Touch Me

Assiduous

A loud, flat beeping startled me, forcing my attention to my left, where the noise was coming from. A monitor. A monitor with a flat, ongoing line. I looked to my right, to find Kevin. Kevin, laying motionless, his skin pale, his hands cold.

"...Kevin?" My heart dropped, beating faster than I had ever thought possible.

My eyes darted around the room in severe perturbation. I couldn't breathe.

Doctors rushed in, crowding around him. I couldn't even see him. I tried desperately to push through them just to catch another glimpse of Kevin. Perhaps my last. I pray to god it's not my last. I don't want it to be my last. It can't be my last. It can't.

A mix of hyperventilation and hysteric sobbing left me panting, and gasping for air. The presumed doctors attempted incessantly to revive him, but he was unresponsive, his heart still failing to beat, his blood still failing to pump. I couldn't even hear them talking over my own cries.

They couldn't hear me either.

"Please! Please help him!" I shouted, relentlessly, to no avail. No matter how loudly I begged them to keep him alive, they couldn't hear me.

Over and over again, my shouts turned to whimpers and screams, imploring that someone just help him.

The only words I heard them speak were incoherent, disappointed sighs, before lifting a sheet over him, pronouncing the time. I couldn't even decipher the time they stated. It all just sounded like gibberish. I looked to the clock, but it was all just blurred dark lines.

"Fucking help him! Please! Please, h-he's just a kid! I can't lose him! Please..." I finally mustered up enough force to push through the crowd of seemingly inferior doctors, ripping the thin white sheet from over him, revealing his pale, almost white face.

"No. No.. No no no no no no.. please, no.." I ripped the sheet even further, exposing the rest of him. His perpetually warm hands, now cold. It's not over. It can't be over. People tried to pry me away from his side, but I just held onto him tighter, hoping, praying for a miracle. The harder they pulled, the tighter I grasped his hand and leg.

In hysterics, tears streaming down my face to no foreseeable end, I dug my face into his chest, my tears quickly soaking spots of his shirt. Somehow I had expected to feel the thump of his heartbeat beneath my cheek, beating like usual. Perhaps feel his chest rise and fall as he breathes. I didn't. It only sent me further into hysteria, my screams near blood-curdling.

"Baby.. please come back! You're not gone, y-you can't be gone! Kevin!" I grabbed his shirt, standing up and facing the doctors.

"You let him die, you bastards! Y-You need to bring him back! Y-You let him leave me! You let him leave his mother! Bring him back! Bring him back!" I hit my fists against their chests, a hollow beating sound as I made the impact. I threw myself back at Kevin, clutching his chest.

I awoke, shouting, slamming my hand to the mattress. What I had come to know as Kevin's side of the bed was cold, nobody there. I lacked any time with Kevin this week, barely any this month, and it was clearly starting to get to me, my inability to check up on him, beginning to worry me.

"Connor, are you okay?" My grandad asked, swinging my door open, thinking that someone had broken in, or perhaps a fire had started.

"..Yeah. I'm sorry."

"It's three in the morning, why're you screaming?"

"I-I had a nightmare. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you.."