Should I Stay?

Chapter 16

I run away.

I leave Harry, Liam, Zayn, Niall and Diana in the lobby and I just start careening through the hospital. I don't realize I'm looking for the pediatric ward until I get there. I tear through the halls, past rooms with nervous four-year-olds sleeping restlessly, past the neonatal ICU with babies the size of fists, hooked up to more tubes than I am, past the pediatric oncology unit where bald cancer patients sleep under cheerful murals of rainbows and balloons.

I'm looking for him, even though I know I won't find him. Still, I have to keep looking.

I picture his head, his messy brown hair. I love to nuzzle my face in those messy locks. I have done since he was a baby.

I kept waiting for the day when he'd swat me away, say ''You're embarrassing me,'' the way he does to Dad when he cheers too loudly at T-ball games. But so far, that hadn't happened. So far, I've been allowed constant access to that head of his.

So far. Now there is no more so far.

It's over.

I picture myself nuzzling his head one last time, and I can't even imagine it without seeing myself crying.

Louis is never going to graduate from T-ball to baseball. He's never going to grow a mustache. Never going to get into a fistfight or kiss a girl or have sex or fall in love or get married or father his own messy-haired child. I'm only ten years older than him, but it's like I've already had so much more life. It is unfair.

If one of us should have been left behind, if one of us should be given the opportunity for more life, it should be him.

I race through the hospital like a trapped wild animal.

Louis? I call. Where are you? Come back to me!

But he won't.

I give up and drag myself back to my ICU. I want to break the double doors. I want to smash the nurses' station. I want it all to go away. I want to go away. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be in this hospital anymore. I don't want to be in this suspended state where I can see what's happening, where I'm aware of what I'm feeling without being able to actually feel it. I can't scream until my throat hurts or break a window with my fist until my hand bleeds, or pull my hair out in clumps until the pain in my scalp overcomes the one in my heart.

I'm staring at myself, at the ''live'' Lucy now, lying in her hospital bed. I feel a burst of fury. If I could slap my own lifeless face, I would.

Instead, I sit down in the chair and close my eyes, wishing it all away. Except I can't. I can't concentrate because there's suddenly so much noise. My monitors are blipping and chirping and two nurses are racing toward me.

''Her BP and pulse ox are dropping,'' one nurse yells.

''She's tachycardic,'' the other yells. ''What happened?''

"Code blue, code blue in Trauma,'' blares the PA.

Soon the nurses are joined by a bleary-eyed doctor, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, which are ringed by deep circles. He yanks down the covers and lifts my hospital gown. I'm naked from the waist down, but no one notices these things here. He puts his hands on my belly, which is swollen and hard. His eyes widen and then narrow into slits.

''Abdomen's rigid,'' he says angrily. ''We need to do an ultrasound.''

Nurse Ramirez runs to a back room and then wheels out what looks like a portable laptop with a long white attachment. She squirts some jelly on my stomach, and the doctor runs the attachment over my stomach.

''Damn. Full of fluid,'' he says. ''Patient had surgery this afternoon?''

''A splenectomy,'' Nurse Ramirez replies.

''Could be a missed blood vessel that wasn't cauterized,'' the doctor says. ''Or a slow leak from a perforated bowel. Car accident, right?''

''Yes. Patient was medevaced in this morning.''

The doctor flips through my chart.

''Doctor Sorensen was her surgeon. He's still on call. Page him, get her to the OR. We need to get inside and find out what's leaking, and why, before she drops any further. Jesus, brain contusions, collapsed lung. This kid's a train wreck.''

Nurse Ramirez shoots the doctor a dirty look, as if he had just insulted me.

''Miss Ramirez,'' the grumpy nurse at the desk scolds. ''You have patients of your own to deal with. Let's get this young woman intubated and transferred to the OR. That will do her more good than all this dillydallying around!''

The nurses work rapidly to detach the monitors and catheters and run another tube down my throat. I'm still naked from the waist down as they hustle me out, but right before I reach the back door, Nurse Ramirez calls, ''Wait!'' and then gently closes the hospital gown around my legs. She taps me three times on the forehead with her fingers, like it's some kind of Morse code message. And then I'm gone into the maze of hallways leading toward the OR for another round of cutting, but this time I don't follow myself. This time I stay behind in the ICU.

I am starting to get it now. I mean, I don't totally fully understand. It's not like I somehow commanded a blood vessel to pop open and start leaking into my stomach. It's not like I wished for another surgery.

But Louis is gone. Mom and Dad are gone. This morning I went for a drive with my family. And now I am here, as alone as I've ever been. I am seventeen years old. This is not how it's supposed to be. This is not how my life is supposed to turn out.

In the quiet corner of the ICU I start to really think about the bitter things I've managed to ignore so far today. What would it be like if I should stay? What would it feel like to wake up an orphan? To never smell Dad smoke a pipe? To never stand next to Mom quietly talking as we do the dishes? To never read Louis another chapter of Harry Potter? To stay without them?

I'm not sure this is a world I belong in anymore. I'm not sure that I want to wake up.

.

.

.

__________________________________________________________________________________

hey guys, I'm sorry this chapter is a bit short. I hope you all enjoy the story as much as I enjoy writing it so far tho.

I listened to these songs while I was writing this chapter. It makes it more emotional then it already is but yeah, just to make it more touching.

One Direction - Night Changes

Westlife - Save