The show must go on

Chapter 35 - I'm still here

I am allowed to ride in the ambulance, but when I arrive at the hospital, I am promptly thrown out of the treatment room and told to sit in the waiting area.

After half an hour, the others finally arrive.

"This fucking traffic in London," Leigh gets loudly upset before plopping down next to me. "Do we know anything yet?"

"They sent me away without saying a word," I explain. "So no."

And that's how it stays. It was dark when she was brought in, but by now it must be deep at night and we're still sitting here with no information whatsoever. Jesy can barely handle the silence. Several times she has gone to the nurse at reception and complained loudly that no one is talking to us.

"It's boxing day, a lot has happened," was her answer each time. I think next to Christmas and New Year's Eve, most accidents happen on boxing day, it explains why we have to wait so long. But it doesn't make it any easier. We've all been sitting here for hours without knowing what's going on, how she's doing, where she even is or what they're doing to her right now. My eyes keep falling shut, but I'm too afraid to let the tiredness win. But I am not alone with this. There are four other people around me, unable to sit still and close their eyes for worry and fear, even though they also appear to be in desperate need of sleep. We have not spoken a single word since we sat here. How could you put the situation into words? What could you even say?

It is almost a miracle for me when someone finally approaches us.

"Perrie Edwards?" he asks into the waiting area and, puzzled, I first look at the others, who share my expression, before I go to him.

"That's me," I say meekly, wondering to myself how this doctor I don't know knows my name. Has Jade been able to tell him? Is she awake? But when the doctor who has largely looked after Jade during her radiation here in this hospital appears, it becomes clearer to me and hope fades even more when I see his serious face.

"Miss Edwards," he greets me with a thin smile, which I cannot return at that moment, the worry too present, the fear of his news too big.

"What happened to her?", I ask quickly.

"I'm afraid she has pneumonia," he explains tersely and I can't help wondering. She's had it before and had a completely different reaction. Back then she couldn't breathe, coughed up blood, coughed in general. She was fine today, wasn't she? She was tired, but how could I not notice something like pneumonia?

"She didn't even cough," I think aloud and to my surprise both doctors in front of me nod.

"Sometimes certain symptoms only set in as the disease progresses. But her body was already so stressed and battered by the cancer treatment that the first germs she came into contact with were enough to cause such a reaction. In such cases, the body usually reacts with fever."

Was she warm? Were her lips warm when I kissed her this morning? I hate myself for not even remembering.

"We suspect she fainted because of the high fever," he continues.