room 304 {lashton}

4

Luke sat in the bed switching positions every so often to get comfortable. He was so zoned into writing these lyrics that he even forgot about that he was in the hospital.

"Writing anything good?" Luke looked up from the notebook realizing that Denise was ready to prepare Him for the CAT scan. "I guess you could say that." He let out a soft smile causing Denise to chuckle a bit. "You're going to have to put that book down for a little bit so I can do my job, please."

"Oh so sorry." He let the notebook fall onto his lap, he held his breath as Denise stuck the needle into his forearm. "Alright, relax." She repeated those words, she took her free hand and rubbed Luke's hand to reassure him that everything will be ok.

"All done. I'll be back soon enough. Do not forget to go to the bathroom before the test. You're gonna be in the CAT scan for awhile and you need to be comfortable." Luke nodded and smiled and Denise went on her way.

Luke picked up the notebook again and started writing once-more until someone came bursting in the door in a wheel chair startling him.

Luke paused and his mouth dropped in disbelief as he watched the situation unfolded in front of his eyes.

"Sir, sir, you need to calm down." The man was moaning and yelling out in pain. He couldn't even stay still on the wheel chair.

"Sir, were going to help you were gonna take car of you." The two nurses helped the poor man into the bed next to Luke. And Luke just watched from afar as they restrained this person as they injected him with drugs to relieve his pain.

Thankfully it only took a few moments for the guy to stop panicking and complaining - and Luke got wheeled down to his CAT scan trying to contemplate everything that just occurred.
~
It was around an hour later when he came back into the room, the guy sitting next to him was on his phone and looked and seemed so much better than before.

Luke found himself starring over at him as the guy was texting but he didn't seem bothered.

Luke looked away for a moment and looked down at the blue bracelet and than looked back over at the guy and noticed that he had a blue bracelet as well. It shocked him.

All of a sudden the guy next to him stopped what he was doing and looked over in Luke's direction giving off a friendly smile. His teeth were shiny and his eyes glistened in the white hospital lights. His dirty blonde hair was slicked back with gel - overall he didn't seem as scary as he was before.

"Hi." He finally said to Luke. "Hi." Luke said in return. "I'm Ashton."
"I'm luke." They exchanged smiles and just started to have a conversation. "What are you in for?" Ashton questioned Luke. As much as Luke wanted to lie he felt he couldn't because it wouldn't help his situation that much. "Just making sure that my kidneys aren't failing me you know, aha." Luke asked the same question back to Ashton. "What about you?"
"Well, I used to be a fitness instructor up until about two years ago and than my joints just started getting sore and swollen constantly..turns out I have Rheumatoid Arthritis. It's when your body thinks your soft tissues are foreign and your body attacks them." Lukes eyes widened in concern, he felt real bad. "I'm so sorry about that, Ashton."

"I never want anybody to feel sorry for me. I'm still the same person on the inside." Ashton was right.

"What's your story Luke...?"

"Well uhhh.." luke trailed off with a nervous look upon his face before answering.

-

I thought we had a place, just our place, our home base, my headspace
Was you and I always, but that phase has been phased in our place
I see it on your face, a small trace, a blank slate, we've been erased
But if we're way too faded to drive, you can stay one more night