Somebody Else ✔

I'm okay.

Cole.

Edited.

I despised hospitals.

I hated hospitals ever since my dad pushed me and I fell through glass so harshly, the shards dug into my back.

But I glanced over at Izzy and Mrs Fisher, as we sat around Mr Fisher's hospital bed, and I held up my chin.

Izzy was running her hands over Mrs Fisher's back, trying to coax her into accepting some water.

Mrs Fisher brushed off Izzy, and arose. "I'm going to find the doctors. I need to know why they were taking so long."

She left, and it was us, alone, with the comatosed body of Mr Fisher. I looked everywhere other than the bed in the center of the room.

He was hooked up to machines, a breathing tube in his mouth, and they hummed low in the background. I had listened to Izzy promise Sam her dad would be okay over the phone, and I could not bring myself to believe it for her.

He had fallen and struck his head. There was swelling on his brain, cut on his hands and arms from where he had, apparently, fallen over holding glass.

Izzy was bouncing her leg up and down, her hand clenched in a fist as she held onto the hem of her dress.

"Sweetheart, take a breath."

She laughed at me, glancing over her shoulder and found me, hiding in the corner of the room. Her eyes held mine, from behind her fake eyelashes. She pursed her red lips into a smile.

I walked forwards, and rubbed her shoulders. I kissed her jaw, and I felt her body shake.

"He looks like he's dead," she whispered, and I finally made myself look at him.

Jesus fucking Christ.

I shuddered away from the bandages around his arms, the vacant way his mouth hung open with the tube lodged in it, and his taped shut eyes.

I swallowed. "He's gonna be okay."

"I'm gonna call Corey and see how Sam is," she said, and grabbed my face to kiss me. She hesitated, and I felt her breath fan my face, before kissing my cheek and turning away.

She left me, standing next to the bed of an almost dead man.

Mr Fisher had a room to himself, and when Izzy left, I pressed myself up against the wall in the corner furthest away from his bed. It was next to the window, and I gazed out it and found nothing but an empty parch of dirt.

A TV on the wall above me was playing the news, and the only they'd been reporting for the last few hours was Michael Rose. It was muted, but still, the subtitles appeared on the screen.

It smelt like lemon air freshener, like it had when I had been admitted as a kid. I swallowed, coughing my mouth was so dry. There was water on the table next to Mr Fisher's bed, but I couldn't peel myself off the wall.

You can do this, Cole. You got this, I thought, and but still cowered away.

I jumped as the door was thrown open, and Danny burst through, his clothes askew, his face red. "You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Good, Jace told me you had gone to hospital and I didn't hear much after that," he laughed, loosening his tie. He turned and saw Mr Fisher in his hospital bed, hidden amongst the tubes. He paused. "Fucking hell."

"Yeah."

"I wanted to talk to you, but I don't think this is the place," he said, to himself. I pushed off the wall, and tentatively stepped toward Danny, grimacing.