He's my teammate

19 - Hospital Beds & Hopes

August 2024 – After the Dutch Grand Prix 

As Formula One drivers, they know how to deal with your fear. How to curb it and focus on what was right in front of them. He had a compartment in his brain where he could shove his fear and slam the door shut. Ignore the sinking feeling, the panic, and the realization of how dangerous their job really was. It worked in other scenarios as well. It's why he knew Lewis loved skydiving, and Charles loved to ice climb. It was why there needed to be a clause in most rookie Formula One contracts to stop rookies from putting their lives at risk off the track to ensure they could compete on the track to their full abilities.

He knew how to deal with fear. Except in that moment.

It all happened in torturous slow motion, but also in a dangerous blur. He remembered the phone call, the words that Katie had spoke which turned his blood to ice. What he didn't remember was dropping his phone or the bottle of champagne, he only found out later on when he tried to call Katie back and someone told him he couldn't; his phone was broken.

Then there was the hospital, the bright fluorescent lights, the scurrying nurses, doctors, and aids. He remembered looking down at his sweaty and champagne-covered race suit and thinking how dirty it looked in comparison to all the sterilized equipment. Which was a weird thing to notice. Right?

"Are you family?" A nurse asked, from across a long desk in the ER. He must have been in the ER, where else would they have taken her, taken....

"Arabella Van Dijk, is she here?" Lando asked and the nurse blinked. Looking to the nurse sitting beside her.

"I have a patient with that name. Sir, are you family?" Lando blinked.

"I'm her...." he trailed off, not knowing what to call himself. How many different terms swirled around in his brain? He wasn't her boyfriend, not anymore, but they had never broken up. Did that make him her ex-boyfriend? The thought of saying it out loud pained him. Pained him enough that he just let his shoulders slump. "I'm her friend."

"I'm sorry sir, I can't let you in." The nurse said which somehow pained him even more. He wasn't even sure what pain he was feeling. How it mixed together with the other emotions along with the fear. The fear he wasn't able to curb. The fear that threatened to overwhelm him.

"Please." He begged, his voice not sounding like his own. "She was my," he practically choked on the words, "girlfriend but then she was in an accident, and she doesn't remember. Doesn't remember our relationship, doesn't remember the love we shared." Tears had threatened his eyes, and there was no holding them back. "I can live in a world without waking up next to her, I know that now, but I love her enough to know that I can't live in a world where she doesn't exist. Even if her memories of that love are gone."

For agonizingly long seconds, the nurse just stared at him. The nurse who was sitting in her chair beside her had a hand on her chest as if his words had somehow touched her. There was a glance and then the nurse who had been standing turned to the computer.

"She had a seizure." Lando nodded knowing that much. "The girl who came in with her explained her condition, so the seizure it's all that uncommon. She'd been taking to get some images to make sure it's nothing serious."

"So, she's going to be okay?"

"Unless there are complications, she should be just fine."

Lando had trained himself to ignore fear, to put it away in a compartment in his brain so that he didn't feel the effects of it. However, in doing that he also never felt the effects of the relief that came after the fear. The rush of pure relief that hit him after hearing the nurse tell him that she was going to be okay. It overwhelmed him. With his already exhausted muscles from the race, there was nothing to stop him from falling to his knees. A nurse rushed to help him, but he just let it happen. Let the tears fall down his face, he hardly even noticed the pain of his knees hitting the hard floor. He just knelt there, in front of the nurse's desk, and wept.