Imprisoned in my Heart Book 1 (Imprisoned in my heart trilogy...Larry)

Chapter 9

This chapter contains the theme of self-harm, so if you are easily upset I wouldn’t advise reading it. If you are affected by this issue please talk to someone about it, don’t suffer in silence. Remember, if you need to talk, my ask box is always open. 

Louis didn’t expect his phone to ring at some godforsaken hour of the morning, so it was just as well that he hadn’t been asleep. The whole room was dark, his covers rumpled around him, and he was lying in bed when out of the corner of his eye he saw a pale, sickly glow light up his phone and the gentle buzz as it started vibrating reminded him of a bee flying around his face. With a groan, he sat up and rubbed his eyes as if he’d been asleep all along – which of course he hadn’t – and fumbled for the phone without looking. His fingers closed around it, and he checked it with a heavy sigh, as if it had disturbed him. Not that he had any idea why he was pretending to be irritated; he was glad of the excuse to stop trying to force himself to fall asleep. He spotted Liam’s number flashing up on the screen and stared sleepily at it, confused – maybe he’d been awake, but he certainly wasn’t very alert. Why would Liam be calling him at – he checked his watch – 3am? Unless it was an emergency…

 His heart leapt into his mouth, forced its way out and landed messily on the floor. Or at least, that was what it felt like.

 Instantly answering it, he demanded “Why are you calling me at 3am? It’d better be important. Oh God, is it important?”

“It’s important all right,” Liam said grimly.

Louis almost squeaked, and then he pressed his lips together and breathed in sharply to stop the pathetic little noise from escaping.

“What is it?”

“It’s Harry.”

Well, of course. It would be Harry. It was always Harry.

 Louis felt annoyed for a few seconds, wondering what kind of dramatic scheme Harry could have come up with now. His irritation wavered when he realized that for Liam to call in the middle of the night and say that something important had happened, it must have been pretty terrible. Oh, God. Something important. Important enough to disturb someone at 3am. Something important enough to disturb someone at 3am, which involved Harry.

 “We’re at the hospital,” Liam continued. “In intensive care.”

 Fear crawled down Louis’ throat and settled somewhere inside his chest, weighing him down and blocking his airways so that he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything apart from shudder and wait for his lungs to remember how to work.

 “Lou? Louis, are you still there?”

Louis didn’t blame Liam for being worried; he was rarely speechless. “I’m fine,” he croaked. “What’s happened to Harry?”

“Well, let’s just say you were a little bit off when you said he was ‘doing great’,” Liam said sharply. “I think you should get down here. It’s not the kind of thing you can discuss over the phone.” He went to hang up.

“Wait!” Louis cried desperately. “How…how bad is it?”

Pause. Eventually, Liam said reluctantly “He’s alive.”

The phone went dead.

 *  *  *  *  *  *

Louis drove like a lunatic when he was panicking, and he’d never panicked as hard as he did at that particular moment. Every hint of exhaustion forgotten, he swerved and skidded at some dangerous speed with his brakes screeching, yanking the steering wheel hard and ignoring most traffic laws, except, of course, red lights. He wasn’t going to be involved in an accident – even though he would willingly have crawled to Harry’s bedside with several missing limbs, he couldn’t see that he would be allowed to leave without filling in reams of paperwork. Impatience had him bouncing in his seat and frantically tapping the steering wheel with his fingers at every seemingly unnecessary pause, but finally he pulled into the car park with both himself and his car intact, and then he sprinted for the building.