Give Me Love (Muke)

This House Is Falling Apart

They’re all curled together in the corner of the second floor waiting room, in closer proximity than they’ve been for a while and yet divided, boarded on different trains of thought. They need to be close, need that comfort and contact to remind them to come back to earth now and then, but they’re in pieces, scattered by the day’s events. Barely the afternoon, and they’re spiraling.

It’s a relief when a nurse appears and asks in the nearly empty waiting room if she could see whoever’s there for Michael Clifford. They snap out of their haze and sit up as a unit, identifying themselves as friends only.

“Is there a family member present or on the way?” the nurse asks. They all look at each other questioningly and Ashton shakes his head.

“No, it’s just us.”

“Is there someone we can call?” she asks.

“His aunt and uncle, but they live in Perth, and we don’t know how to contact them.”

“We’ll do what we can about that,” she says, and pulls up a chair to sit in front of them. “Let’s lay things out, shall we? Your friend was admitted for an overdose of fluoxetine, known more commonly as Prozac, which is an antidepressant drug. Were you aware he was taking medication?”

“No,” Ashton and Calum say, brows wrinkling, at the same time Luke answers affirmatively.

“He told me he wasn’t depressed, though,” Luke says frantically, wanting to deny that he knew. Knowing of the medication’s existence somehow implicates him, places the blame on him. He was the only one who could have even guessed.

“He may not be,” the nurse says, trying to calm him slightly. “Prozac is an antidepressant, but it can be used for other reasons. Since it’s a prescription drug, we can’t say for sure if he was trying to overdose, or if it was an accident. It’s possible he didn’t mean to overdose. These things happen. It’s also possible it was intentional. We’re drawing up information on his prescription based on the bottle we found.”

“Is he gonna be okay?”

“We’re pumping his stomach to get rid of the drugs, and we’ll be monitoring the toxin levels in his blood. We also need to figure out if it was a suicide attempt or not, which would complicate things further. It’s hard to say right now.”

“When can we see him?” Ashton inquires hopefully.

“He has to come out of the emergency care and then we have to run tests and make sure everything’s working okay, and even then he may still be unconscious. It’s hard to say. It might be a few days before he’s even awake.”

“Days,” Calum breathes, slumping. “Oh.”

“Let’s focus on the here and now. Typically, procedure is to only allow family members to visit, but if he wakes up and there are still none present, we’ll talk about exceptions then. Any questions?”

They’re silent, trying to figure out how they should feel. “I recommend you boys go home for now and leave a phone number, and we can try to call if anything happens.”

“Wait,” Luke says, grasping at her arm as she stands to go. “He’ll be okay, right? For sure?”

“Nothing’s for sure,” she says, “but we’ll do everything we can. I can promise that.”

---

“Stop pacing, Luke, I swear to God,” Ashton says, bordering on sharp. “Seriously, stop. You’re making my head hurt.”

Luke knows Ashton never gets snappy unless he’s upset, so he lets it slide with a dirty look.

Luke’s been on edge. The nurse said Michael would be fine, but she also said a lot of other things like organ damage, and so until he sees Michael, he won’t be convinced he’s anything close to fine.