MEDICINE ➤ SPENCER REID

SEVENTEEN

"Every single time you looked at me, through the corner of your eye and smiled. My heart pushed the ribs with all the force towards my lungs, until it got crushed and I could not breathe anymore." - Akshay Vasu.

* * *

Louise woke with the familiar ringing in her ear - it was so loud, to which it made her head throb in agony.

Her eyes were glued to the ceiling, noticing how each ceiling panel moved and how every so often a light would pass by, making her realise that she were being wheeled through the busy hallways of the hospital.

It was bright; so very bright, and she squinted, feeling blinded.

Muffled voices echoed as her vision faded from reality to blackness; hearing as people spoke way too quickly, or how some whispered, or how some even called out.
Louise tried her absolute best to figure out what the nurses begged out for, she tried so hard.

"Emergency!"

The word echoed hauntingly throughout her head, playing back to her in loops like a broken record.

It was when Louise felt plastic rub against her mouth, feeling as an oxygen mask were placed over her lips; passing air into her utterly wrecked lungs. She tried to reach her hand up to feel her face, but the feeling of chord tugging against her skin made it difficult, for an IV stuck into her forearm.

Louise couldn't help but to close her eyes, finding comfort that she were in hospital, and she wracked extremely difficult breaths of oxygen.

But when she heard the familiar voice of her father, Jim, Louise regretted closing her eyes shut - and when she tried to open them, in hope of seeing her father pacing along beside her wheeling bed, the skin covering her eyeballs refused to move.

Her arms tried to reach out to the comforting voice of her father, but it was when she felt her arms refuse to move - feeling like they were bolted down to the bed with nails.

She panicked, hearing as her heart rate monitor began to pace faster, feeling as her lungs desperately gasped for air in the most painful way, feeling absolutely gut-wrenching to her.
Louise tried to call out her fathers name, but as the air crept up in her throat, the sensation disappeared and it left her airless, unable to speak.

"What's happening?!" Jim followed the nurses, a panicked tone riddled in his voice.

"Louise's lungs have collapsed," the warm voice of a nurse breathed out, stressed, "we're getting her an emergency double lung transplant right now."

"What?!" her father almost froze, making Louise's stiff body scale over with goosebumps.
"We found new lungs for her," the nurse comforted, "we need to get the procedure to be done with as soon as possible."
"New lungs..." Jim's voice echoed, a pang of hope in his tone.

Louise felt a wave of relief overcome her paralysed body, somewhat surprised yet happy that the hospital had found new lungs for her.
For what felt like a lifetime she had been waiting for a set of new lungs, for ever since she were a child she hoped that one day she could live just that tiny bit longer. Even her late mother, Rosemary, wished nothing more than for her daughter to receive new lungs - since getting new lungs for a Cystic Fibrosis patient made their life really worth living for.