café » l.s ✔

xvii

When Louis woke up, he didn't know anything. He couldn't figure out how long he slept, or where he was or why he was all wired up in an uncomfortable bed.

He did know, though, that the room he was in was completely white. The walls were white and the bed sheets he was laying on and even the paintings up on the wall were white. For a second there, he could've swore he was in heaven.

But the beeping of a monitor and a pair of red eyes looming over him hinted otherwise.

"Hey, you..." The person said, and even though Louis' eyes weren't fully open and he still wasn't fully aware of his surroundings, even in his sleep, he could figure out it was Harry. But his voice was different from his usual happy tone. This one was grim, and quiet and sort of sounded like how it did when Harry first found out.

"Harry..." Louis tried to sit up but before he could even lift his hand up, Harry was pushing him back down gently onto the bed.

"Don't strain yourself, love." He whispered hoarsely, as if he had been crying for hours.

"Where am I-"

"Ah, good. You're awake." A man walked into the room and it was when Louis saw his white coat—Why did everything have to match?—and the clipboard he was holding in his hand that Louis finally realized he was in a hospital.

But why?

"Can someone tell me what I'm doing here?" He asked, a little bit irritated that no one wanted to fill him in on anything.

"Well, Mr. Tomlinson. You had collapsed a few hours ago due to extreme malnutrition and, uh, we did some tests and we found out that you are lacking vitamins, and other minerals. Your esophagus is also ruptured." He hummed and nodded towards his clipboard as he wrote some things Louis didn't know onto it. "Do you, perhaps, know why, Mr. Tomlinson?" The doctor, whose name was written too small on his tag for Louis to read, asked. There was so much information he had to take in in that one very sentence, Louis blinked.

He was in the hospital. Because he fainted. Now the doctors know.

This was the one thing Louis tried to avoid because it was one thing Harry knowing but having his doctors know and potentially taking him into rehab or some bullcrap that he wouldn't agree with, that was a whole different thing.

Instead of answering the question, Louis looked at Harry who was looking back at him then squinted his eyes shut. "Y-you can't keep me in here against my will." He said, all of sudden feeling really sick and light headed.

"We have the right to keep you in here for three days if you're in danger of hurting yourself." The doctor replied, from the way his knuckles turned white, Louis could tell he was holding his clipboard tightly.

"I'm not hurting myself, you don't know shit about me." Louis snapped, hearing Harry whisper his name to tell him to calm down. "I'm not going to calm down! If I want to leave, you can't force me to stay. I don't want to stay. There's nothing wrong with me!"

"The tests prove otherwise."

"This is complete bull-" Louis was cut off by the screeching of Harry's chair as he pushed it back onto the white tiles and stood up.

"Could I talk to you for a second, doctor?" He asked, rubbing his tired eyes and following the doctor out of the room.

"Don't you dare tell him, Harry." He told the boy as he walked out, Harry just giving him a soft look in return before he closed the door. How did things get so complicated all of a sudden?

*

What felt like an eternity for Louis which actually turned out to be fifteen minutes, Harry walked back into the room, rasping out a 'hi' that Louis didn't return.