After Everything (A Starkid Fan Fiction)

Chapter 24-Dying to Live

~This is what I know right now. Love people hard, love them all you want, but let them go away from you. Love them from far away if you have to. It's okay. And let yourself go, too. Friendship, family, all those bonds that keep me breathing - they can still cross oceans. It's okay to go. -Shannon Barry~

Chapter 24

I hear commotion a few hours later, voices. I still can't open my eyes or move my body, and I don't understand what's happening to me. Did they break my body or something?

Then there's a loud, eerie and painful scream that comes from another room.

The sound of a door slamming open and the pounding of feet approaching me scares me, but I can't move or do anything.

"You're lying! You fucking said, you promised everything would be okay!"

It's Rachael, her voice sounding hurt and like she's trying not to cry.

"Miss Soglin, Jeff even said before we went in, I'm a doctor, I shouldn't be making promises. He's right. There's nothing we can do right now. He slipped into a coma because of the surgery complications. We just have to sit here and wait to see if he'll wake up. But with his body so weak from the cancer--" The doctor stops. I'm not sure if this is Maroni or another doctor, but he pauses in the middle of his sentence and I feel my own body tense slightly. "It's unlikely he's going to wake up."

I don't know what scares me more. The words from the doctor, or the scream that Rachael let's out when the doctor finishes talking. I hear a thump on the floor and she sounds like she's sobbing extremely hard. Coma. A...a coma. No, that's literally impossible I'm lying here right now, and I can think, I'm aware of my surroundings. There's no way any of this is real. I'm having a nightmare from the surgery, I'm still in surgery and this is just some big nightmare. There's no fucking way, this isn't real.

Then another voice speaks, a voice I'm surprised to hear. "There's got to be something you can do, doctor, something. You got the tumor, there's nothing else that's affecting him, right?"

"Miss Rose," the doctor let's out a long sigh. "I wish, I really really wish there was something I could do. But we can't wake him up. I'm sorry to say that Jeff knew the risks when going into this surgery, I told him everything. There's nothing we can do but wait. But his body is weak from fighting the cancer again."

"The cancer was only in his brain," Alex shoots back. "I had brain cancer, two years ago. I had the headaches, I had the bloody noses and the vomiting constantly and the everything, doc, so don't tell me, that the cancer was doing all of this to him, too. He should be fine, he should be awake."

"Miss Rose--" his voice is much more stern now. "Do you think I would be telling you this if there wasn't a single thing I didn't try? I've been trying to fix him for nearly two days. His first doctor screwed up massively, and do you think I want to follow in the footsteps of him?"

A silence fills the room between the two people talking, but Rachael's sobs are still going, and I feel my heart thumping in my chest. There's a lump in my throat, knowing that Rachael is in this room and crying and I can't comfort her. I can't do anything.

"No, I'm not giving up," Rachael says between sobs.

"Rach, don't do this to yourself, don't build up false hope."

She hiccups. "Jeff, I'm holding your hand right now. If you can hear me, squeeze back. If you can hear me, then take my hand and squeeze it. Give me an indication that you're there." She cries a little harder as she holds my hand, her touch warm against my hand, which I now realize is cold. "Please," she whispers at the end. "Please baby."