Catharsis || Lashton AU - boyxboy

30. rhyddhau

trigger warning?

 "I will send a transmission home,
To say that I've been out here too long alone,
And I wanna come down now."
-Yellowcard, Transmission Home

l.h.

The nurse is running so slowly, I thought. So slow when her computer is beeping like crazy. A doctor followed her into the room, too, and then two people pushed a cart in after them but they were just moving so slowly. I could've done it--I could've ran in there at lightning speed and I could've saved him. How were they doing that? How were they running that slowly? Like they were in the air for minutes before their other foot touched the ground.

Everyone was moving so slowly like it didn't matter. The people in the waiting room or the patients roaming the halls, the other doctors--no one was moving fast enough to get to the person in the room across the hall. I didn't know why it all felt like that. Like everyone around me was moving in slow motion and I was running in overdrive. It should have been me. It should have been me in there. I could've fixed it.

Hands grabbed my shoulders tight in their grip, but I shook free of them and I ran to the room where the nurses and the doctors ran so slowly, God, so slowly, and once I was there, I couldn't move. Pins and needles rushed from my toes up through my legs all the way into my head, and my stomach dropped, heavy. The nurse who had been the first one in there looked at me, frantic, almost, and she grabbed me by my arm and ushered me out of the room. I stumbled over to the desk in a daze--I couldn't think, couldn't even function, and I felt like I'd been knocked onto my back, all the air from my lungs gone, and then I was gasping, gasping for air and I just couldn't get anything in. She pulled me into the room next to the his, shoved a mask into my face, but even when my breathing evened everything burned inside of me, like I'd been ravished by a wildfire. I thought I was dying. Or maybe already dead.

I couldn't hear the commotion in the next room through the loud, static ringing in my ears. I bet it was loud. They dragged in the defibrillator. He was dying. They were trying to save him. Just not fast enough.

I felt so dizzy, like I might fall over, and I was holding tightly onto the metal frame of the bed in front of me with one hand, the other grasping the oxygen mask and holding it on for dear life. I was no stranger to the overwhelming sensation of a panic attack, but I couldn't see anything and I felt so very wrong. It was like strobe lights flashing rapidly in my eyes, so blinding, and I could only make out bits and pieces of the nurse's face through the darkness clouding my vision. I could see that she was talking to me, but I couldn't hear her. I wondered if she knew that.

The unbearable static noise in my head, and the tunnel vision and hyperventilating, plus the uncontrollable shaking I had only become aware of when I notice the bed frame rattling against the wall. Adrenaline was pumping through me so rapidly I swore to God I could feel it in my veins.

I remembered dropping my coffee in the hallway only when I noticed it was no longer in my hands.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I let the oxygen mask hit the floor as my sight came back, but I was still shaking so hard I don't know how I hadn't collapsed.

The nurse lunged forward to return to me the oxygen mask, but I pushed it away. I could barely hear myself speak as I frantically said, "That man is my best friend," I couldn't stop panting long enough to get a sentence out. "You have to--you have to save him, please--you--you have to go help my best friend--I didn't get to--he was supposed to be okay--please, you have to go save him--he has to be okay--please--"

My curiosity was resolved when my knees finally buckled and I found myself on my hands and knees, sobbing and gasping for breath. I hadn't collapsed yet because I was still building up to it. When I thought I was dying I hadn't even been feeling all of it. The panic, the desperation, the paralyzing fear. But now it was all there, all at once, and it hurt so fucking bad. So fucking bad in my chest, like I'd just been stabbed through the heart.