Live & Let Die

Can You Fill This Silence?

The boys sat in the waiting room, staring blankly at the paintings on the walls.

Updates will be given every half hour. 

It's been almost an hour since the last one and no one dare even looked around them.

You'll be accommodated, you won't have to worry at all. 

George was practically crawling up a wall with anxiety and restlessness. Already he had ditched his jacket and shirt, which were both coated in dry blood. Now, if the nurses didn't come soon, the same would happen to his pants and he didn't have a spare.

Ringo tried to calm him down, but George already couldn't stand the sight of blood and here he was with his brother's all over him.

"Where?" George mumbled in a nonsensical way.

"Nowhere," Brian sighed. He joined them the second Paul went under and was currently the only one who could understand George. Ringo tried but failed and John was out of it to even give it a go.

"Why?"

"I'm sorry."

George sniffled and leant on the manager, going on with his sniffling but giving up on talking.

A nurse slowly walked into the room. It was just the four and another man in the room, but he was waiting for paperwork and she had none. Brian stood shakily. This could go either way.

"Mr Epstein," she started, but she already said it all. She couldn't look at him, was already slow with her words and her voice was cracking.

Brian slumped back into his seat and wouldn't hear another word of it. George left the room the second Brian sat down and Ringo had to go follow him.

John was the odd one out. He laughed quietly. A shoulder shaking sort of laugh that was silent but one nonetheless.

Brian looked over in a heartbroken sort of way.

Not him, especially not him. He wasn't sure which Beatle the news would affect the most, with George knowing him the most, John having the deepest connection and Ringo being sensitive. Now, it was just painful to see their ways of coping.

"John," Brian started, but it got louder and his shoulders only moved more as he continued. The nurse took that as her sign to leave and did so with a tear running down her cheek.

"It's okay to talk—"

John's laughing stopped abruptly, his body suddenly taking a statue-like stance.

Brian hoped the other two weren't like this.

"What is there to talk about?" John asked angrily. It was so menacing and under his breath it almost sounded like hissing, making Brian flinch at every sound. "My friend just died. He died and I wasn't there."

John sat for a moment, thinking about God knows what. In the next moment, he sprinted down the hall, toward the patient rooms.

The manager had no time to think. Before he lost John to the confusing layout of the hospital, he raced to find him.

It was almost a sick game as John screamed for Paul and every once in a while stopped short because he remembered. It would take him far too long before he remembered fully that Paul could never call back and his ragged breaths of realisation filled the hallway and Brian's head. 

John walked slowly to lean against a wall and slid lower and lower until he was sitting down, letting out all the emotions that he was trying to hold in. Brian inched forward to him, afraid the tears running down his face would grow into angry ones if he rubbed John the wrong way.