Only you can save me (A Paul Walker fanfiction)

Chapter Sixteen: Florence ... Nightingale??

I returned to the room, sat against the doorframe and just looked at him until I fell asleep sitting there. Now that my mind, my sixth sense and my heart had made peace it was as if the breakage of the past four months slowly started healing. I woke up with him awake, lying on his back looking at the ceiling and I started smiling. My earlier doubts seemed silly now, of course it was Paul, and in that moment I was just grateful to be able to be here. How many times had I wished to be able to talk to him one more time, see him one more time? I had lost count ... It felt like a miracle.

I said goodmorning, to be met with a soundless, brief glance before he looked away. I stood up and walked over to the bed, to try and talk to him but I realised immediately why he was avoiding me as best he could: he had wet the bed. It was a bit of a wake up call. I had gone from the darkest place known to mankind to cloud nine and now I landed somewhere inbetween in reality. I didn't want to baby him, so I did the only thing I could think of: I pulled him out of the bed and marched him, long overdue, to the bathroom for a shower. Then I went back to the room and took off all the bedcovers. I didn't have a washing machine there, and after one sniff I decided I wasn't going to need one. Instead I walked out and dumped them down the road in a dumpster. I would need to find him new ones but fortunately that was easy. 

Going back inside I listened for noises from the bathroom but heard nothing so I poked my head in. He was still standing where I had left him, looking like he wanted to be back in the bed. Slowly, I went inside and started pulling on his shirt to take it off. He just looked at me wordlessly a moment, then lifted his arms so I could pull the shirt off. Swear to god, I heard it crack. I was a cotton shirt but I heard it break and splinter like glass when I took it off of him. Making a mental note to add clothes to the list of things I needed, I moved on to his jeans. Those were much more complicated as they just wouldn't budge. The button opened, the zipper, it came down a bit and then it just felt like it was stuck. 

I should have been smarter ... no excuses for my next mistake. I thought nothing of it and just tried to pull the jeans down by yanking extra hard, and that's when he screamed in pain. I let go immediately, shocked and startled. I had no idea what I had done wrong. It was my second wake up call, it made me look at him, really look at him without the rose tinted "HE IS ALIVE" glasses. And what I saw made me shudder ... He was a walking skeleton, his collarbones and backbone jutting out, his ribs visible plainly under stretched skin, his stomach concave above hipbones that looked like I could use them to carve wood with. He held his arm in a weird angle that made me sure it was broken and on his face, and basically everywhere else on his body, were angry red burns and flesh that looked wrinkled as a dried prune. 

The jeans, it turned out, were impossible to remove. On his left leg was a nasty infected wound about six inches long, oozing pus and bleeding, and the jeans were stuck inside the wound. I took off my clean shirt (because like an eejit I didn't think to bring oh I don't know, washcloths and towels and dressings or anything actually useful) and soaked it in lukewarm water. Then I started slowly wetting the heavy material, hoping it would release from the wound. I could have added a few tears to the mixture, tears that I hid by bending over his leg. I felt so sorry for what had been done to him ... 

After a few rinses the material had come loose and I threw all his clothes in the hallway, fully intending to make them end up in the dumpster the bedlinnen now resided in. Showering him was in no way erotic or exciting. I tried to be as gentle as I could, keeping the water a shade above lukewarm to avoid irritating his skin further. The water that ran off him had a muddy grey colour. I had taken the shampoo bottle out of my handbag (if the handbag is big enough then yes, I am one of those people) and washed his hair and his body twice, three times until the water became clear. It was unnerving to see how much there was on him that I couldn't wash off. 

It was as if a simple shower had worn him out so after drying him off with kitchen paper (it was all I had. Like I said, eejit) I let him crash on the sofa. Again, his eyes fell shut almost immediately. Having him clean was a big improvement but when I touched his face something else worried me: he was burning up with fever. I realised that having him here alive wouldn't be something permanent if I didn't pull myself together and started really helping him so, as he slept I got all the stuff he needed. I went to my doctor and complained about a bladder infection (I had them frequently so he didn't question) to get medication strong enough to help against the leg wound, I got dressings and clothes and towels and bedcovers and basically anything that I thought could be remotely helpful. 

It was some of the things he desperately needed but it didn't mean that it was just getting better from then on. His leg healed slowly even if the fever broke after a few days. Things like eating were a struggle. The first time he tried to eat he just threw it all up again a few minutes later, his body heaving while he shuddered with the pain it caused him. Most of the time he spent on the bed, sleeping or resting, not saying a word. His shell was alive. I wasn't too sure if the rest of him had survived too ...