Teen Helpline [#1 of the Helpline Trilogy]

2 : 10 a.m

Eva Adams hates hospitals.

She hates how they always reeked with the clinical, sharp scent of antibiotics and cheap lemon polisher. She hates how their rooms all look the same: white, steel, grey, black, lacking personality and seeming as though they've been decorated by a funeral parlour. She hates how it's the place of finality, of the crucial decision between life and death. She hates how they contain her worst memories, confining her into the recesses of depression. Her grandfather, literally her favourite person in the world, died of a heart attack in a hospital. Her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in a hospital. And now, this. 

Sprinting into the white and grey waiting room, pulse beating in her throat, fear wild and real in her mind, she catches the attention of bored and tired onlookers as she races across the linoleum reflective floor and nearly falls over the receptionist desk when her converse sneakers skids across noisily into a halt. 

She never expects that she'd be in a scenario like this. Where time is running out like sand out of a broken hourglass, where the fear is very vivid and very real, almost painful. Her life has always been safe and clean without any adventure, which is why she prefers to pretend imagination where she could be a witch with a wand and fight bad guys and face her fears. She thinks it would be so cool to face death and adversaries. But now she is living in a bleak reality and is thrust into a true situation where her best friend had attempted to kill himself, she realize death isn't cool and the situation isn't just boom boom epic- it comes with sacrifices, pain and hardship because everything isn't as easy as the surface makes it up to be. 

"I'm looking for- for Damien." She has to stop herself from saying 'Mr Fanceh' because that isn't his real name and the hospital wouldn't have understood that. 

The receptionist blankly gazes at her. Eva's irritation rose, angry at the lack of a more alarmed response."Damien...?" 

Shit, swears Eva. How could she not know his last name? "Um, uh- well, I'm his friend. I'm the one who called 911. I'm Eva- he's the one who tried to..."

The receptionist's blue eyes lights in recognition. "Was he the one we just brought in? The boy who overdosed?"

Eva's stomach uncoils uneasily; from the tightened ball of anticipation, worry and concern into a messy assemblage of stains. Is he dead? Did she cause that? "Why?" she chokes out, "Is he- is he dead?"

"No, he's alive," the receptionist promises her and Eva lets out a sigh of relief, choking and gurgling in the tension released. Thank God. Then the receptionist observes her distressed state, clicking her tongue together and offers a question: 

"Would you like to see him?" 

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