Waiting For This Cough Syrup To Come Down (Re-write)

Chapter One

21st July 2014

I yawned for the fifth time in a row, eyes streaming from tiredness.

Three o'clock in the morning, I grumbled. This is low.

My phone kept vibrating, clattering against the bedside table, emitting an irritatingly high-pitched tone. I groaned, ran a hand through my hair to tame it and glanced at the screen, wincing at the harsh light.

My eyebrows furrowed. Why was he calling? He wasn't abroad, so there was no time difference ... What was he doing awake at three in the morning?

I answered the call, all fatigue forgotten.

'Hi,' I managed, stifling a yawn.

'Hey,' he said. 'I'm sorry I woke you.'

I was about to deny it. Woke me? No, it's fine, I was already up. But why the hell would I be awake at this time?

'Don't worry about it,' I replied. 'Is everything okay?'

'Yeah,' he said. 'Yeah, everything's good. Just called to see how you were doing.'

I furrowed my eyebrows. 'At this time? I'd say I'm a mix of tired, stressed, and irritated, but that's nothing special.'

'Sorry,' he said again. 'I was -'

'Zayn, I was kidding,' I chuckled. 'Well, not really, I really am tired, stressed and irritated, but not because of you. Talk to me, what's been going on?'

'Still jet-lagged,' he said. 'My internal clock thinks it's nine o'clock at night. I thought you might be working or something, so I'd leave you a message and you would call me when you could. I didn't think you'd pick up.'

'Well, I'd be a pretty crappy student if I was on the phone to you instead of writing all the essays I usually get.'

'Pretty much. How's it going?'

'Good, actually,' I replied, rolling onto my side and fiddling with the edge of the comforter. 'I finished my third year at uni, this whole thing's going so slow. I just want to specialise already.'

'Neurology?'

'You know me well,' I replied, feeling the heat creep up to my cheeks.

'It can't be that boring.'

'It isn't,' I said quickly. 'I like learning, I just wish I didn't have to learn about abnormal bowel movements.'

'Gross.'

'Exactly.'

'So aside from the disgusting stuff, how is it?'

I bit my lip. 'You would't be interested, it's a bunch of medical stuff -'

'No, I want to hear it,' he said. And he sounded genuinely interested. 'It's all you could talk about, tell me about it.'

It sucked, really, having a crush on Zayn Malik. Especially when all I wanted was to stay friends. Nope, the irrational side of me just wanted to become even more irrational and fall hopelessly in love with him. Somehow, I became someone incredibly insecure - around other people, I'd have no problem talking about my studies. But Zayn ... I was so scared of boring him into an oblivion.

Zayn was engaged, travelling the world, with an abundance of cash weighing down his pockets. His hard work went into doing what he loved everyday, of course getting stressed under the spotlight, but he woke up every morning already in a place he wanted to be in.

Me? I was a medical student living in a two-bedroom flat. Zayn had a house in Central London, living a life of luxury. I was in Cambridge staying up until the early hours of the morning working on essays and reading notes on lectures ready for exams. And unlike him and his fiancee, I was studying twenty-four seven, so that I could work in a hospital, for a hundred hours a week, to earn a fraction of what they were earning. Some of it would be glamorous work: taking blood samples, using defibrillators, doing MRI scans ... but until I specialised into a field of work (which would happen in another four years when I started training) it was dirty work, taking night shifts every other weekend, checking stool and urine samples ... The junior doctors definitely got the short end of the stick. And I was only a Third Year.