if you look at him, he'll kill you!

13: white lights

sitting in the back of an ambulance wasn't necessarily the way josh expected his night to go.

the paramedics made him release tyler's hand, they had reason to believe that his arm was broken so they didn't want josh's death grip to further the injury. tyler still hadn't woken up, and the medics said they didn't know when he would.

there were signs of internal injuries, some bleeding and what not. josh was scared.

he had spent the first few weeks of his time in this town being a complete ass to tyler, but now he's sitting in an ambulance with the boy who could possibly die.

he didn't want tyler to die.

he would trade his own life to keep tyler's.

it all kind of passed in slow motion. the ride to the hospital felt like ages and then when they began to remove tyler from the vehicle, it's like all josh could see was the boy and everything else was a blur.

the voices of the paramedics yelling to surgeons and doctors about what was going on, who tyler was and how these injuries happened.

all josh could focus on for the next 5 and a half hours that he sat in that waiting room was the bright white lights of the hospital.

he'd always hated hospitals. they were either excessively bright or way too dim. they just seemed too eerie. eerily bright is how josh would explain this one.

he didn't know when he started crying, or how long he had been but when the doctor came into the waiting room at around nine pm, the boy had tears streaming down his face and his hands twisted around his dark brown hair.

"tyler joseph?" the doctor looked directly at josh, seeing as he was the only person left in the room.

his head snapped up, his hands untangling from his dark locks and his legs pushing him up from the hard plastic he sat on.

"yeah, yeah. i'm, yeah. i'm here for him. i'm josh," he was rambling, he knew that, but frankly he couldn't find it in himself to care.

he only cared about tyler.

"well, good news is that surgery went well and. he's still alive. bad news is that we don't know if he'll stay that way."

josh frowned as more tears flowed. "what- what do you mean? i- he has to be okay. he has to be."

"sir, he has a lot of internal bleeding. he took some really strong hits to the abdomen and chest. some of the bleeding points seem to be recent but others seem to be kind of older. just like the bruises, there are some newer bruises and some that seem to have been there for a while. do you have any idea how long these beatings have been occurring?"

josh shook his head. "i just moved here, um, i just moved. like a month ago, maybe? and it was happening then so i'm sure it happened before that."

the doctor just nodded. "you can come see him, but he's not awake. we have him on a lot of sedatives and pain medication so he's still out. but he looks worse than before. he's lost a lot of blood in surgery and he's covered in bruising and cuts."

josh just nodded, his whole body shaking.

what exactly would he see when he walked through that door?

-

568 words

published january 22, 2020

it's very short and for that i'm so so so sorry!