Damien's POV
There was a faint beeping sound ringing in my ear. Some parts of my body ached while the rest felt strangely numb. I could hear quiet voices whispering around me. They sounded extremely similar to what my own family sounded like. I forced my eyes open, wincing in pain as a sensation of stinging erupted across my entire face. It took me a few full minutes before I could move my head side to look around the room I was in. It was a hospital room, a small one at that, with most of my family members crammed inside of it. There were both of my parents, Connor, and all of my cousins. Oh yeah, they always visited during the winter holidays. I guess that they arrived after I got rushed here. The entire group were all talking to one another, not even realising that I had woken up. The only person that probably knew was Connor, who was sitting on a small, plastic chair next to the bed, staring up at me with watery, terror-filled eyes. I dreaded to know how long he had been worrying about me for. Judging by the state that he was in, he didn't have a good night's sleep; And it also must have been early in the morning, as well. His hair was sticking up all over the place, his face was pale, and he was still wearing his pyjamas. They consisted of a long-sleeved, dark purple shirt, bright pink pants with purple spots covering them, and slipper-boots that looked like a cross between an owl and a penguin. On the recent pyjama day that his school had, he was faced with constant ridicule due to them being 'girl's clothes'. I still found it annoying that society gendered pieces of material.
I weakly smiled at him before staring straight up at the wall again, trying to remember what happened, and what else had happened while I was asleep. The last thing I remembered is laying on a stretcher bed inside of an ambulance, staring up at Hunter and saying something to him. I do know that, before I was in the ambulance, I was in a crap-load of pain while playing one of my Dad's video games. What the hell happened to me? My memory seems like shattered glass. I could pick and piece together some pieces, but others seemed to be lost forever. I closed my eyes, trying my best to remember. I had to remember something about what happened after I started to feel the pain. Surely I just didn't black out and end up in an ambulance, right? I could ask Connor if he knew what happened; Something was telling me that he knew. I opened my eyes, rolled my head over to the side of the bed that he was sitting on, and made eye contact with him. Tears were dripping lifelessly down each of his cheeks, before slipping down his chin and leaving little, tear stains on his pants. I slowly removed my left arm from the sheets, gritting my teeth as pain spread through it. God, what the hell did I do to myself? Did I break my freaking arm? No, wait...That's impossible. If I broke a bone, it would be in some sort of splint right now. Ugh, I must've done something to it though. I eventually got my arm to rest against its elbow, before lowering my forearm and running my hand through Connor's hair. He got closer to me, resting his head against my mattress. I smiled. It had felt like forever since I last held him close to me like that.
The curtain that covered my hospital 'room' from the rest of the ward that I was on suddenly opened, and Hunter, out of all people, walked in. I instantly looked over at him, my smile growing bigger. For some reason I felt closer to him. He stared back at me, causing everybody else to have the same reaction. My parents instantly ran over to me, hugging and holding me close, while my cousins jumped up onto my bed, crushing my already pain-ridden legs. I cried out, tears coming to my eyes. My cousins yelled out apologies as they leaped off from the bed, and ran over towards the right corner of the room. My parents took a few steps back, staring at me up and down. Connor stayed in the exact same place, gripping to my arm tightly, as if somebody was about to drag him away at any given moment. I contained to rub his hair, looking at all the people in the room, wondering what they were thinking. Hunter was still standing in the exact same spot he stood when he came in. His dark green eyes stared right at me, seemingly being the only source of life within his body. I let my other arm escape from the madness of the tight, thin, hospital sheets, and held out my hand. He stumbled forward, fell down into the chair that was opposite Connor's, and gripped my hand tightly. Tears rose up in his eyes, and rolled down his face seconds later. Why was everybody so emotional? Did I almost die or something? All I remember is passing out along with a weird, achy pain in my chest and numbness in my limbs. Surely I couldn't have been close to death, right? Right? I guess the only way to find out was to ask exactly what happened.
I opened my mouth to speak. No words came out. Could I not speak? What was going on? I tried speaking out again, only managing to create a quiet whisper that was hardly audible. I stopped stroking Connor's head to place my hand over my mouth in an attempt to try and see if I could even breath through my mouth. Shockingly, I felt something cold and hard covering the area where my nose and mouth were. Did I have an oxygen mask on? Why did I have an oxygen mask on? I felt around for the straps, wanting to rip this thing off so that I could commuinicate again. I found the strap, slipped my fingers behind it, and pulled it downwards. The rough edges of the plastic mask dug into my face as I ripped it off. The moment it was off from my face, and was resting against my neck, breathing became a lot harder. What the hell had happened to my lungs? Why weren't they working properly? I despretely took a deep breath of the icy, antiseptic air that surronded me in, making my lungs yell out in agonising pain. They felt sore, as if I had just run twenty marathons or something. I breathed out, waited a second, and took another deep breath in.
"Are you alright, Damien? Come on, you need to get that mask back on. The doctors put it on you for a reason, you know!" My Mom complained, grabbing it and trying to slip it back into its original position. I wanted to escape, yet my body hurt so much that I could hardly move. The only thing that I could do is roll my head to one side, only to end up facing her again when my Dad put his hands on either side of my face. It didn't take long until the mask was back onto my face, forbidding me from talking all over again. "Anyway, can you write down what you were trying to say?" She handed me a pencil and a small, pocket sized notepad. How the heck was I meant to write when I couldn't even sit up, as well as control my fingers properly. Sure, I could stroke Connor's hair, yet I couldn't move each individual finger. It was horrible. I shook my head, turning away from the small set of staionary equitment. "Do you wanna sit up?" I nodded, waiting to see how they would make me sit up. My Dad picked up a small, pastel yellow remote and pressed a button on it, causing the top half of my bed to rise upwards. When I was almost at a perfect ninety-degree angle, he lifted his fingers off form the button, placed it back on the table that was at the end of my bed, and handed the notepad and pencil. I had no other choice but to ask what I wanted to say. I rested the notepad on my thigh, gripped the pencil in a uncomfortable fist, and attempted to write. Due to my entire forearm aching from pain, as well as my fingers being numb, I would be genuinely shocked if they would be able to read a single word.
When I had finished 'writing' my question, I set the pencil down, before looking at what I had wrote. Each single word was a difference size, others were in capitals, some of them in lower case, and some letters weren't even in the correct words. I was starting to get the feeling that, somehow, my brain somehow got damaged alongside...well, whatever else happened to me. God, I just wanted to find out what happened. My Dad walked back over to me, ruffled Connor's hair, before picking up the notepad and reading it. After studying it for a few minutes, he nodded to seemingly himself, and slipped it into the back pocket of his pants. He mumbled something to Connor, causing him to stand up, let our Dad take his seat, before crawling up and sitting back onto his lap again. Was my Dad somehow able to read what I wrote? How in the world was that possible? He ran his fingers through my hair, pulling out all of the knots and tangles that were within it. How long had I been out for to cause for so many tangles to happen? The last time my hair was this knotted was when I went to Summer camp for a week, and I happened to forget my hairbrush. I also didn't use the restroom for the entire week, resulting in a horrible bladder infection and a blocked bowel, which I had to get operated on...Needless to say I never went back to any types of camps again.
"Damien?" My Dad leaned slightly closer towards me. "Can't you remember what happened? Can you remember anything that happened? Anything at all?" Of course, I could remember some details, but I couldn't say any of them due to my mask seemingly stopping me from making any noises whatsoever. I shook my head, a small pit of anger being formed inside of me. I knew some details yet all of them weren't important! I wanted to know what happened to me! I wanted to know why I couldn't breath! I wanted to know why half my body was numb and half of it was aching like mad. I wanted to know! I wanted to know so freaking badly! "Well...You were playing the game I just made, which was a horror game, and after the first jumpscare, you started to look extremely pale, sick, and you started to wheeze, as if you couldn't breath. After a while, you vomited like crazy, fainted, and hit your head pretty hard against the floor in my study room. Hunter mentioned that you were having a heart attack, so your Mom kinda freaked out and called an ambulance." He paused for a second to glance over at Hunter, who was starting to look like he was going to faint at any second, before speaking again. "When you were in the ambulance, the paramedics ran some quick tests and found out that Hunter was, well, right. Turns out, two of your artiries somehow collasped, and that somehow caused both of your lungs to almost stopped working. Blood flow to your brain also stopped, so that's probably why you feel like death. Hopefully it won't last for too long, though." The anger got replaced with fear. I had a heart attack? How the hell could I have a heart attack? Wasn't my heart perfectly healthy? "Turns out, you have a condition called Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy...It's basically when your heart muscles are bigger than usual, and your artiries are smaller than usual. Luckily your not so badly affected...They thought you...you were going to pass." He stared down at Connor for a few seconds, rubbing his eyes. He then lifted Connor off from his lap, and made his way out of the room. Was...Was he crying?
"You're lucky you're not dead, Damien." Hunter whispered. He lifted himself up onto the bed, so that he was sitting on the edge of it. "Did you mean what you said in the ambulance? You do remember what you said in the ambulance, right?" I shrugged. I knew that we talked about something, but I couldn't remember exactly what.
"You said you LOVED him!" Austin, my youngest cousin, blurted out. Something clicked within my brain. I remembered the last sentence that I said to Hunter. 'I love you'. That was probably way I felt more connected to him. That was why I suddenly felt why I felt so more strongly connected to him! We...I guess that we were, techinally, dating now. I looked back at him, watching as his face turned a bright shade of red. "Oooh! You two are d-a-t-i-n-g!" I grabbed the pillow from behind my head, put it over my face, and tried to block out his taunting. Although I was used to it by now, I couldn't help but be embarrssed. I guess I was also kinda scared at how my parents would react. I didn't know if they were homophobic or not. I heard my Mom talking to, I presume, Austin, before lifting the pillow off from my face and pulling me into a hug. For some reason I started to...cry. I couldn't really make any noises, but enough tears spontanolsey flew out of my eyes to create mutiple oceans, with enough water left over to form a river. I opened my eyes, only seeing the pale green fabric of the shirt that she was wearing, as well as Hunter in the corner of my vision. I couldn't hear my cousins in the slightest, so they had probably left the room when my Mom, most likely, yelled at them. My Mom eventually pulled away, gave me a box of tissues, before mentioning that they had to go to the other side of the hospital for Connor's annual checkup. Oh yeah, he also got a checkup around the time that my cousins came down. It mainly consisted of brain scans, ultrasounds around the area that his bladder was, as well as a intense, four hour conversation with a doctor to talk about his anxiety and autism. The only reason I knew that it was intense was because I went to watch one of these 'talks' once. It was basically like an innterrogation, minus the handcuffs and policeofficers.
When both my Mom and Connor walked past the curtain, leaving just me and Hunter by ourselves, he sat on the small, single bed and wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I could feel my chest become warm. Not from the side affects of my heart attack...But from happiness. I felt so safe within his grasp. I guess this really did mean that we were dating now. Wait, was that the reason why he was aksing me if he was gay the other day? Was it really because he had a crush on me? Well, of course it was! Why else would he ask! Did that mean I was gay, then? I knew that I had crushes on girls before, and now I was in love with a boy, but bisexual didn't feel right to be. Besides, I wasn't sure if I felt even a inch of sexual attraction for, well, anybody. If anything, I was replused by the idea of having sex. So the 'sexual' in 'bisexual' definetely didn't make me feel comfortable. Ugh, I wished I had my phone on me right now, then I could go onto Google or something and look up the definitions of the hundereds of orentations that were out there. Then again, the last time I attempted to use the internet here, it took twenty whole minutes to load freaking Google, so even if I did have my phone, it probably wouldn't work.
"So...Do you love me, then?" I nodded, lifting my head up at him. Despite him being assigned as a female at birth, he was still way taller than me. "Do you?" I nodded, lifting my head up higher so that our faces were closer to one another. I was about to take off my mask, so that I could speak to him, when he already asked what was on my mind. "Do you wanna...kiss?" I nodded, lifting up my arms and taking off my mask. It was a little bit easier to breath than it was before, yet there was still a hint of struggle within my body. Our lips met and, even though we were only locking lips for a few seconds, it felt amazing. It felt so amazing.
Connor's POV
I hated this place. Hospitals in general were fine, but this ward was...it had a scary vibe to it. You could see past the doctors smiles and laughter. You could tell when they were annoyed with you. I hated it. It was even worse when I had to come here from my so called 'thearpy' sessions. The normal check-ups that I had to get done were fine, but...but my therapy sessions were bad. I hated them. Damien said that the place in which I had my therapy sessions were 'like interrogation rooms minus the handcuffs and police officers'. He was right. For four, long, horrible, agonising hours, I was forced to sit down in an uncomfortable chair and talk to somebody that I didn't even know. I didn't wanna talk. The only times I did talk, I either made no sense, said something that didn't add to the conversation whatsoever, or was just plain wrong...I never talked during these sessions. I never did. I did speak once, and the doctor went on a ramble about what I was saying was utterly wrong. I never talked to hardly anybody ever again. I could only trust Damien. I only seemed to make sense around Damien. He was the only one that was actually nice to me if I did mess up as well...My name was called, making me flinch. I still kept staring at the ground, ignoring the sound of the 'kind nurse' who was trying to talk to me. Maybe, if I ignored her, then I wouldn't have to spend four hours with her. She said my name again, pressing her hand against my leg. Her hand felt rough against my pants, making me flinch again. Her hand was still on me. I could feel her nails digging into my skin. It felt like knifes.
I grabbed the nearby chairs and started to drag myself away from her, tears starting to stream down the side of my face. I wanted Damien so badly. He would know what to do. He always knew. I could sense the Nurse coming closer towards me again, ready to capture me and put me into that freaking room! My tears started to roll down my face faster, as I started to mentally beg for Damien to come and save me. I didn't want to be trapped with this person. I didn't want to be trapped with her! I felt her hands wrap around my wrists. It hurt. It hurt so bad. My entire body shook with fear. I didn't want to be trapped with her! I had to escape! I HAD too! I somehow managed to break free of her grasp, wipe the tears from my eyes, and as soon as I had clear vision again I immidetley noticed the evil look in her pastel brown eyes. If I didn't get away now, then I would never get away. I rolled off the chairs that I was on, landing in heap on the floor, causing a weird cracking sound to erupt from my shoulder, along with a bunch of a pain. I knew that I had done some kind of damage to it. Still, I couldn't stop that from me escaping. If I paused now, then I would be trapped. I scrambled up to my feet, and started to try and find the exit. As soon as I started to run, the nurse grabbed me from underneath my armpits and lifted me into the air. No! She had caught me...There was only one thing that I could do left now, and I knew that I was going to mess it up...
"Damien!" My voice was barely a whisper, yet the Nurse still heard it. I could hear a loud sigh come out from her mouth. No...I messed up. I knew that I would mess up! My shaking started to become even worse. I flailed my legs. My ankles bashed against each other painfully, making me want to scream out. I didn't want to talk...I didn't want to talk, let alone scream."Damien...Please." I thrashed around in the monsters arms, praying that somebody would come to save me. After what seemed like years, the nurse put me back down on the waiting room chairs. I wasn't going to be able to escape, though. She was gripping firmly onto my shoulders, and the look on her face was enough to make anybody cry. I only felt even sicker, and my body only shook even more.
"Don't move, Connor." Her voice send shivers down my spine. I stared down at my lap and started to cry, despretely trying to remain silent. I didn't want to talk to a single person. "Connor. Stop crying." That only made me cry harder. "Connor!" I held my breath, wiped my eyes, and waited until she left. I wanted to escape so badly...This was hell.