"Brian!" Michael shouted in relief down the phone, once he had eventually picked up. Brian looked at his clock, the time read 4.23am.
"What's wrong, Mikey?" He answered grumpily, rubbing at his sleep weary eyes.
"Brian... It's Ben." Michael whimpered "He's... He's... I mean, he only had the flu and now he's..." Michael stuttered as he broke down into sobs.
"Where are you?" Brian asked, who (after having sensed Michael's tone) was more alert now, and began scrambling around the foot of the bed for something to put on.
"I'm at the hospital." Michael said "I need you." And with that Brian grabbed his keys and reached for the door. "I'm on my way." Brian said as he shut off his phone and rushed out the door.
Brian reached the hospital within minutes, running all of the red lights and completely disregarding the speed limits. Once inside the hospital, Brian began to frantically search for his friend in A&E. Eventually he found him, curled up in a ball on his own in the corner of the hospital, sobbing gently to himself. Brian approached him tentatively.
"Mikey?" He asked as gently as he could. Hearing his best friend's voice, Mike looked up with his red, swollen eyes.
"Brian?" He managed to croak in response, his throat sore from crying. Brian took his response as his cue to do something, moving closer to slowly give his friend a well needed hug.
"What happened?" Brian asked carefully after holding Michael for a while. Michael blinked back some tears before responding.
"Well," he began "Ben caught a case of the flu a few days back. I was worried about him, so I made him go to the doctors. They said that he would be fine and just needed some rest. But he's been getting worse and worse, and I woke up this morning at around two to get some water and I noticed that he was barely breathing. So I called an ambulance, which came and they took him here, but they won't let me see him!" At that point Mikey broke out into fresh tears as Brian held him, trying to absorb what he had just heard.
Once Michael had once again regained control over his breathing, Brian told him that he would go and try to find a nurse to see what was going on. After several minutes of trying to flag one down at the nurses' station, he eventually caught the attention of a sweet looking, petite, young nurse.
"Can I help you, sir?" She asked Brian as she approached the counter, placing down a chart with a beaming smile. "Yes, you can." Brian replied with a slight hint of urgency. "I'm enquiring about a friend of mine, Ben Novotny? He was admitted about two hours ago."
"Okeydokey, just wait one moment please." The cheerful nurse replied, before turning on her heels and disappearing around the corner. She returned a few minutes later with a chart in her hand and a decidedly more defeated look on her face.
"You were enquiring about Ben Novotny, weren't you sir?" She said in the general direction of Brian, not expecting an answer or even looking up from the chart. "Well," she carried on "I'm afraid that he has been moved to the intensive care unit. He is in a critical condition." She said, still unable to look Brian in the eye. "I think it may be a good idea for you to go and see him. I can take you if you like?" The nurse offered. Brian, caught off guard by the severity of the situation, tried to clear his head of negative thoughts and instead turned his thoughts to Michael.
"One moment." Brian said to the nurse before turning around and hot-footing it back to Michael. "Mikey..." Brian said once his friend was in hearing distance again. "This nurse is going to take us to see Ben, alright?" Brian asked, gesturing towards the nurse. Michael simply nodded and followed them silently. Brian swung an arm around Mikey's shoulders to offer some support. He was going to need it.
As they approached Ben's room, they could hear the reassuring, steady beep of a heart monitor letting them know that Ben was still alive. When they rounded the corner, they saw that he was hooked up to all kinds of monitoring equipment as well as a ventilation tube.
Michael's knees gave out at the sight of his husband lying there, looking so helpless and weak. Brian laced an arm around his waist as he helped him into the room and sat him in a chair beside a very ill looking Ben.
Once Brian had established that Mikey was not going to fall off the chair, he turned his attention back to the nurse who was patiently waiting outside. Leaving the room, Brian pulled the door shut quietly behind him before he began to speak.
"So what's the prognosis, doc?" he asked in a hushed tone, too low for Mikey to hear.
"I'm afraid that it is not looking good." The nurse replied in an equally hushed voice. "What with his already underlying condition of very progressed HIV and a severe chest infection brought on by the flu... The doctor said that he would be lucky to make it through the night."
The words fell on numb ears, unable to grasp fully what she was telling him. It was almost painful for him to hear. And that wasn't even the worst part. How the hell was he going to tell Michael?
