''Ian Romero, the person I hate the most in the whole wide world. He turned the entire school against me, and then just left me alone in the hell he created.''
There's no one Cody Walker hates more than Ian Romero, who is the reason he has been bull...
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*Cody Walker's POV
I was shot. Not just exhausted, but dead tired. Having a severe asthma attack was one thing, but adding the fever, the physical exertion while having fever, the momentary certainty I was going to die and having to come clear to my family to the mix was a whole nother thing.
It turned out I was indeed having influenza, which together with the physical exertion was enough to trigger a severe asthma attack. The doctor told us it was really close to turning fatal, since I could have gone into respiratory arrest if they hadn't called an ambulance on time. How surreal it already felt to think that I could have died today.
Actually, it all felt surreal when I lied on the hospital bed, while mom was snuggled on a mattress on the floor. The personnel of the hospital had told us the others couldn't stay the night, so they had left the room reluctantly. All except mom, who simply refused to leave my side and the nurses had no other option than to give her a mattress and bed sheets.
We were watching television, or to be more precise I was texting with Ian while I pretended to be watching television. A part of me wished it was Ian sleeping on the mattress instead of my mom. Even better, he could have shared the bed with me, no matter how small it was.
A yawn escaped my mouth. Gosh, how tired I was. Mom seemed to get my signal, since she switched off the television and the lights.
"Cody, honey." Mom murmured softly in the dark room. "I know I might not always show it, but not a day goes by when I'm not proud of you. I love you and your siblings more than anything, and you should know it would kill us if something happened to you. Stop making yourself small, stop telling yourself you don't matter and, for god's sake, no more lies. Promise me you'll tell me, if someone hurts you again or if you're in trouble."
"I love you too, mom." I told her quietly. It felt weird to say it out loud, like I had never actually done so before. "And I promise."
***
They wanted to keep me in the hospital for another day, to monitor if the meds were working and whether or not the fever was going to pass. It had gotten worse again, thanks to the little occurrence with my favorite trio yesterday.
"I want real food. On another thought, I want pizza." I complained. As I've mentioned earlier, I'm not picky and as long as something is even relatively edible I can eat it. Yet, looking at the grey-ish paste on top of three rubbery potatoes, I felt like I was going to burst out crying.
"I'll get you pizza tomorrow, okay?" Ian offered, leaning in like we were conspiring something huge and illegal. Then he looked at me empathically and continued: "But until then, you need to get by with that."
"You're a terrible boyfriend.." I muttered quietly, poking the food with my work, a deep scowl on my face.
"What? Can you say that again?" Ian exclaimed all of a sudden. It was just us two in the room, finally. My family had been with us the entire day, until they had to go grab a bite at some nearby restaurant. Probably pizza..
