all we can do is keep breathing

eight.

a heart shattered too many times to number.

||✚||

"I'm here! I'm here!" Harry shouts urgently, running up to the nurses' station, panting. "What happened? Where's my daughter? Is she ok? Where is she? I need—"

"Sir, sir please calm down." The nurse soothes, standing to her feet to address him.

Harry looks around madly, eyes darting and panicked. He can't calm down—how can he be expected to fucking calm down? He rushed across the entire west coast after getting a vague call from SSMC that his daughter had been hospitalized. Jesse sent him a few texts, but as he is not her legal guardian, the hospital didn't release any new information to him. "Is she back there? Is she alright?"

"Sir, what's your daughter's name?" The nurse behind the desk asks gently. Her eyes are kind and genuine, watching Harry with concern.

"A-Avery." Harry stutters, hands trembling as he cards them through his disheveled hair anxiously. He feels the prickle of tears already building in his eyes, pure fear overtaking his entire body in the form of uncertainty. "Avery Styles. S-she's...she's eight y-years old and—"

"Harry?"

"Jesse." Harry sighs at the sound of a familiar voice, collapsing heavily into his fiancé's arms the second he sees him. He buries his head into the crook of Jesse's neck, hoping it will somehow ground him enough to push through this. "What h-happened? All they told me is that she'd been admitted and...and that they c-can't release medical information over the phone."

"I don't know, babe." Jesse runs his hands up and down Harry's back gently. "I don't know, she was feeling ill at school and I went to get her—"

"Loui—Dr. Tomlinson!" Harry's eyes instantly widen as he spots Louis walking towards them over Jesse's shoulder. He slinks out of Jesse's arms to meet up with Louis instead. "Where is Avie? Is she ok? What happened to her?"

Louis' whole body is stiff and tense, as though he is using all his energy to contain himself. Yet despite the rigidity of his body, his eyes are far more vulnerable and deeply sad. "She is stable for now, but..." He glances at Jesse as he pauses, the two of them making charged eye contact. Harry looks between them trying to figure out what's going on, but his head is spinning and shouting and he can't focus on anything but the but Louis' sentence ended on. Louis slightly shakes his head as if decisively clearing his mind. "Um, let's go somewhere quieter. Please follow me."

Harry feels Jesse take his hand, giving him a reassuring squeeze as they silently follow Louis to a vacant conference room.

"Have a seat." Louis instructs, holding the door open for them, digital chart clutched to his chest.

Harry and Jesse take a seat next to each other at the long table, Louis sitting across from them. His face is unreadable and essentially void of emotion except when Harry meets his eyes. Louis' eyes tell a story, they always do. The sapphire blue of his irises give him away every time. They depict sadness, a heavy despondency mixed with traces of lingering anger, and Harry knows without a shadow of a doubt that there is something he's not saying, something he's purposefully holding back.

"Louis, what is it? Just tell us." Harry urges in desperation. The longer he has to wait, the more he internally loses it. Piece by piece, he can feel himself slowly crumbling apart from the inside out.

Louis' jaw tenses, he looks down for a moment, seeming to collect himself before he looks up again, taking a deep, self-soothing breath. "Harry..." His gaze wanders to Jesse momentarily, growing cold and harsh before he meets Harry's eyes with sudden warmth and empathy. "There is no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to come out and say it straightaway." If possible Louis' eyes manage to soften even more as he speaks directly to Harry, voice incredibly gentle. "Avery has another tumor. Her cancer is back."