Notebook [Book One]

Seventeen

Aiden paced the sterile, sanitised hallway back and forth, waiting for the boys to arrive.

The smell and the stress gave him a headache. Looking back through the window, he could still see his mother arguing her case, pointing furiously at Nathan as he slept in the bed, but the doctor shook his head again.

They couldn't take parental responsibility for him, not without official documents.

Aiden's heart lurched when he looked at the white-haired boy lying in the hospital bed.

His skin was an awful shade of grey and white, paler than his usual tone, and a large black bruise was already developing on his forehead.

The sight and sound of Nathan falling to the ground, hitting the stair bannister on the way down, would never leave Aiden. It replayed every time he looked through the window, making him sick to his stomach.

The doctors and nurses had already hooked up several bags of fluids, pumping them through the cannula in Nathan's left hand at an alarming rate.

They had used the words 'intensive treatment' and 'severe infection,' but Aiden couldn't listen. He needed to be in there with him.

The medical staff insisted Aiden stay outside while the examination took place and the treatment began.

He was glad Nathan was unconscious because he would have hated every second; being swarmed by strangers who poked and prodded at him would have been a living hell.

"Aiden!" The sound of Matt's voice echoed in the quiet corridor. Suddenly, there was a stampede of footsteps and an overwhelming number of faces rushing toward him.

The pink-haired boy was pulled into various embraces, sometimes multiple people hugging him at once.

When he stepped back and looked at all the visitors, tears instantly pricked his eyes, making him blink rapidly to clear them away.

Despite the late hour, all the boys arrived to support and console their friend. But what was most beautiful was how each boy's parents had come too.

They had spent so long caring for Nathan, each taking him in and treating him like another son, that when they found out he had been rushed to the hospital, they acted like he was their child.

So, instead of looking at five concerned faces, he saw five young boys and a myriad of older parental figures staring back at him.

Evan's mother, Aiden's aunt, rushed forward, hugging her nephew and kissing the top of his head. She looked affectionately at him as his eyes watered, touched by the surrounding love.

"What happened?" Reid asked, his arm around Evan's waist as the youngest boy anxiously hopped from foot to foot.

He hated hospitals. The smell and the bright lights overloaded his senses. The seriousness of his friend's sickness only added to that.

Aiden rubbed his face, looking into the room to see if Nathan was still sleeping.

He hadn't moved at all. From his spot outside, the younger boy could see how truly sick he'd become over the space of a few hours.

A clear sign of infection was now evident on Nathan's body.

As he lay in the bed with the blanket pulled up to his chest, Aiden could now see his left shoulder was swollen and bright red.

When he'd fallen asleep that morning after taking his medication, that definitely wasn't there. So it developed as the boy slept the day away and was evident to the medical staff when he arrived. It was also the reason Nathan had become so feverish.