A Dance With Death

|| Chapter 9 - Visitor ||

Chapter 9

As I enter the room where my body lays, I find a tall figure standing next to it. The person is standing next to my body, talking to it. The voice in my head fades as the sound of my visitor becomes clear and audible.

I walk towards my bed. I gasp in shock at what I see before my eyes.

"H-harry?" I stutter in disbelief.

Harry doesn't look at me, obviously. He's changed since the last time I saw him. He has cut his hair short, till the point where his curls are barely visible. The characteristics of age have not affected him. Yet, there is this unfamiliar stillness in him that makes him different from what he was before. After all, he is looking at his best friend who's at the brink of death.

His eyes are fixated on my barely alive self. He is no longer speaking. His green eyes are grim and reflect a person that has gone through a similar type of grief before. It doesn't seem like he has been crying, but I can tell that he's not far from letting his tears flow.

"So this is your friend, Harry," Griffith says from behind. "I can see why he was such a big deal back in the day. He's attractive." I throw a glare at him, along with Althea and Ektor. Griffith turns his gaze from Harry to me. "I'm not gay," he says. "If that's what you were thinking."

"Of course not," Ektor scoffs.

I ignore them and look back at Harry, who now proceeds towards the chair beside my bed. Not removing his eyes from the bed, he sits down.

"Guys," Althea says to Griffith and Ektor in a whisper. "We should leave them alone."

Silence follows after their muffled sounds.

"What's going on, Zayn?" Harry says in a brittle voice, one I've never heard before. Hearing him after a long time heals my heart and then breaks it. "What's happening to us? First Niall, now you."

I stand beside him, not removing my eyes from the man on the bed. "I wish I knew, Harry," I say. "I wish I knew."

"After all these years, we'd finally decided to come back together," he says looking at the heart monitor. "We were finally going to do something about One Direction. But..." He gulps, as if trying to stop his words from coming out.

"I'm sorry I messed up," I say.

I look down at my pale hand. In the time that I look at the hand, it seems as if life is slowly ebbing away from my soul.

"I'm about to die." I rub my palms as I inch closer to him. "This coma may run on for years, but I may not come back. You can't listen to me, but I want you to know how sorry I am. I don't know what to do. I'm just as lost as you are."

Harry rests his head on one hand and taps the other on the arm of the wooden chair. "You might not be able to hear me."

"I highly doubt that," I laugh without humour, at the irony of his statement.

"But we really need you," he continues. "You can't leave us. You can't."

"I know."

His words are hurtful, but they reflect what he really wants. I wish he knew how hard this is for me. I wish he knew I'm more devastated than anyone else. Especially after knowing that I wasn't even supposed to be dead; that someone deliberately used their resources to have me killed. Someone just tried to take away my life.

"I'll try my best," I say. "I just need to find a way out."

Harry leans forward. "I know I'm crazy for saying this, but, don't leave us, Zayn," he says, trying to keep his voice firm. "Please don't. There'll be no life without you." His voice breaks.