Goodbye Soul (Get Scared fanfic)

Cold and Comatose

"He had severe bleeding around his lungs due to blunt trauma, which is a fancy way of saying his body got hit too hard. We were able to stop the bleeding and make sure nothing else was damaged, and he seems to be fine, so the operation was successful. What we don't know if he has any brain damage from the crash," Dr. Shaffer explains to us: Rachel, Johnny, Adam, Dan and me, "he hasn't woken up from the surgery and we're afraid that he went into a coma because of the accident." 

Rachel rocks her baby, Neveah, in her arms to soothe her to sleep as she listens to the doctor speak. Distressed, she asks, "What are the chances that he wakes up?" 

"It's hard to say. When people go in to comas, they become unpredictable and you don't know when or even if they'll wake up. We're going to get some physicians to run some tests for brain activity in a moment, so maybe that can give you all some hope."

"Can we see him?" she asks.

"Yes, but only two at a time please. The baby doesn't count, she can go in with you and another."

Rachel immediately starts walking into the recovery room that Nick is in. The rest of us stand in the hall not knowing which one of us will get to go first.

"Lloyd, you go, you've known him your entire life," Adam says and the others agree. Semi reluctantly.

I see her kneeling next to Nicholas, who has an oxygen mask placed firmly over his mouth and nose. There's an IV in his arm and a blanket over his body. Rachel takes his hand which has bandages on his fingers and squeezes it. I kneel down next to her.

"He'll make it, he always does," I say to her, trying to comfort her.

"He's everything to me. My husband, the father to my daughter, my best friend. If he doesn't wake up, I don't know what I'll do."

"It's going to work out, Rachel," I say as I give her a side hug. 

Nevaeh starts reaching towards Nick and making random noises. The noises are repetitive as if she was trying to communicate something to us, but neither one of us understand her.

"That's daddy, honey," she coos, forcing a smile.

 Nevaeh calls out, "daddy!" with the cutest and purest voice I've ever heard. She keeps reaching towards him wanting him to carry her, but unfortunately he can't.

"She's never said that before," Rachel starts to cry, "and he missed it. He didn't hear her say daddy." 

"You know, sometimes people in comas can still hear everything around them, so maybe he did hear her say it," I tell her. She gives me a weak smile.

  She cries softly over him and Nevaeh grasps her necklace to put in her mouth. Rachel is so devasted that she doesn't do anything about it. 

  I rub her back and she thanks me for being here.

"Why don't we talk to him? You know, assuming he does hear us," I say.

She wipes away her tears and faces Nick again. "Hi, Love. How's it going inside that beautiful brain of yours?"

"C'mon Nick, you better wake up. Otherwise I'm going to steal all your stuff and sell it in ebay, so I can afford a new car," I joke around. Rachel laughs. 

"If you don't wake up, Lloyd is gonna steal your dead body."

Well, that was morbid, but okay I can work with that. "Yeah! And I'll sell that on ebay, too!"

Why is our coping mechanism to make jokes about him dying? 

After a few minutes of us joking around with Nick, we leave and give Dan and Johnny a chance to go in. The room was quiet expect for a few mumbled words exchanged between the two. Guess they don't have the same twisted way of coping with the situation. They leave the room with fallen faces. Adam goes in, and Rachel takes a second round to say hi. 

Later on, a bunch of doctors step in to run tests on Nick to test his brain activity. I watch them fixate a lot with his eyes. Unaware of the reasoning, I inform them of Nick's blindness in his left eye, but they seem unphased. They shine a bright light both of his eyes, take a cotton swab and sweep it across his open eye, they hold his eyes open and move his head from side to side, along with a bunch of other strange procedures. 

The physicians speak amongst themselves and write things down, making my stomach sink. I can't particularly hear or understand what they're saying from where I am, so it has built up unessasery amount of suspense.

I turn around, noticing that Georgette has finally arrived to help Johnny out. He kisses her and then embraces her with every inch of love in his body.

After they're done with the odd tests, they inform us that Nicholas does seem to have an active brain, for his reflexes are still working the way they should. A spark of hope lights up the atmosphere. Adam and Johnny bring us into a group hug, making this be the nicest feeling of the day. Unfortunately, Johnny's cast has dug into my spine without him realizing it, but it's okay.

Everyone pulls away and peace lingers in the air we share. Soft smiles are exchanged along with a sense of hope.

Johnny starts scratching his cast. "This is rediculously itchy," he complains.

Georgette smiles and rolls her eyes, "babe, scratching the cast isn't going to help."

"Fine." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pen then immediately starts shoving it down the cast.

"It's going to get stuck," everyone warns him at the same time.

"Shut the fuck up, it's not g-" he stops, "okay maybe it will. Whatever, at least it's not itchy anymore."

"You lietrally act like you're in elementary school," Dan comments.

"Yeah, fucking retard. Next one will go up your ass," Dan laughs.

Teasing Johnny about his stupid behavior might not be the most mature thing to be doing in the halls of a hospital, but if I'm being honest, I think we're milking it  so we don't have to think about anything else. Better to make fun of our friend that's healthy than to remember someone might die and cry about it.