I Miss You - McLennon AU

1.

??? November, 2019

The next morning, Paul woke up to a doctor in his room. He had been changing the pillows on Paul's bed, swapping them for fluffier ones, when the patient's eyes began to flutter open.

As soon as the doctor noticed that Paul was awake, he grabbed the clipboard from behind the hospital bed, scribbled something on it, and immediately rushed out of the room.

All Paul could think as he watched the man leave was how Mimi wouldn't do that... Mimi would have stayed for a conversation, or if she was too busy to stay for a conversation, she would have atleast asked him if he was alright. But all this doctor had needed to do was see that Paul was awake, look at the machine and if the computer told him that he was okay, he would leave.

For a good few minutes, all Paul and done was stare out from the window in the corner. The blinds had been pushed together, however twisted so that a little bit of the November sun shone through.

At least Paul figured it was November.

He felt so depressed, so alone. The walls were all white, so plain and empty. All to be heard was the beeping of then machine next to him, as well as patients being wheeled around in the corridor. With the little strength he had, he gripped onto the bedsheets, pulling at them anxiously.

He hadn't been told anything other than he had been missing for three weeks, and then been in a car accident outside of strawberry fields. He didn't even know what his injuries were. From what he could tell, he had a broken left wrist, a dislocated knee and a broken leg. This recovery surely wouldn't be as fast as his previous one, it wouldn't just be a 'go on crutches for two weeks then walk again' recovery, it would take months with his broken leg and wrist.

As well as that, he was sure he had damaged his head, too. Not only was it sore, but there were things he just couldn't remember, atleast not yet. He remembered John, Mimi, Stuart... If the thought hard enough he could remember there were two others but their names just passed him by. He could paint a brief picture of them.

He could remember what John's room looked like almost to perfection. Where his bed was, where his desk and wardrobe was... He remembered that there was a telephone in Mimi's room, an old telephone that had taken him atleast twenty seconds to figure out how to pick it up when John called from his high school.

He remembered the trips to Liverpool city, the clothes shopping and the cinema trip. Seeing Elvis for the first time on the first ever broadcast of such an iconic performance of his. And he couldn't forget the time he had told John about who he actually was, how he had cried himself to sleep in John's arms, and how John believed him.

Most of what he could remember were painful memories. Grief, from loosing both his mother and the new life that he had grown to adore. He had lost his mother, and then lost John. He felt the same pain that he did when he woke up in strawberry fields alone; powerless, fearful and heartbroken.

Sure, he had seen John later that day... But he was old. He wasn't his John. He wasn't the John with the short cut auburn hair, who had the vaguest of freckles on his cheeks. He wasn't the John who, though serious when he had to be, was a total goofball and cheerful mess.

He wasn't the John who loved him.

The man had to have been John, he had the chain and everything. He explained where the band went without Paul, and he explained how his and Paul's time was over... Maybe Paul just refused to believe it because he didn't want to think that John could have just... Moved on with the band. Moved on without him...

Paul felt serious unease and upset in his stomach.

In that moment, a bell was heard through the corridor. Paul knew what that bell meant, it was the visitors bell. It rang at 8am and again to end the visiting hour at 12pm, until 3pm when it rang again, and it's final ring was at 7pm. He knew the noise from when he had been a visitor for his mother, but as his mother was in serious care and could have passed at any second, the bell did not apply to his family. It did not exist in 1955, visitors were allowed in from 7am to 9pm.