I MISS THE WORLD CUP AAAAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHHHHH aha enjoy you guuuuise ily
~~~
— robert frost: promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep —
Previously on — bulletprxxf lxve —:
He was not overdose cocaine, liver cancer, liver transplant, alcohol poisoning, coma, an “off” reticular activating system, acute personality disorder, Hepatorenal Syndrome, lightheadedness, suicidal, knee injury, heart attacks, cirrhosis, severe Hepatic Encephalopathy, mouth cancer, pale, chemo or high dose of painkillers.
Yet he was. He was all of these and more. More that the doctor was telling them but they refused to listen. The wanted to keep the little piece of sanity they had left of Niall and tuck it in their pockets where it would remain forever.
Zayn interrupts Dr Jenkins, “Will he be okay?”
“In my opinion, he was the walking dead,” Dr Jenkins concludes. “He was going to die at any moment. But he’s here and therefore he will be treated.”
“What about the coma?” he asks.
“I need to spend more time with him to see his progress in order to give all of you full details of his condition,” responds the Australian doctor. “I urge you to all go back to your hotel and get some rest,” – he turns to look outside where the sun is rising – “it is almost morning.”
The lads’ eyes follow Dr Jenkins retreating body down the ceramic-tiled floor, their thoughts a tangled web. However they had one common thought: they would not leave Niall.
Liam turns to the other lads and asks, “We’re not leaving are we?”
“Not until Niall wakes up,” Zayn determinedly says.
“We’re never leaving,” Harry vows.
“Screw that doctor,” Louis ends.
And now:
+ 8:20PM Tuesday +
Harry gingerly walks into the fluorescent lit room where Niall is lying peacefully in a coma on the bed. There are several monitors on both sides of his bed, a lot of needles pinned into his skin, liquid flowing in and out of the tubes. Harry gently taps on Zayn’s shoulder who is curled up on the grey couch facing Niall’s sleeping body. His lashes flutter open and gazes at Harry.
“C’mon Zayn, go get some food,” Harry gently says to him. The dark-haired Mexican glances at Niall. “Don’t worry, I’ll be here, I’m not leaving at all.”
“Fine but I’ll be back,” Zayn agrees albeit groggily. He walks out as Harry takes his warm spot on the couch.
He swipes a quick glance around the hospital room and sees its quite different than the last time he was in here – this morning. There are definitely more flowers by the table opposite his bed, more cards on the table as well as the bedside table, there is a huge teddy bear probably from Nick, Harry muses and he notices the African paintings on the wall too. All this color is a sharp contrast to the comatose body on the bed.
Niall’s face is pale that he looks like a ghost, Harry notices. His collarbone is very visible under his stretched, overworked skin. His neck is thinner than usual, his Adam apple is not dancing beneath it like it always did. He swallows deeply when his green eyes move down his body and settle on Niall’s arm and at the end is a white bandage wrapped around his wrist. His fingers are distinctively pale, almost as white as the cold walls. He stares hard at the white bandage, sharp memories of five nights ago when he almost died; when his best friend almost left them.
“Hey Niall,” Harry says weakly at first but regains his voice. “It’s me Harry. The doctor said that you haven’t responded to the medicine they’ve been giving you but they’re hopeful you’ll come around.” He cracks his knuckles, and pouts his lips like a fish. “To be honest, I don’t know if you’ll…when you’ll wake up. Will it be today? Tomorrow? Next week? Next month?
“Doctor Jenkins said that coma patients respond to stimuli in their environments like sounds, smell… something they’re familiar with and they will start responding but it’s been six days Niall, six. He said a lot of scary things when we rushed you to the hospital. Too many things that I didn’t want to hear, I didn’t want to believe that they were you. They couldn’t be you because…because you’re you.”
He takes a deep breath and pins his elbows on his knees, his face resting on his knuckles.
“He said that your body was overworked that it just shut down. You shut everything off buddy that your body joined in. I read somewhere that nobody loves you more than your body. Your body wants you to be happy and if it can’t make you happy it will allow you to destroy it because then you would be happy. That means if coke, alcohol, cigarettes, funny pills and medication make you happy then so be it, your body will comply. We however disregard the danger and in the end it’s too late to notice our body degrading within us and then it can’t make you happy.
“It starts to turn on you. All those many snorts of coke start taunting you, those shots you kept taking in the truth or dare game with the lads… those memories haunt you and you ask yourself why you ever did that. Why did I drink so much? Why did I smoke so much?” He pauses for a moment. “But that’s the thing, no matter what you do to make yourself happy the pain is so much more and it gets so bad your body shuts down yet what goes on in between must have been excruciating.” He chuckles a little bit. “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. I’m paraphrasing The Fault in Our Stars. Yes I read the book the day after we brought you to the hospital. Doctor Jenkins said you had cancer so then I remembered there was a time I heard you and Zayn talking about some girl called Hazel in a book and then it hit me – TFiOS! So I went out with Lou and bought the book and read it with him in 5 hours... Louis keeps saying I’m Augustus and he’s Hazel…”
He sniffs once. He wipes the crystal liquid dripping down his upper lip with the back of his hand. Too bad, he can’t wipe the other glistening liquid rolling down his cheek.
“I can’t imagine what you went through. You must have been in so much pain; the knee, the constant nosebleeds, the silent screams nobody was hearing yet you never said a word! You never said anything. You could’ve said something. Anything at all and I would’ve listened and if not me then Zayn. Zayn would’ve helped you, he would’ve been there.” He adds silently, “He would’ve stopped you.”
He stops speaking to Niall for a few minutes, his sobs uncontrollable at this point. He feels the weight on his shoulders weighing heavily down on him and blaming himself for not seeing the signs of suicide form Niall. And the guilt.
Oh, the overwhelming guilt!
“I introduced you to this life Niall; the hard life of drugs, sex and alcohol when I shouldn’t have. See, I perfected it. I knew when a lot was a lot, when too much partying had happened and I needed to slow down on the Vodka and on Jack but you didn’t know. You were on a roll buddy, a long roll and I didn’t even see it because I was too busy trying to get Caroline out of jail. It’s all my fault that you’re here, that you’re in a coma. Please forgive me, I beg of you Niall, please forgive me for doing this to you.
“I was the one who let you take your first and second snort of coke and after two snorts you’re addicted. It was me, you, Ed, King and Grimmy and we were making a list of who could be Mr X and you snorted your first. I encouraged you to when I should have known better and stopped you. But I was fucked up then…but that’s still no excuse!”
He wipes the last of his tears off his red eyes and swipes his tongue over his bottom lip, moistening it a little bit as it is dry and his lip balm was with Louis.
“Trust me, I know how it feels. If there is anyone here it’s me who knows best what you were going through because not long ago I was depressed and wanted to simply wanted to leave these demons in my head. I know exactly how it feels to cry in the shower so no one can hear you, and waiting for everyone to fall asleep so you can fall apart…safely. For everything to hurt so bad you want it all to end. And you beg yourself to just hold on and be strong but you can’t. You ask yourself if it ever gets better? You ask yourself who will come when you call them at 3AM because the monsters in your head are saying hello… and that’s when you start to give up on yourself. You sleep too much, you drink too much, you find yourself snorting more coke than air, and all you can think about is the ways you want to leave.”
He digs into his pocket, pulling out a crumbled paper.
“Doctor Jenkins is an ass by the way. I don’t like him maybe because he was saying the truth. Funny that, when we’re told the truth we always fight for a lie,” he says as he is skimming through the square-lined paper. “I wrote down all the things he found inside of you and it’s creepy how long this list is…Some words I haven’t even heard of them like Hepatorenal Syndrome, Cirrhosis, or Reticular Activating System which apparently I should’ve learned in Biology but” – he shrugs – “never cared much for school. You’re going to have a completely new liver. He showed us a thingy of your liver, it was horrible… sorry but seriously, it looked rotten! I know that’s mean of me but I want to make a promise here and now.
“I want to promise you that if you wake up, no, when you wake up I will help you quit everything. I lost Ed to drugs, I can’t lose you to them as well. I swear on my fucking life that I’ll help you quit coke, alcohol, cigarettes which I didn’t know you smoked, Nandos because it’s fatty and has far too much cholesterol. We don’t want to add diabetes or coronary heart disease to this list,” – he rattles the paper in his hand – “of complications you have. Here’s why Doctor Jenkins is an ass: it’s because he thinks you’re not going to wake up—”
His speech is stopped as if his mouth is paralyzed as he hears a slight beep from the monitor above Niall’s head. He quickly glances at the screen but the green light is flat. Flat as a table and still.
He chuckles. “I must be hallucinating! Or maybe I want you to be alive so bad. I really should stop taking my pills but I can’t. So like I was saying, Doctor Asshole keeps hinting that you’re not going to ever wake up but I know you are. I know you will, I mean you haven’t met Neymar yet, you haven’t finished the stadium tour but at least you have performed at the Jo’burg Stadium, you’re dream! You told us that you used to watch football matches when you were younger and that when you went for the auditions you dreamed of coming here for a long time and you finally did it.”
He quietly looks at Niall’s still body and swears upon himself to bring Niall back to life – not just physically. “I couldn’t save Ed but I will save you. And to begin with, I brought the book!” He shows Niall The Fault in Our Stars. He points it to his face and he is all smiles and grins. “I heard you love this book so much and I see why, it’s sappy and romantic and… I have to admit it’s so me.”
He opens the first page and notes to Niall that John Green, the author, wrote other books such as Looking for Alaska and he promises to buy those books as well and read them to him.
“To Esther Earl,” he reads out loud from the book. “I wonder who that is. His wife, maybe?” He flips the page to where he begins reading the book to Niall’s sleeping beauty. “Chapter One….”