Viva La Vida

Part 20

Zayn hates hospitals. He particularly hates waking up in them when he has no memory of going to sleep in them—small holes in his memory happen more often than he'd like these days (one of the more disconcerting effects of his injuries) but coming to in a hospital for no discernible reason means that something bad happened in the gap between that moment and his last memory, and despite everything, he'd rather remember a bad thing than have the absence of it haunt him. Moments like these are too much like his time in the cell, when he'd sometimes wake up bleeding and have no idea how it happened.

In any case: he's in a hospital now, and he's not sure why. The last thing he remembers with any clarity is stepping into the shower, which doesn't help at all, and there's no one in the room to ask. It's especially freaking him out because he's got an oxygen mask on, which he hasn't had since his very first few days in the hospital back when he'd just gotten out and everything was still up in the air concerning whether he was actually going to live or not. The mask actually really makes him claustrophobic, but this is not a movie and contrary to what everyone thinks, he does not have a death wish, so he's not going to take it off and rip out his IV and start walking around. He's spent enough time in hospitals by now that someone is going to walk in sooner or later, and that everything will be explained then; no need to be dramatic and stupid to make statement. He just wishes it wouldn't take so goddamn long.

To make himself feel better, he catalogues his symptoms: throbbing chest, sore throat, trouble breathing, raging headache. He must have gotten sick; some enterprising virus has probably taken advantage of his compromise immune system and landed him here. It was bound to happen at some point, honestly; he's just glad he's still breathing, albeit through a machine.

"Ah, I see you're awake, Sir Malik," a voice says, jolting him out of his thoughts. One of the doctors he's worked with before is in the room; he's a short, kind man with a beard and a turban that always matches his tie.

"S'just . . . Zayn," Zayn says through the monitored breaths the mask is making him take. "What . . . what happened?"

The doctor laughs a little, making a note on his clipboard. "Well, my next question was going to ask if you remembered what happened, but I suppose that answers that. We're not exactly sure what happened, because you were alone at the time of the incident and were found later, but it seems that you either passed out or had a nasty fall in the shower."

"That . . . landed me . . . in . . . hospital?"

"Would you like a notepad, Sir Malik? I understand talking can be difficult right now, and you should be resting your throat anyway."

Zayn nods, and the doctor hands him a notepad and a pen. The first thing he writes: falling in the shower put me in the hospital? I must be weaker than I thought.

"Not quite. It seems that whatever happened—it's most probable that you passed out, given the circumstances, but again, it's possible you fell—put you under for enough time for the shower head to get a fair amount of water in your lungs. Given the fact that you were lying face up directly under the spray, it's a miracle you didn't inhale more, but it was still enough that effectively, you nearly drowned. You were brought in and then developed pneumonia within twenty four hours. That's why you're in the hospital; the original damage wasn't terrible, but with your weakened immune system, the pneumonia was harder on you than we would have liked."

Who found me?

"The king, I believe. He went into your chambers to check up on you and deliver some papers for the next council meeting, heard the shower running, and decided to wait for you to come out rather than just leaving the papers and going. Thank God he did, too, because after a while he realized something must have been wrong, and went into the bathroom to make sure you were all right. Gave him a nasty scare, too, I believe—he was very distraught when he brought you in."