Don't You Go • Jalex Short Story

Dead Air

THREE MONTHS LATER

We rushed into the building, away from all the bright lights and loud sounds. People dressed in white and blue were shouting back and forth at one another in some sort of code as the horrible fluorescent lights flickered above them. The building had a sickly smell of disinfectant and disease. The room was buzzing with electricity and life. Shame I couldn't say the same for the boy lying in front of me on a hospital bed.

I had slipped to the bathroom this morning only to come out to find Jack lying in the middle of the floor in the front lounge struggling to breathe. Rian was knelt down beside him as Zack had his phone pressed to his ear calling an ambulance.

Jack removed his oxygen mask from his face as he looked over at me beside him as we rushed through gloomy corridors. "I'm gonna be fine 'lex, stop worrying." He wheezed out, barely conscious.

I reached out and lightly smacked his hand. "Get the damn mask back on, Barakat, or I swear to god you'll never hear the end of it!" I yelled at him.

Jack smiled at me and done what I said putting the mask back on as he got pushed into a room getting hooked up to various apparatus while the three of us were left outside. After a while we were told we could see our friend. We all walked into the room to see Jack looking worse that he ever had before. I wanted to gag at the sight of my dying friend. This isn't, Jack? What monster did this to him?

Jack was paler that the fresh crispy white sheets on the bed. He has a sickly shine to his skin as his body was drenched in sweat. His hair was all over the place with his fringe stuck to his forehead. His eyes were closed as his chest rose in shallow breaths. He was hooked up to an oxygen tank, a drip and a heart rate machine. Was this is? Was this the end?

Zack patted my back with a sad smile before pushing me towards the empty chair beside Jack's bed. I sat down and took ahold of one of his cold hands, rubbing circles on the top of it. The room was filled with a deafening silence, the only thing heard was the sound of Jack's heart slowly beating. Just then a strangled sound left my throat that I never realised I'd made. I clamped my spare hand over my mouth to muffle my cries as I brought my left knee up to my chest. Rian walked over beside me and rested his hand on my shoulder, rubbing it soothingly.

We sat there for a further few minutes with me sobbing my heart out before Jack's heart monitor made a strange noise before beginning to flatline.

"No! No, not yet! YOU CANT LEAVE ME!" I said shaking the dead boy. "NO, PLEASE! NO!"

Just then I was pulled back by Rian and shoved over to Zack as Doctors and nurses fled the room. One walked over and escorted us out as I screamed in protest to see my friend.

"Please, let me see him!" I cried out, as I got dragged backwards.

"Alex, please!" Rian tried to calm me.

"No. I need to see him! Jack! JACK!" I yelled as the door closed.

I fell to my knees in the middle of the corridor. "Jack ... Don't you go..." I whispered into the dead air.

The doctors were in there some time before Jack's body emerged from the room as he got whisked away into another part of the hospital. Hospital, how I hate the word. I stood up and ran up to one of the doctors while Rian and Zack shouted on me to come back. "Is he going to be okay? Where are they taking him?" I asked one of the doctors.

The doctor sighed pushing his long brown hair out his face, his dark brown eyes meeting mine. "He going into emergency surgery but I'm afraid we're not sure what the outcome may be." He spoked in a formal tone.

I nodded my head, holding back any tears that threatened to spill and muttered a 'thank you' as I watched him disappear into the distance after Jack. Rian and Zack quickly came to my side as the three of us watched our friend being whisked away. My knees shook as silent tears poured down my face like Niagara Falls. The boys held onto my hands as we sat in the waiting room, waiting for the news.

"You need to tell him, Alex?" Rian croaked out beside me.

The three of us had been siting here for the last hour and a half in tears.

"If he comes out of surgery alive you have to tell him!" Rian said, wiping any evidence of him crying from his face.

"I don't know if I can, Rian. It will only hurt more once he's gone. Plus, I don't want to lose him as a friend or have him leave me with things all awkward between us."

Rian turned in his seat to face me. "Alex, if that was Cass in that room right now, if I didn't tell her how I felt and she died, it would destroy me."

I groaned in frustration. "Yeah but I'm not you, Rian!" I snapped.

"No. You're worse!" Rian said standing up. "If Jack was to die right now without you telling him how you felt, it would KILL you!"

I refused to meet Rian's eye. I knew he was right. We all did. I was just to stubborn to admit how deep I'd fallen for him.

"Do you want anything, I'm getting coffee while we wait." Rian said as he turned to Zack.

Zack shook his head as Rian left to go to the cafeteria. I sighed as Zack placed a hand on my knee.

"You know he's right. I don't admire how he worded it so harshly but he does have a point. Even Mr Stubborn here knows it." Zack spoke, trying to break the tension in the air.

I nodded my head. "I know I'm just scared. I don't want to emotionally lose him before I physically lose him."

Zack nodded and the two of us sat in silence. After some time, Rian returned and not long after a doctor came out telling us Jack was alive and we could see him. We walked through the to see him smiling in his bed again, very much so like the first day we found out about the disease.

"Told you I'd be fine." Jack chuckled.

I ran over to him with a huge grin on my face, just happy to see him alive. I wrapped him in a tight hug.

"Don't do that again!" I cried into his shoulder.

Jack rubbed my back as he rested his head on my shoulder. "I promise I won't." He whispered with a small sniffle, making a promise we both know was impossible to keep.