It was 8 pm, right after dinner...

LVIII

"Is Eddy going to pay you a visit?", Josh, Brett's hospital roommate asked with a soft smile.

The clock was almost hitting 4 p.m. and Brett had been asking himself the same question for the last six hours or so. He still hadn't had any luck with reaching Eddy or anyone who'd seen or heard from him and was pretty positive by now, that either something really tragic had happened or he had taken the opportunity to walk out of Brett's life forever.
Both scenarios seemed pretty legit in Brett's anxiety ridden brain by now.

"I don't know. He might be too busy...", Brett answered weakly. He felt so tired, yet he'd hardly slept because of obvious reasons.
"I'm sure he'll show up. He seems to me like someone who'd come no matter what."
Brett wasn't sure of anything anymore, but he nodded out of the little politeness he'd miraculously found somewhere deep in his repertoire of social skills.

4 p.m. rolled around and the first visitor in their shared room were Josh's wife and daughter. His daughter squealed upon seeing Brett, hugged him tight with her dad's loud protests in the background and demanded an autograph and a selfie. An autograph was quickly arranged, but Brett said no to the picture. He was usually quite a laid back guy, but there were limits concerning a fanshot and one of them was laying on a fucking hospital bed in a fucking gown. She understood and finally got tamed by her very apologetic and clearly embarrassed parents.

As soon as the distraction passed, his nail-biting waiting proceeded. There was still no message from Eddy saying he'd come or not and his phone was about to die down soon. Brett tried to just relax and wait, but he wasn't successful with the relaxing part whatsover.

5 p.m. came and went by and so did another dreadful hour. Brett mentally shut down completely and had put on his most deadpan face in years, trying to block out his surroundings. What happened to "I really don't want to leave you alone here." and "I'll bring it tomorrow.", whatever item Brett would demand? Very obviously, those had all been lies or Eddy was injured or dead somewhere and there was nothing Brett could do. He cursed his God damn sickness, causing all of this and making Eddy suffer with him to an extend where the other might have found quitting was the only way to cope with this situation and had just done exactly that.

Even Josh had gotten quiet, noticing Brett's bare, cold panic and drew the curtains to give him some privacy.

And Brett was about to give up on life itself (very dramatic, but he had no idea, what he was going to do without Eddy), when the door to their room burst open and finally, finally a masked, out of breath and disheveled looking Eddy stormed to Brett's bedside.

"Oh my God! Brett! I'm so sorry!", he panted with both hands leaning on his knees.

Brett stared at him with wide eyes, not sure if he was dreaming or not.

"I'm so sorry!", Eddy said again and propped a hand on Brett's bed, "I went straight to your Gastroenterologist, Dr. Han, yesterday to make sure she got the pictures and see, if she'd analyze them straight away. I stayed till late and got there again this morning and guess what? I forgot my phone at home." He shook his head and took a deep breath for the next wave of explanations. "And she had patients, of course, and had to look over the scans in between, so I had to wait forever until she called me in. First she didn't want to, said something about privacy policies and shit and told me to go home, but I persuaded her to give me just a short summary. And guess what?"

Brett still just blankly stared at Eddy, like he was some sort of angel appearing out of thin air.

"She said it's NOT Crohn's disease! It's nothing life threatening and with the right treatment, we can get rid of it pretty soon!" Eddy's expression was radiant, despite his sweaty forehead and the dark circles under his eyes.