Symptomatic

15

When he opened his eyes again, he was still in the bathroom. There was a cloud of commotion surrounding him.

Noise, movement.

Crying, shouting, running. Someone was clinging to him. Harry reached his hand up, feeling the person's wet cheeks and soft hair. Their skin was warm. It was comforting.

"Mum...?" He whispered, trying to open his eyes wide enough to see the person's face.

"It's okay, Hazzy. You're gonna be okay. Stay awake. We're right here, okay?"

Everything went dark again, and the next time he opened his eyes, he was still on the floor and there were new people hovering over him, saying things to each other in quick phrases that bounced in and out of Harry's ears. There was something on his face. He was being lifted onto something flat and moved out of the bathroom.

Everything went dark again.

There were sirens when consciousness returned, and Harry could hear the sound of crying. Someone crying so hard that they were coughing and letting out pitiful whimpers. Someone was holding his hand tightly. Harry looked up, catching a blurry glimpse of Josh's face before his eyes shut on their own.

The next time he woke up, everything was real again. He could hear a beeping noise and the sound of machinery. He opened his eyes and saw that everything around him was white. He squinted at the unexpected brightness, and noticed that there was an IV in his arm, pumping a clear liquid into his body.

"I see you're awake, Harry." Said a nurse, as she stood in her blue uniform. "How do you feel?"

Harry thought for a moment, unsure of how he felt. "Weird..." He responded. "What happened?"

"You overdosed on your anxiety medications. We've got you on suicide watch for the next few hours, just to make sure that you're safe."

Harry felt very confused.

"I wasn't trying to kill myself." He said. "The tablets- they weren't real."

"They were real. You're lucky you survived. If your friends had waited any longer before calling an ambulance, you'd probably be dealing with some pretty bad damage to your liver."

Harry just looked around the room, trying to decipher the nurse's words. If they were real, why did he take so many of them? He knew medicine didn't work that way, so why did he do it?

"Josh has been waiting to see you all day."

"Which one?" Harry asked.

"Your brother." Said the nurse. Harry paused, unsure of what to make of the situation.

"Would you like me to let him in?"

After a few seconds of thought, he spoke, "Sure."

Footsteps grew louder until Harry was looking up at Josh. His younger brother had his hands stuffed in his pockets, and he had bags under his eyes. He looked at Harry with a stone cold expression.

"I saw the pictures online, so I tried to check in on you, but you wouldn't answer your phone. And then I found out you were here." He spoke slowly.

Harry didn't say anything, so his brother continued.

"I'm sorry. I should have told you the truth about Dad, I was just... I didn't want to hurt you. I've been trying to get him to come around, but he won't. He's too stubborn. He's too stupid."

Harry remained silent.

"The truth, is that Dad says he was never able to make a connection with you- and he feels like he'll never be able to. He saw Mum as the only thing keeping the family together, and he's basically lost hope."

Harry didn't say anything, and they sat in silence for several minutes. He felt his eyes fill with tears, and he looked up at his younger brother, who was also crying.

"I miss her." He said, quietly.

"I do, too. But we can't change what happened. All we can do now is take a deep breath and move on. And maybe we'll be able to think about her someday without getting sad. We'll think of all the happy memories."

Josh slowly wrapped his hand around Harry's, and they didn't say anything else. Even when the elder's hand got sweaty, Josh didn't seem to mind. They just sat there, and it was almost nice.

It reminded Harry of when they were kids, silently caring about each other because they were too stubborn to admit it.

Like the time Josh had ran after Harry and his friends, trying to catch up with them as they walked to the ice cream shop, and fell. Harry had looked back and stopped, then carried Josh to the shop and bought ice cream for him rather than himself. They didn't say anything, but Josh felt loved.

- - -

"All these weird things keep happening to me." Harry said to the doctor later that day. "I get hot really easily and I sweat a lot. And I get heart palpitations. I never used to have real panic attacks, and it started all of a sudden. It doesn't feel natural."

"And I was losing weight before I lost my appetite. I was eating all the time, but I still kept losing weight and I didn't know why because the other boys ate less than me and weren't losing weight."

"There's a good chance it could be your thyroid." Said the doctor, briefly.

"What? What does that mean?"

"The symptoms you're describing sound like symptoms of hyperthyroidism. Do you have a family history?"

"Um... I don't know. What's gonna happen if there's something wrong with my thyroid?"

"You'll most likely drink radioactive iodine, which will kill your thyroid, and then you'll take a pill once a day. Easy as that. Your thyroid plays a large part in your body. It controls your metabolism, and when your metabolism speeds up, it can cause the heart palpitations you've been experiencing and the changes in anxiety levels. The blood work will tell us if you've got it or not."

When the other boys stepped into Harry's hospital room that afternoon, the youngest felt a flush of comfort take over his body.

"I'm so sorry, guys..." He said, looking at all six faces that surrounded him.

"I wasn't trying to kill myself, I promise. I just kinda- dissociated and made a dumb decision. I guess I thought taking a million tablets would make me feel better, I don't know. It was stupid."

"It's okay, Boggy." Ethan said, ruffling the younger boy's hair. "We're all just glad you're okay."

- - -

The bloodwork results came in, and Harry was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism.

It made a lot of sense, and he felt better to have answers to all of his questions. Even in the time before he received treatment, he felt better. His brother texted him almost every day, updating him on his life, sharing photos of their dogs and his girlfriend.

Harry's relationship with his father might have been gone, but he was closer to his brother than he had ever been.

He started seeing a therapist to deal with his anxiety. Things were definitely getting better. Instead of sitting back and watching his life crumble around him, he finally felt as though he were in control again.

"There's always gonna be bad days," Josh had told Harry at some point, after a long day of filming. "But nothing bad lasts forever."

And Harry believed him.

He had bad days. He had panic attacks, and he had days where everything felt too hard.

But those days ended with the setting sun, allowing room for new days to come.

They always did eventually, and that was all Harry and his friends could ask for.

- - -
end