Could this be love?

Chapter nineteen

Ashley’s Point of View

My whole world was falling apart around me.  My phone slipped from my fingers and fell to my bed with a soft, barely audible thump, but I couldn't bring myself to care.

Andy is in the hospital.

Andy tried to kill himself.

The doctors don't know if he's going to make it.

My Andy could die.

And it would be my fault.

A muffled, "Ashley?" Came from somewhere in the sea of covers, pulling me away from my thoughts.  With much effort, I broke through the fog that was starting to form in my mind and started to look for my phone.  Once my shaking fingers found it, I grasped it and brought it up to my ear.

"Ashley?"  I heard Sandra ask from the other end.  "Ashley? Are you still there?"

I opened my mouth to try and answer, but only a small squeak type sound came from my throat.  My mouth was too dry to form words.  

"Ashley?"  Sandra asked again, her voice full of concern.

I licked my lips and tried to clear my throat.

"Yeah." I muttered.  "I'm still here.  Is he... Will he... How is he doing...?"  I asked quietly.

There was silence for a moment.  "They don't know.  They told his parents that with the amount of pills and stuff he took, his organs might begin to shut down."

"Wh-what?" I stuttered. Of course I had heard her properly, but the words weren't making sense in my brain. 

"When they took him to the hospital they tried everything they could to revive him. They pumped his stomach and basically threw him in a tub of ice because his body was over heating."

"Wh-what about now?" I whispered, deathly afraid of the answer.

"Now they're pumping fluids into him.  He's barely stable Ash. They don't know if he's going to survive the night."  Sandra replied, copying my tone. 

My body froze. I tried to speak but the signal from my brain to my vocal cords and mouth seemed to have been severed. My breathing became rapid and painful, and I felt like the walls were closing in around me.  This couldn't be happening.

"Ashley?" Sandra said into the phone, panic clear in her voice.  Her clear, overwhelming worry for me somehow broke me out of my frozen state.

"I'm okay." I replied. I didn't exactly lie; I was physically okay, however mentally? I was falling apart.

"Can you make it to the hospital? Ju-just in case something happens to And-"

I cut her off quickly, not wanting to let her finish her sentence in case her saying it somehow made it happen. "Yes. I'll be there soon." I said in a firm voice before hanging up.  I threw the covers off of me and swung my legs over the side of my bed, quickly standing up.  I paused for a moment, feeling faint from how fast I had stood. The lightheadedness had barely passed before I made my way to the bedroom door.  The brass doorknob was cold in the grasp of my sweaty hands and I shivered slightly.  I was still dressed in a shirt and jeans as I had passed out without changing early, but yet the chilly air coming from my bedroom window still made me shiver violently.  Although, if it was from the cold or from the adrenalin rush that fear brought, I didn’t know. 

I opened the door and stepped out into the black hall, and my breath instantly became panicked.  I had always been afraid of the dark, and right now was no different.  The only light that broke through the eerie darkness that coated the hall was the moonlight that leaked through my window.  However, it couldn’t penetrate all of the darkness.  As I walked towards my parents’ bedroom, my surroundings got darker.  I couldn’t see five paces ahead of me as I walked, and when I turned a corner it got worse.  My ragged breath caught in my throat as I stopped in my tracks and starred at the blackness before me.  The extremely small part of my brain that wasn’t coated with the panic induced fog kept whispering for me to calm down and turn on the lights, but for some reason I wasn’t registering the sensible advice.  I was still frozen, starring in front of me.  I was just about to say fuck it and run back to my room when I remembered why I was here; Andy was dying and I needed to get to the hospital.  Somehow, the thought of Andy was all I needed.  The fog seemed to have lifted from my body and I no longer felt the overwhelming sense of dread and complete terror from being in the darkness of the hallway.  I took a deep breath and rushed towards my parents’ bedroom.  Before I knew it, I was beside my mum’s side of the bed.