Spotlight |h.s|

Eighty

Aubrey Hart

"Are you sure you've had enough water today?" I ask Harry for the millionth time as I rush around his room in the shitty pair of slippers one of the nurses gave me.

It's Harry's second night of a possible five in the hospital due to his heart stopping, and I'm an anxious mess making sure everything is okay. I just want to make things easier for him.

"I'm already getting fluid from my IV, and you've been forcing me to drink even more than the nurses already are. I'm fine." Harry laughs as he watches me.

"But with everything that was in your system you need to drink a lot, I'm just trying to—" I attempt to defend myself, being cut off by his voice.

"When's the last time you sat down?" He asks as I pick up the folded blanket I asked a nurse for, wanting to keep him warmer since his shaking is back.

It's dull, but it's there, and I feel terrible about it. Every once in a while today, I pause my frantic rushing around to take phone calls, talk to doctors, and see Louis, Zayn, and Jade in the waiting room, holding his hand while standing beside his bed to make it better. I somehow help with his shakiness, and I always have. I just hate that he has to feel it at all after all of the progress he's made.

"Not important." I unfold the covering and place it over his body, his eyes narrowing at me as I do so.

"I haven't seen you sit down since last night when you sat in bed with me. You ended up falling asleep, right? You were up before me this morning. That isn't normal."

"I slept a little, yeah. You're on medication that makes you tired, don't think too hard about it." I assure him, not wanting him to know about the measly hour of sleep I've had in the past 36 hours.

I fell asleep with his head resting on me last night, trying not to move his body too much and disrupt his broken ribs and the wires attached to him. All was well for the first hour, my exhaustion finally hitting me and making me fall asleep.

It was all going completely fine until I had a dream.

I saw yesterday all over again right before my eyes. The blue of his lips, closed state of his eyes, and limp nature of his body. I saw him losing everything. Never getting to have another holiday with Ruby. Never seeing her get married. Never getting to the huge milestone of one year of cleanliness. Never getting married, proving to himself that he could be a much better parent than Thomas ever could, or winning his first major award for his acting.

I felt his loss, the sadness ripping through me and absolutely tearing me apart with the thought of him never getting to do all of the things he wanted to do in life. I was convinced he was gone all over again, and it was the worst feeling in the world.

So, until I'm exhausted enough to be willing to live through that again, I'm not sleeping.

I shake off my thoughts about my intense dream that sent me shooting up in my spot beside a sedative-filled Harry with teary eyes and a gasp, focusing on tucking the added blanket beneath the mattress so it doesn't fall off of the bed in his sleep.

He huffs as I then walk to the head of the bed and fluff the pillows behind him, making him move a slight bit so I can do it correctly. He's shaking his head at my persistence as I then push him to fully lay back down, hurrying to grab a water bottle and give him yet another to drink.

I hold the plastic bottle out to him, signaling for him to take it. He groans, throwing his head back as he takes it into his hand.

"You want me to drink this whole thing?" He complains.