Never giving up on you - Completed.

47.

[A/N: This photo acutally got taken and posted on Instagram by Austin only a day after the cancelled OMAM show I had tickets for would've taken place. The day before the show I learned it got cancelled due to him having to get back to Cali because of what had happened to him and I swear, I have never cried so hard about a show being cancelled and a band member not being well. Until this day it still hurts when I think of it hahaha.
Anyway, enjoy this chapter. It's cute and I hope this makes up for the last two chapters haha. Enjoy and let me know what you think!]

Caity

It had been a hectic time since we had come home, and we hadn't even been really 'home' yet, since Austin got admitted at the hospital almost right after Lillian picked us up from LAX and drove us to Stanford. It broke my heart to see in how much pain he was; I knew he was used to being in pain, every day, but this was on another level. He could barely walk, his entire body was tensed up and his face was frowned in distress. The twelve hours in a plane hadn't done him well. He tried to make it look like he was okay, but he surely wasn't and I was glad when he finally got put in a bed and got some really strong painkillers to take the edge off. Right after, he fell in a drowsy sleep with some tremoric seizures in his legs every now and then. I found myself all alone in the silent hospital room, sitting in a chair near the window, watching the traffic and people pass five stories down. It was already late at night, and Austin's surgery was scheduled tomorrow afternoon. Lillian had taken Hailey to my parents hours ago, to give me and Austin some rest and to make sure Hailey got to sleep. Sometimes my eyes trailed from outside to Austin in the hospital bed. He was broken and I had never seen him like this before; Austin always pushed through and he always turned out to be alright, but now he wasn't and it was scaring me.

My phone rang and I quickly picked it up and left the room, not wanting to wake Austin from his well-deserved, seemingly painless rest.

'Hello?'

'Cait? Are you at the hospital?'

'Hey Tino... Yeah, I am. Austin's asleep, they gave him painkillers and it knocked him out, so he's at peace for a short while.' I stared through the window to a curled up Austin, who almost hid his head under the blankets.

'Good. Well, the guys and I are about to board our plane soon.' I quickly counted the time difference; it was almost midnight here, so that meant it was already around eight in the morning back in England. A silence hung between us. Then Tino spoke again. 'So, what are they planning on doing with him?' A sigh left my mouth and I rubbed my face as I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

'Eh... The MRI they made back in London showed three tears in his dural sac around his spine, which causes him all the pain when he screams or even moves, and because of brain fluid leaking through the tears, he's having those massive headaches all day. They're planning on a risky operation later today. It's really serious. The doctor said that if he had pushed through and went on with touring, he could've become paralyzed from his waist down for the rest of his life...' The diagnose had thrown both me and Austin off; it was beyond scary to think that he could've been disabled for the rest of his life if he had only pushed through a little further. It also made me realize that the doctor back in London had been wrong all along, and my intuitive feeling had been right. It angered me so much, that I wasn't able to say a word about it without wanting to scream in frustration.

'Jesus...' Tino was speechless, and I didn't know what to say either, but I didn't want to say a thing anyway, because I felt tears welling up in my eyes and my throat getting thick. 'And that doctor back there said there was nothing to see on that MRI!'

'Yeah... Understand why I asked him to look again? I knew something was wrong, Tino. Thing is that he just didn't know a thing about Marfan and didn't know what he should be looking for... But they did here.'