The Long Run (BoyxBoy-teacher/student) *Completed*

Chapter 18

Right now we’re sitting in the waiting area outside the emergency room where Drew’s being kept. It’s been 2 hours since I’d talked to Mr Phillips, two hours since we’d left, two hours we’d been sitting here.

His parents were sitting opposite us, dark circles were under their eyes and I bet I looked no better. Anika, Drew’s younger sister, was curled up on two chairs beside her parents. Unlike everyone around her she didn’t have a good idea of what was happening.

Not once in that two hours has anyone bothered to inform us about Drew’s health or if he’s okay or not. No one could muster the will to speak, only listen to the medical team talking on the other side of the door. Although we couldn’t hear exact words it felt good to know that they weren’t yelling or calling anything a code red.

~

It was exactly 1:36 in the morning when a doctor emerged from the room, he held his head low and looked at us with regret. Before he even reaches us I hear Floyds tears erupt. He’d been on a roller-coaster ever since we got here. One minute he’d be fine and the next he’d be crying his heart out.

Hearing him now, seeing that pain that he felt hurt. I could feel it too. The pain of your brother dying, to me he was more than a friend. Both him and Floyd were, they were my family. As the doctor explained that the operation didn’t succeed Drew’s parents embraced each other while they cried.

Dead.

It was a word the doctor used so effortlessly, as if he used it every day. Heck, he probably did. But I shut down when he said it. The word seemed to make everything seem that little bit more real. Drew was dead.

My body shook and I don’t register the weight of Owens arm over my shoulder. I don’t register Kate’s words of sorrow. I don’t register anything. The floor beneath my feet doesn’t seem to matter anymore. I may as well be dead.

You should be the one dead. Something whispers in the back of my head.

It was true. I should be the one in that bed, covered in a black sheet. It should be me with the bullet in my chest. If only the world didn’t thrive on my pain and torture. Haven’t I been through enough already?

I don’t believe in a God but right now I could picture the big man up there laughing at me, laughing at another day I have to live my pathetic life.

It’s only when Floyd goes running from the room that everything seems to flick into me like a rubber band. Nico gets up to follow him but I reach my hand out and stop him.

“I’ll talk to him.” He seems to understand without any more explaining and quietly I stand up and leave the room the way Floyd went.

I find him outside sitting on the hospitals back steps. Behind the hospital is an old parking lot that no one uses anymore, trees have begun to take back the land and roots are reaching through the cracks in the cement.

Silently I take a seat next to him and listen to the cars on the road and the wildlife around us. Two completely different sounds that seem to mix together and make something soothing.

I know there isn’t any words I can say to make him feel better so instead I place a hand on his back as he bends over and weeps into his palms.

“We were meant to have forever.” His muffled voice cries.

 “What do you mean?”

He looks me in the eye for a second before turning away. “We were going to tell you but we didn’t know when the right time was.” Floyd says, “We were together. For about a year. We were going to tell you but then your accident happened and we didn’t see it as the most important thing.”