Stand By Me ~Zouis Family

Nine

With shaking hands and sweaty palms, Louis fumbled with his phone trying to make a phone call to his husband, his stomach was churning and he didn’t even know why... This wasn’t his fault, he didn’t know any of this would happen.

“Hey Louis.”

Louis nearly jumped out of his skin when Zayn’s voice rang through his phone speaker, breaking the silence of the hospital ward.

“Zayn... I have some good news and some bad news.” Louis mumbled into the phone.

“Hit me.” Was Zayn’s casual response.

“Uh well, the bad new is: Today I found out that Liam has an allergy to nuts,” Louis leaned over the rail of the hospital bed and stroked his youngest son’s hair. “But the good new is: I managed to get him to the hospital on time and he’s going to be alright.” 

Louis didn’t really know what sort of response he was expecting Zayn to come back with but for some reason he felt like an abused wife waiting to hear if the dinner she made was good enough for her drunk husband; he was terrified.

“Shit! How’d you find out? In fact, are you okay? You sound terrified.” Zayn replied. His voice was a mixture of both worry and relief and Louis let out a piff of air.

Louis then went on to explain the days events, filling Zayn in on all the details both important and unimportant, he just liked having someone to explain himself to, he hated how some of the nurses were looking at him as if it was his fault.

But Louis was glad that he’d taken a medical training course a couple of months before they adopted Liam, because it’s the tell tale signs like the rash around Liam’s mouth and the sudden difficulty in breathing the told Louis exactly what he was dealing with that he wouldn’t have known had it not been for that course.

His mind was swirling with ‘what if’. Like what if he hadn’t taken the course? What if he’d left Liam alone to eat while he went off to take care of other things? What if there had been car crash, slowing down the traffic causing Louis to not make it to the hospital in time? They were all horrible scenarios that never even happened, yet they still haunted Louis’ mind.

And there was no reason for him to think like that because everything went well. The hospital was a five minute drive from the Tomlinson-Malik household but Louis managed to clock it in three. He’d taken Liam in and the pair were rushed into the emergency room where the doctor knew exact what was happening and gave Liam a shot of adrenalin and slowly the toddler came right and fell asleep in his still shaking father’s arms.

Liam was now sleeping in one of the little beds in a colourful room in the children’s ward. Louis had been given a couple of epi-pens and he’d been taught how to work them if Liam was have an allergic reaction again. Liam was due to be released from the hospital in a few hours. 

The experience was new for Louis as he’d always been so cautious when it came to his children, hell he almost had a heart attack when Niall would climb all over the furniture and now Liam, his baby was in hospital because of a severe allergy to peanuts that Louis didn’t know about.

Even though Liam had only been a part of the family for less than a year, Louis still felt like it was something he should have known about the child.

So Zayn allowed Louis to tell him about the toy car Rusty pushed under the couch and how Liam made a scene because it was ‘his favourite’ and he listened to the story of how Louis didn’t know there were nuts in the cake and how if he had of know that Liam was allergic to nuts he would have checked before giving it to him, because Zayn knew it made Louis feel better.

~*~

Harry’s last class of the day was English and he wasn’t in the mood. He was restless and about ready to go home.

The boy he met on the field, Rhys had given him his number and the two had been texting throughout the lesson. Harry didn’t share any classes with Rhys and he was a little unsure on said boy’s motives. There was just something about Rhys that seemed off but Harry was sure he was just being paranoid.

Rhys was asking things, trivial things like what’s your favourite colour. And that was fine, but the questions got more and more personal and Harry was a little unsure on how to answer them considering he didn’t exactly trust the boy yet.

Harry didn’t remember this process at his old school with his old friends, he didn’t remember question after question after question, he simply remembered every goofing around and slowly learning things about each other. Harry liked that better.

So there’s this party on Thursday at Scotty’s place... You keen? 

Harry stared at the message, he wasn’t even sure he actually knew who Scotty was but he didn’t really feel ready to go to a party, he’d only just made a friend, he’d be bored out of his mind at a party full of strangers; given going to the dumb party would be a good way to meet new people he just didn’t feel up to it.

Can’t, I have to babysit my brothers that night. He lied.

Harry stuffed his phone back the pocket of his trousers and turned his attention back to the work he had in front of him. His English teacher Mrs. Worthy had photocopied the notes he needed for the current topic and he had a huge wad of papers to glue into his book, or he could just copy the notes out but who’s got time for that? 

“Mr. Tomlinson-Malik?”

Harry looked up as Mrs. Worthy walked over to him with a folded piece of paper in her hand extended out to him. 

“Thanks Miss.” Harry smiled politely up at his English teacher as he took the note from her, it read:

‘Harry, Please come to my classroom now, bring your things,’

Below was Mr. Campbell’s signature, and Harry stomach lurched, he was worried he was in trouble for some reason. He gathered hi things, showed the note to Mrs. Worthy and made his was back to his form room.

Mr. Campbell’s class was empty when he arrived, indicating Mr. Campbell wasn’t teaching this period.

“Ah Harry, I’m glad you made it, take a seat.” Mr. Campbell’s voice sounded from behind him.

Harry jumped when he felt a hand on the small of his back as he was lead over to the teacher’s desk but decided not to think much of it, Mr. Campbell was just being friendly, he didn’t realize how intimately he was touching one of his students.

“I called you here to discuss Maths tutorials during your lunch break once a week, I feel as though you need a little extra push to help you catch up.” Mr. Campbell looked over his desk expectantly as Harry pondered the proposition.

Personally, Harry didn’t feel he was that far behind the other students, he wasn’t actually too shabby at Maths.

“Um okay.” He replied uncertainly.

“Excellent,” Mr. Campbell beamed, “How’s every Wednesday until the end of term?”

Harry didn’t want to give an hour of his free time every Wednesday, but he didn’t really know how to say no the middle aged man before him, Mr. Campbell was nice and Harry didn’t want him to think of him as rude or uncooperative.

“Okay.” Harry muttered just as the end of school sounded.

“Great, I’ll see you then.” Mr. Campbell smiled standing up and walking Harry to the entrance of his class room. “Have a good evening Harry.” He winked and a repulsed shiver ran up Harry’s spine as he muttered a quiet ‘you too’ before quickly joining the mass of student bodies all trying to get out of the school grounds.