We're Not Sleeping, We're Just Dreaming (Waterparks fanfic)

Thirteen - Awsten

I tried again the following day.
Sitting in an extremely uncomfortable plastic chair outside of the door, I was anxious not to be caught by the nurses on shift. Every so often, when the coast was clear, I would peak through the gap in the blinds - I don't know why. Nothing had changed. I sighed - should I go to school? Probably. But that didn't mean I would.
I leaned my head back against the wall and breathed in - the smell of hospital filled my nostrils which made me uncomfortable but I didn't care.
"Thought I'd find you here."
I snapped my eyes open and stood up.
"Geoff?"
He stood in front of me - had he been crying? He sniffed, wiping underneath one of his eyes.
"I...Why are you here?"
"Why am I here!?" He suddenly yelled. I shushed gently, looking around the corridor to make sure we weren't being caught. He glanced to his left and his right before lowering his voice and leaning closer to me. "Why are YOU here? I've been looking for you everywhere!"
I shuffled my feet against the floor. "I...I...sorry."
"Sorry doesn't cut it," he scolded. "Everyone has been looking for you, you completely disappeared without fucking telling anyone, we were worried you had done something like Keon and tried to kill yourself over this. Do you have any idea of the panic you've caused!?"
I tightened my lip. "I didn't realise..."
Geoff sighed. "I'm sorry I yelled."
I ran a hand through my hair and scratched the back of my head. "They won't even let me in anyway, I'm not family."
He sighed again. "Word around the school is that he doesn't have much family."
I raised an eyebrow.
"It's unlikely anyone will actually visit him, some people are saying."
I glanced through the window, peering through the crack in the blind. It was the same as two minutes ago, and all through the 30 minutes I'd been here, save the nurse who came and checked on him, every ten minutes like clockwork - scribbling onto her clipboard, checking the monitors, sometimes fiddling with the IV bags or the bedsheets - ignoring me entirely. He was alone. I turned back to Geoff and sighed, before staring at the ceiling for a moment, then closing my eyes and averting my line of vision to my feet.
"Awsten, he's comatose. He won't know you're there."
I sighed.
"He probably won't be able to hear you, or feel if you touched his hand or something. All you'd be doing is sitting there."
I felt the lump in my throat come forward.
"But what if he woke up, I want to-"
"Look at him, Awsten!"
I felt the lump in my throat come forward and looked Geoff in the eye, feeling the ducts fill with salted tears but I didn't let them fall.
"He's not going to wake up today, or tomorrow, or the next few days." Geoff put his hands on my shoulders gently. "He's seriously ill, Awsten, and you've just got to accept that right now, he won't wake up. Right now, you need to let them do their jobs, and help him. And sitting here, in this hospital corridor, is not going to help them do their jobs any faster or any better."
I snapped. I completely broke. The tears fell freely from my eyes as I violently sniffed, whimpering quietly. Geoff sighed, and out his hands firmer into my shoulders.
"Right now, we should be together. You. Me. Otto. Support each other."
I nodded, pulling the sleeve of my shirt further over my hands and running it underneath my bottom eyelids, drying my cheeks and erasing the runaway tears from my face, as Geoff began to walk down the corridor.
"Coming or what?"