Safe

Chapter 17

The rush starts the second they get to the hospital: Courtney is whisked straight from the ambulance into a bed beside the door in an open emergency ward, Shayne literally jogging to keep up with how fast the paramedics are moving. An emergency doctor seems to appear out of nowhere, seeming to order tests and call in all their specialists from the list Shayne scrawls out hurriedly onto a piece of paper at the same time. It's when Courtney is wheeled back out of the room, now in a hospital bed, that Shayne feels his own adrenaline finally crash, slumping back in the single chair beside where her bed had been and bursting into tears.

Fuck. The worst wasn't meant to happen, they said it wouldn't, but this was the worst they talked about and maybe she had been talking and okay in the ambulance as he reassured her that everything would be okay, but what if it isn't? What is all this even going to mean, what's happened to her that they can't immediately see and what's happened to their kid-

Shayne feels another doctor glance at him, almost annoyed, and it makes him shudder – at least they're beside the door, the curtain on the side of the rest of the room is closed and shielding him from everyone else, and the noise of doctors and nurses and patients moving around is muffling him, but he is kind of sitting out in the open bawling and he doesn't know what to do and he just wants-

He'd managed to grab his own phone as they rushed out of the office – they had left everything else there – and he roughly pulls it out of his pocket, sobbing roughly as he tabs through to call his Mum.

"Hey Mum, can you please tell Dad too, Courtney had a seizure at work and we're at the hospital and I think she'll be okay but I'm so scared and I don't know what to do because they said this was the horrible unlikely worst thing that could happen," he rambles into his mother's voicemail, when she doesn't immediately answer her phone. He knows he wants to ask them to fly to LA, but he can't bring himself to actually say it, instead pausing for a moment before ending the call and dropping his phone down into his lap to stare blankly at it.

Christ, what is he meant to do? What the fuck is he meant to-

He rapidly picks up the phone again and navigates to her Dad's contact, calling him, not surprised when he answers on the second ring.

"Shayne, is everything okay?" he asks, Shayne immediately bursting into loud tears again and inwardly kicking himself as he does. Christ, he doesn't want to make her Dad freak out-

"She- it- it will be okay but she-" he stutters out, through his tears.

"It's okay, Shayne, it's okay, take a deep breath," Kenn tells him, carefully, Shayne immediately doing as he says and feeling the breath shudder through his chest. "Okay, now you don't need to tell me everything at once, you don't need to tell me everything at all, but why did you want to call me?"

The slightly different question helps him, a little, and he grips to it, letting out a long puff of air before he speaks.

"I don't know what I'm meant to do right now. She had a seizure at work but it was only a short one and I think kinda mild, she came out of it, the paramedics didn't seem too concerned about her immediate health, just that she needed to get to hospital for tests, and we're at a hospital now and she's gone for tests and I was running on adrenaline from as soon as I realised what was happening but now I'm in an emergency ward alone but with people everywhere waiting I've crashed and I don't know what to do," he explains, letting his tone turn vulnerable.

"Let yourself just stop for a minute, Shayne, you might have jumped into adrenaline and I'm sure you've done everything you could to look after her like you always do, but it's still traumatic, and it's okay to be upset and scared," Kenn reminds him, carefully, "would you like me to come over to the hospital now, or wait until after tests and things and you know more about what's going on? I can be there for you too, you know, not just Court."