Catboy

23

The goodbyes had been preemptive, but the truth was that Lloyd's vital signs weren't good.

The nurse assigned to him, Petra, chewed on the end of a pencil as she sat beside his bed, occasionally checking his breathing and making sure that his heart wasn't slowing down. She had dismissed his friends twenty minutes earlier- they had already been distraught enough when they entered the room. Then another kid had shown up, and it had all kind of gone to hell. There had been so much crying and so much apologizing that she had had to ask them to leave.

She looked over her patient's face, a pang of sadness running through her. His one eye was closed, dark eyelashes fanning out over skin a few shades too dark to just be a tan. His hands rested loosely against the stark white of the bedsheets. She watched as his chest rose and fell, watched as an IV dripped into the needle in his hand. He lay there, silent, his breath the only sound she could get from him. Handsome, she thought.

Do you have a girlfriend back at home?

Does she know that you're here?

Does she know how sick you are?

Her thoughts were interrupted by a sharp intake of breath, and she snapped out of her trance to see his one eye open, looking up at her.

"Hey, kiddo," she said. "You really scared us for a minute there."

"Water," he whispered, his voice hoarse. She shook her head.

"We can't give you any. You might need another surgery soon, and you can't have anything in your system."

"No... water," he insisted, weakly pointing at his face, and she understood.

"I'll see what I can do," she replied, and stepped into the room's bathroom. She walked over to the sink and turned the tap on, waiting for the water to flow cold. She filled up a plastic cup and returned to his side. "How do you normally water this thing, anyway?" She was trying her best to be cheerful, but she knew that cracks would show sooner or later.

The truth was, she was scared.

She had never had a patient die on her before.

Sure, it wasn't guaranteed that he would, but the surgeons had said that everything was delicate. It was the word they had used, over and over again. The situation is delicate. His health is delicate. The surgery was delicate. 

She passed him the cup of water, but his hands were shaking too much for him to take it. He struggled for a second, but the water started trickling down his palm and he gave up. Gently taking it from him, she raised one eyebrow. "How do you usually water this?"

"Never have," he murmured. "Never needed to before."

Petra hesitated for a second. "Well, I'm just gonna put a bit down the sides of it, okay? Sorry if I get your face wet." His one functional eye followed her movements as she dipped her fingers into the water and leant forward. She didn't miss the way he flinched as her hand brushed the side of his tree. "Sorry! Did that hurt?"

He shook his head. "No."

His mind was drifting out of consciousness, back and forth between the real world and simple darkness. His chest hurt, and his hand stung where they had stuck the needle through it. His whole body ached. He hated it.

The nurse finished up with the water and went to pour it out in the sink. He took a minute to try to scan through the details of the room; maybe it would give him something to recognise. This was supposed to be his home, after all. For the next few months; for the next year; for the next week.