One Way || Phan

Part 15.

*Dan's POV*

No no no no no, this couldn't be happening.

I ran over to Phil, panicking rushing through me, and knelt down next to him, calling out his name multiple times, but he didn't respond. My heart was pounding in my chest. I knew I had to call 999, but first I checked if he had a pulse. I placed two of my fingers to his neck and waited, praying he was still alive. I didn't feel anything at first and it fucked me up real good until I finally felt a faint pulse and I sighed in relief. Suddenly the feeling of his heartbeat was the best feeling in the world. 

Thank God, he was still alive. What to do now? Flip him over so he would be laying on his side? I vaguely remember that being the thing you had to do in situations like this but I had never really paid attention when people at school were demonstrating such things, so I had no idea how.

There wasn't much time to think so I just did something, and Phil ended up laying on his side so I guessed it was better than nothing. I was shocked to see his face being all bruised and I tried to gently remove some of the dried blood. It made me feel so powerless and horrible when I realized I shouldn't have left him.

Then I remembered I had to call 999, and tried to take my phone out of my pocket. My hands were trembling violently so it took a while before I could dial the number and press the device to my ear.

The phone rang. Once, twice, three times... I cursed loudly, why didn't anyone pick up the damn phone? Phil was definitely injured and needed medical attention. I had no idea how to get him to a doctor if nobody answered the phone. More time passed and I started pacing up and down the room, becoming more and more stressed and frustrated.

After what seemed like an eternity, someone finally answered.

"999 what is your emergency?" a woman's voice said and I drew in a shaky breath.

"I-I need an ambulance, my friend is has been beaten up and is now unconscious-" I started rambling, having no idea what I was saying exactly. I was completely panicking by now and I could feel myself starting to get dizzy. The operator apparently couldn't follow what I was saying, so she cut me off. 

"Please calm down sir, don't panic. Where are you?"

I was breathing rapidly and rested my head against the wall of Phil's room. I tried to control my breathing a bit before speaking again. I told her the address and she told me to stay calm and stay with Phil until the ambulance arrived. She asked me a few more questions about Phil's condition and I tried to answer them as best as possible, while still shaking heavily.

The minutes of complete silence after the operator hung up was absolutely terrifying. It was dark and I was extremely scared Phil's father would return, for example. And I regretted not staying with Phil so much. This was all my fault, it was my fault Phil was injured, I could have stayed with him and stood up to Phil's dad. I hated myself for not helping Phil sooner, maybe all of this wouldn't have happened then.

I sat down next to Phil. I wanted to hug him so bad, but I didn't dare to move him so instead, I stroked his hair soothingly. My crying had started to calm down a little and my breathing was the only sound audible.

I stayed with Phil like that until the ambulance arrived. The paramedics needed full access to Phil so I moved away reluctantly. He was still unconscious when they put him on a stretcher and carried him away. I was allowed to ride along with the ambulance to the hospital and I sat next to him, holding his hand the whole way, while thoughts consumed me. 

-

A few hours later I sat in the waiting-room of the hospital. I hated hospitals, they always smelled disgusting, too clean. The crappy plastic chair I was sitting on was extremely uncomfortable and painful, causing me to have to change my position every few minutes. I sighed and rested my head against the wall behind me.

The doctors had told me to stay here until they had an update on Phil's condition. That had been two hours ago, so I had been sitting here for quite a while already and I still hadn't heard anything. No one had come by, no one even looked at me. The only other person in the waiting room was an old lady who had fallen asleep. I didn't mind at all, she tried starting a conversation with me earlier when she was still awake but I kind of rudely told her I didn't want to talk. She was quite offended, but I was just too busy worrying about Phil.

I started to fall asleep a bit, which wasn't surprising since it was almost midnight and I was basically exhausted, both emotionally and physically. Then my phone rang and I squeaked, startling completely awake again. The old lady had woken up too because I was so loud and shot me a dirty look. I couldn't be bothered though because I read the name of my mom on my phone screen and realized I completely forgot to tell her where I was. She must be bloody worried about me.

I quickly swiped the phone button to the right and brought the phone to my ear.

"Daniel James Howell where have you been?" My mom yelled directly into my ear and I immediately distanced the phone from my head, because she was basically deafening me. I let her finish her worried yell speech before putting the device back to my ear again and answering her.

"You don't have to scream, I can hear you perfectly well," I snapped angrily. "I'm in the hospital-"

The word 'hospital' caused my mother to burst into screams again and I tried to calm her down because all the people behind the counter were looking at me, wondering why the hell that crazy teen was ruining the silence.

"I'm not hurt, mom, calm down," I hissed. "It's Phil, there was a kind of... situation. I told you about him, remember? I can't explain everything right now, but I'm staying here until I know he's okay."

My mom didn't agree with me staying for who-knows-how-long at the hospital on my own of course, and she wanted to pick me up or at least stay with me. I agreed with her picking me up after I was being updated on Phil and I told her I would call her after that, before ending the call.

Another extremely boring hour of doing absolutely nothing passed. I tried to scroll through Tumblr to set my mind to something else, but the wifi connection was incredibly slow and it only agitated me. After five minutes of silently cursing the hospital wifi, I gave up. The battery of my phone was running low too and I was going to need it for calling my mom later this night, so I'd better leave it. I rested my head against the wall and tried to sleep a bit to kill the time. When I finally trailed off to sleep someone tapped me on my shoulder and I reluctantly opened my eyes again.

"Phil..?" I mumbled sleepily, rubbing my eyes and blinking against the sudden light. But it wasn't Phil, of course. It was a middle-aged doctor, who looked down at me and smiled.

"Dan Howell?" He asked and I nodded, sitting upright again.

"How is Phil doing?" I asked, fully awake now and dying of curiosity and concern. The doctor sat down on the seat next to me and placed his hand on my shoulder.

"Go home," he said. "Phil is fine, we're taking good care of him."

"But I want to stay here with him!" I said, but to be fair, going home and get some sleep seemed very appealing. I was so tired, I felt like I could fall asleep any moment.

"You can't stay here, Dan. Phil is asleep, his condition is stable so nothing will happen to him. I'm sure you're very tired and your family is probably worried about you. So go home and have some rest. You can come back tomorrow to visit Phil and I also want to ask you some questions about something tomorrow, so you need to make sure you're well rested."

I was way too tired to protest, so I simply nodded, thanked the doctor and called my mom.

[A/N: I'm so not happy with this chapter, I feel like it was really bad. Especially the first part. Sorry.]

Edited: 25-2-2018