After The End: Book 1

13. Rescue

My mind was racing. Every thought was moving twice as fast as I needed it to. It was disorienting and confusing. Harry's room was too bright and too loud for me. Every noise assaulted my ears and every light threatened to blind me. The sensory overload was too intense. I could barely follow what was happening in front of me.

Despite my invisible sensory battle, I was very aware of what Harry had just done. He had just done what amounted to a coerced suicide attempt. I could see him, on his knees before me with blank eyes and trembling hands. He had wrapped his arms around his torso as if hugging himself. He looked nauseous and sweaty. His demeanor had changed so quickly within seconds of taking the injection and every minute since had been met with a clear deterioration of his condition.

"I definitely like you better this way," Jade was speaking to him at face level but he didn't seem aware of what she was saying. "You're attitude is insufferable."

"Leave him alone," I snapped. I went to step off the bed in his direction, but the man with the gun, Evan, stepped in front of me. I flinched back.

Jade laughed. "You won't have to worry about him much longer," she said dreamily. She approached me, putting her face so close to mine, our noses almost touched. She searched my eyes for something, then spoke. "You're coming down? You seem stressed. You could probably use another sniff."

I didn't feel any less erratic. If anything, the thumping in my chest had gotten worse, not better. I couldn't even tell what was anxiety and what was cocaine anymore.

I tried to think of a response, but when I looked into her face all I felt was disgust for what I had just seen her do to Harry. I spat at her.

Jade seemed caught of guard at first, then she slapped me across the face, her fake nails leaving stinging scratches in her wake.

I was fairly certain I was going to get shot in that moment. I had accepted it, despite the deal Harry had attempted. I didn't see how either of us were getting out of this.

Then the door was flung open and Liam and Zayn stood gaping in the doorway. "What the fuck?" Zayn exclaimed at the scene. He was always so eloquent.

It seemed for a second, that everyone stared at each other as if confused by the new developments. Harry continued staring into space like his role had already been exhausted. I used everyone's momentary shock to shove past Jade and past the man with the gun to Harry's side on the floor.

Everyone behind me was yelling. I completely tuned it out, despite how difficult the sensory megaphone in my head made it. I put all of my brain power into one place and zeroed in on Harry.

I was so angry with him. Everything that had just happened to us was his fault. I knew that, beyond doubt, Harry had allowed his personal endeavors to escalate beyond what he could handle. He had been dishonest with me. He had blatantly lied. He had partaken in something dangerous and reckless and in the past half hour we had suffered greatly for it. He had almost gotten me killed.

Then, as soon as I'd been threatened he had changed scope. Hadn't he offered himself up for me? Hadn't he suggested I go back to my mums and forget he existed? Hadn't be looked at me and begged me not to watch him take the heroin? He wanted me protected. He had openly told Jade I was off limits, and based on context, I could assume this wasn't the first time he had drawn that boundary.

I placed myself in front of him and grabbed his shoulders. "Harold," I said sternly, giving him a small shake. He was still upright. That was a good sign. He blinked at me through glazed eyes. His pupils were pin pricks in the sea of green. After several seconds, he seemed to register who I was. He had a dreamy expression on his sweaty face and at his recognition of me, he broke into a smile.

He blinked twice and then murmured out jumbled words. "I messed up."

That was the understatement of the year. "Yeah," I agreed a little too unkindly.

One of his hands rose from him torso to his chest. He took a gasping breath and then cringed. He leaned back placing his head against the wall behind him. I watched his eyes roll up to stare at the ceiling. His color dropped several shades to white.

Behind me, I heard Nialls voice. "The police are coming!" He yelled. I glanced back to find the room mostly empty too, except Niall facing away from us in the doorway. I didn't know where everyone else had gone.

"Call an ambulance too!" I heard a familiar female voice yell. Over his shoulders, I could just see the top of Naomis head in the hall. In the back of my mind, I knew that I'd been waiting to see her all week. I wanted to be excited and feel heart flutters but her arrival had been dampened by the fact that Harry was actively dying in front of me.

"Already did," Niall assured her.

I turned back to Harry, who had let his eyes close. "Harry!" I said loudly. "Eyes open. Please."

He didn't respond.

"Harry please you've got to stay awake," I pleaded shaking him again. I could feel myself crying. This stupid reckless idiot was NOT going to die in my flat. I wouldn't allow it. "Please...the ambulance is already coming."

He squeezed his eyes in a tight blink before opening them again in to tiny slits. His lips were turning an ugly shade of blue. She took a shallow breath before speaking in a very small voice, "I'm sorry Lou."

"It's not a good time to apologize," I told him softly. "Just keep breathing please."

"I'm going to die," he said it so matter of factly in his weakened voice. It was barely a whisper. He said it as if a trusted authority had assured it to him. There was a loud bang in the other room. My mind immediately flashed to the gun but I shoved the thought down. I had a problem to face right in front of me. His face suddenly contorted into something pained and sad. "Where's her picture?"

Before I could respond, he jerked his shoulders from my grasp and threw himself down on the floor where he retched violently. He hadn't thrown up the last time he'd overdosed, so the action surprised me. He retched and gasped for a minute and then as if his body had a mind of its own, he began shaking violently. It took me a moment to realize as Harry's head jerked violently close to the wall, that he was having a seizure. His entire body was trapped in violent convulsions.

I sat in horror as he gasped and choked and jerked on the floor before me. Only seconds before, he had been speaking. What did this mean? Was this worse than the last time? Could he come back from this? Before Liam and Zayn had entered the room, I had begun to believe that Harry would die. They had sparked hope in me again and I was trying with everything I had to believe that Harry would pull through and that maybe this was something that was survivable. As I watched his body jerk, I felt like a deflating balloon.

Then, I was being pushed out of the way and two people with pressed white shirts and medical masks were leaning over him, seemingly unphased by the pile of sick on the carpet. Nialls arms were wrapped around me from behind, dragging me from the room despite my loud expletive filled protests and erratic limbs. In the hallway, he pushed me into Naomi who embraced me without speaking. I didn't know where the others had gone but the hallway was deserted otherwise.

I knew me and Naomi had issues that needed to be hashed out but this wasn't the time. I was sobbing into her shoulders, welcoming her presence while I made peace with the fact that Harry would be dead in the other room and that he had complied to kill himself only because he thought that it promised me life and that I was so angry at him and at myself that no tears in the world could silence the pain.

It was only out in the hallway, embraced by Naomi and feeling sorry for myself that I realized in his dying moment, Harry had been asking me to show him a picture of a little baby named Emma. He had not asked to see her picture in over a year, and he'd had me hold onto the single small square photograph for safe keeping. It wasn't the type of thing he could display. He had wanted to die looking at her, and I hadn't been able to understand that. I had failed him.

Authors note: Emma is explained in the Before the End prequel.