The past ten minutes have been a complete blur.
After grabbing a taxi at the edge of town, I am finally at the hospital. What surprises me is my reluctance to actually enter the All Saints Hospital; though really it should be no surprise. The last time I was anywhere near a hospital was when my heart was broken and I don’t want to enter again and leave with that happening again. I’ve barley managed to fix my heart back from my dad. However, the worry for whatever is wrong with Cole outweighs my anxiety, so I force myself through the revolving doors and ask the receptionist immediately where Cole is at the front desk.
After finding out where Cole is, I run up the stairs I trembled down two months ago, desperately searching for the floor and room Cole is on with only one thought running through my head.
Please be alive.
I find the floor and ward that Cole is on and find the room number he is in too. I open the doors cautiously to the room and relief washes over me as see my boyfriend lying on a hospital bed, connected to several machines beside his bed and several lines rammed into his hand.
Thank goodness he is alive.
I completely panicked on the way over, practically having a heart attack thinking something fatal had happened, but to know he is alive and in front of me, that makes me feel so, so much better. The feeling of knowing he is okay is indescribable. I am beyond relieved.
He looks at me and then he immediately glares at his mum, knowing she told me. Did he really think he could keep this from me?
‘What’s wrong, Cole?’ I ask frantically, rushing over to his side and I notice that he has very little colour to his face like he did this morning. I knew I was right. I knew something was off with him.
‘I’m okay,’ he tells me, forcing a smile and taking my hand gently in his. 'Don't worry.'
I look to Willa and she looks furious. She looks like she’s aged ten years with worry etched across her face. ‘You are not okay, young man. You know you’re supposed to take those drugs religiously to stop your body rejecting your heart. How could you be so selfish and foolish, Cole?!’ She asks him harshly.
I’m confused. I look to Cole to explain himself and he sighs, looking away from me before saying, ‘I didn’t bring enough of my pills for the weekend. I thought I had enough, but I miscounted and ran out on Saturday.’
My heart sinks realising what he went through when his body was slowly telling him he was not well. I replay several moments over the weekend, all while his body was slowly worsening on him. How could I not have known about his pills?
‘Cole! You idiot! Why didn’t you tell me? You stayed at the wedding knowing full well you needed to take your pills? Oh my God, Cole, how could you?’ I hiss at him.
Cole raises an eyebrow at me and admits breezily, ‘It was important for you to go to that wedding. I was hardly going to turn around on Friday evening; it took a lot of effort to get you there and I wouldn’t change anything.’
‘But you could have died,’ Willa buts in, with tears now streaming from her eyes and I feel really bad for her. She looks like she's going through hell being back in a hospital again. ‘Why would you be so selfish, Cole? You knew you didn’t have enough and you didn’t even bother to get them or even call me to bring them to you. They are keeping you alive, Cole. They’re not sweets you can pick and choose when you take them. They are keeping you alive.’ She fumes, grasping at her red hair and swiping her tears away.
‘Some things are more important than me, Mum,’ he answers her calmly. He looks at me and leans up, wanting me to kiss him.
But I don’t let him. Instead, I push him back and all I manage to tell him is, ‘You are a complete idiot, Cole.’
He huffs and leans back in the hospital bed. While I cannot express how delighted I am that he is still here, still able to talk to me and while all I want to truly do is make out with the guy, I am angry at him for letting himself get poorly and I know underneath this all, Cole could have had a much more serious outcome. At that moment, the doctor walks in and Cole’s face drains when he sees her. I empathise with him. I think doctors are the scariest people in the world. They have the potential to break your heart, ruin your life, and yet it’s not their fault. They just deliver the bad news. The doctor looks at me and Cole says, ‘Hope’s my girlfriend.’
‘Nice to meet you, Hope, I’m Dr. Milton. So Cole, we’re monitoring your heart and we can tell it’s trying to reject it now due to you not taking your immunosuppressive drugs. We’re upping your dosage and I will need you to stay in here for a week minimum as we’ve got to fight the rejection caused by the lack of drugs and the infection you’ve picked up because you didn’t take your drugs before we deem it safe enough for you to leave hospital.’
‘Basically a lose-lose situation then,’ Cole quips, placing his hands in his lap.
‘Which you brought on yourself,’ Willa chastises, nudging her son angrily.
Dr. Milton continues to explain what the next few days ahead will bring. Cole seems to have zoned out as his doctor elaborates on what drugs he will be receiving and the different tests he will have to undergo. What is important is that anyone who comes to visit Cole does not have anything that could make Cole worse than he has become. After finishing, Dr. Milton leaves with Willa, who wants to ask a few more questions.
Once the room is empty, with just Cole and me, I shake my head slowly at him. ‘What on earth were you thinking?’
Cole rolls his eyes and says a hell of a lot calmer than me, ‘That being there for you at your mum’s wedding would be more important.’
‘More important than your health? Than your life? That is ridiculous! You are more important, Cole,’ I exclaim, feeling my heart beat furiously. I recapture my breath and exhale deeply as I say, ‘You worried me so much. All this morning I thought you had cold feet about me and knew something was up, but you didn’t bother to tell me? Why didn’t you tell me? You could have told me that you needed your pills. We could have gone back and got them, but instead you’ve risked so much, Cole.’
‘It was my own choice and I wanted to make the weekend special for you, and I don’t regret not telling you,’ he shrugs, taking a sip of his water beside his clinical hospital bed. A shiver runs up my spine as I think of why I was last here; the same white walls, the same view, the same smell. It all feels eerily similar to when my dad was here, and it sends chills through my body.
‘You’re in hospital because of that,’ I snap at him. ‘I feel so to blame, Cole.’
I bite down on my bottom lip hard. Panic, however, sets across Cole’s face and he grabs my hand, begging, ‘Please don’t blame yourself, babe. I didn’t think I’d react like this. It was my own fault.’
‘Are you going to be okay?’ I ask desperately, searching his eyes for a truthful answer. I need to know. I need him to be honest with me.
‘Hope so,’ he tells me with a smile.
That was not the answer I was waiting for. ‘You hope?’
‘Yeah, I hope. Is that alright?’
‘I’d rather you knew,’ I mutter, stroking my fingers across his knuckles.
‘No one knows in life. It’s better to hope and be optimistic, than to imagine the worst.’
Gently, I rub my fingertips across the needles in his hand and pout. I know Cole is in more pain than he is letting on, with all these lines, pills and machines, it’s not going to be a breeze while he is in here. ‘You are so poorly right now, aren’t you?’
He shrugs, clearly that’s a yes. I can see it in his eyes that he’s not his usual self. ‘I’m in the best place I can be to get better; I’m just going to be locked in here for a week like prison.’
Willa walks back in, bearing delicious sandwiches for Cole, and also one for me. I smile appreciatively, but can’t help but feel guilty that her son is back in hospital again and physically so fragile again. If only we didn’t go to the wedding, none of this would have happened. Willa has to leave to pick Jennifer from her friend’s house, but I insist on staying here. In fact, I think I’m going to be here all week until he is safe enough to go home.
Throughout the day, doctors and nurses come in and out of the room, taking blood, escorting him to the toilets and feeding him new lines. Cole doesn’t even flinch now as they prick, poke and prod at his body. I feel like yelling at them to leave my poor boyfriend alone, that he just needs to rest, but what do I know? All the doctors keep talking complete mumbo jumbo to Cole and it means nothing to me. I wish I was clever enough to understand what they were really saying. It would make me feel a lot more included in everything that is happening to him.
‘What does rejection actually mean?’ I ask, referring the word I heard earlier in lieu with his heart.
He looks over at me and yawns as he says, ‘It just means my body doesn’t want the heart yet.’
‘Yet?’
He grins placing his hand almost subconsciously on his heart. ‘Yet. I will. I know my body will get used to it, whatever the doctors say. Just right now, it thinks it’s an infection, which it’s not. Kind of a love hate relationship going on inside my body, but I’ll be okay.’
Something tells me his optimism is shining through, rather than what really is going on.
‘Honestly?’ I try.
‘You won’t get anywhere in life if you don’t hope, Hope. You should listen to your own name.’ He leaves it at that and resumes taking small mouthfuls of his food. The nurses come in and top his medicine up, all of them slowing down deliberately as he’s that lovely to look at and also to be around even being so ill.
‘Visiting times end soon,’ a nurse tells us before finishing with taking some more blood samples from Cole.
‘I can stay, can’t I? I’m his girlfriend,’ I ask her.
‘Hope, you don’t need to stay,’ he cuts in, looking at the nurse to give us a moment. ‘You can come back tomorrow and rest this evening.’
‘But I don’t want to go,’ I murmur, suddenly feeling overwhelmed at the prospect of leaving him. What will happen if I leave him? I don’t like the feeling of not being here for him. It actually hurts my heart thinking about leaving. My eyes begin to well up as I admit, ‘I don’t want to leave you.’
I can see Cole is torn. He doesn’t want me to go either, I know he doesn’t, but he just thinks it’ll be easier on me, but it won’t. I won’t be able to sleep tonight without knowing he’s still living, breathing and talking. I need to know this or else I won’t remain calm. It sounds obsessive, but I imagine its how new parents feel, watching their newborn baby compulsively, checking they’re breathing and alive, because the prospect that anything could go wrong is life shattering.
That makes my decision easy enough. ‘I’m not going,’ I tell him. ’You’re not well and I don’t want to leave you.’
Cole pulls me closer to him on his bed and sits up so we’re face to face. One of his arms loops around my waist as our foreheads press against one another. ‘Hope, for me, go home and get some sleep tonight. I’m going to be in here for a week minimum. You’ve got dancing tomorrow too.’
I snort and shake my head. ‘I am not doing anything this week.’
‘Hope,’ he warns, his facial expression turning serious. ‘I’m going to be okay. Honestly.’
He knows I don’t believe him. He’s not stupid enough to think I would believe his desperate attempts at reassurance. We both know why he has been admitted to hospital is both life threatening and serious, but neither of us will speak aloud the worry we have. I don’t believe him when he says he’s going to be okay because I’ve lost the one man who said he’d always be there for me, but not even my dad could live out his full life. Who is to say that Cole is going to be any different?
‘They just need to watch me this week and get my dosage altered to stop the possibility of rejection and fighting the infections. I’ll be okay and out before you know it. I promise you, Strawbs.’
I don’t say anything for a few moments, before giving in and pressing my lips to his. As I pull away, I cup his head in my hands, I tell him sternly, ‘Please be here for me tomorrow when I come back.’
‘I’m not going to die on you,’ he laughs, but there’s a flash occurring in his eye and it tugs at my heart.
‘Please, Flash,’ I whisper even more unsurely.
‘I won’t, Strawbs. I won’t.’ He leans up, moving the wires and lines aside and kisses me deeply, slipping his tongue into my mouth and nipping at my bottom lip. Sighing, I rest my forehead against his. ‘You are such an idiot not taking your pills.’
‘Yeah yeah,’ he waves his hand dismissively, probably bored with so many people telling him the same thing. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Hope.’
‘I’m calling you when I get home,’ I comment as I walk out of the room.
‘Looking forward to it,’ I hear him respond, before I wave goodbye from outside the hospital door and head straight out of the hospital, knowing that if I dawdle, I will not be moved and would stay here all night, waiting until I could see him again.
On my way home, each foot step feels a little heavier, my heartbeat a little more erratic and my body is feeling a lot weaker. After an unpredictable weekend with the wedding, the last thing I needed was to start my week off with Cole being in hospital.
As I cross the road, I look up to the sky and make a silent wish my dad is looking down on Cole. ‘Please let your heart be okay, dad, I don’t want to lose Cole. I really, really don’t know what I’d do without him,’ I whisper northwards, before turning right and following the winding roads all the way back home.
A/N-Cole's aliveeeeeee :D but still pretty poorly :( though I'm glad you all love him as much as I do. Please do let me know what you think of this chapter :)