dancing, and then the next he was not. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get the memory of his screams out of my head, or the look of desperation in his eyes. The way his limbs slumped in defeat as I carried him in my arms through the hospital car park, like he had already given up. He was hardly breathing, not speaking, not even blinking. It was like his life was over at that point and he didn't see any reason to carry on....like his soul had already left. The sight broke my heart into a million pierced and then stomped it into the ground.

In that moment I would have given anything to trade places with him. Oh how I wish it was me in that hospital bed right now, him sitting in the corridor outside anxiously waiting for some news. I guess that's what it means to truly care about someone, you'd give anything for them to be okay, even if it means sacrificing your own happiness.

Sienna awoke with a grumble and an unattractive snort, the dribble on her cheek dried like concrete against her skin. Her hair was messy and in its naturally curly state, her makeup trashed now. Not that I cared about what she looked like, there were far more important things for us to focus on right now. One of them being the doctor walking our way, a stern look engraved on his tired face and far too wrinkly hands that didn't match the age of the rest of his body. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, and his hair was already greying despite the fact that he must have only been in his 30s. It made me wonder what horrors this guy had seen throughout his career, how much blood had stained those hands. The thought alone made my stomach churn. Had it been Oliver's blood that he scrubbed off of his skin?

"Are you the party accompanying Mr Sykes?" The doctor asks in a calculated, intellectual manner. I nod, Sienna does too after she wipes the sleep from her eyes and the spit from her face. If the tension around us wasn't so thick, I would have joked about her drooling in her sleep and how messy her hair was. This was no place for jokes.

"He can have one vision now, though I should warn you that he may not be acting quite himself just yet due to the pain medication." The doctor informs us.

One visitor? Sienna and I look at each other with a silent question lingering in our stare. The selfish part of me wants to go see how now, yet Sienna has been his friend for years yet I've only truly know him for around a month and a half, and for half of that time we weren't even on terms. And yes we've admitted that we like each other and we've messed around a couple of times, but we aren't officially together.