gone ✧*｡ luke a.u.

27: august 6 2011

LUKE

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 6TH, 2011

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Luke watched Jack's face, even though there wasn't much to see. Just tubes: in his nose, his wrists, his neck.

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

Luke had never seen so many tubes in one place before.

Beep.

There was another patient in this room too, separated from Jack's side only by a thick green curtain. They were lucky. They got the window.

Beep.

"Go get some air, Luke. You've been in here long enough."

That was Dr Greenwood. He hadn't heard her come in, but now she was standing at the foot of Jack's bed, her eyes sympathetic.

Beep.

The room smelt of chemicals.

Beep.

"Come on, Luke. Let's get some food into you," she said, coming over and helping him out of the chair. His stiff legs almost buckled; he had been in that position for too long. "Jack will be okay until you get back, promise."

"Yeah," Luke said numbly, allowing Dr Greenwood to guide him from the room and down the hall. His parents were both sitting pale-faced in the waiting room, and he could see Ben a few metres away from them, crying into the arms of a girl Luke had never seen before yesterday. Apparently they were dating now.

He sat next to his dad, who placed a hand on Luke's shoulder. It was probably supposed to be reassuring. It wasn't.

"Any updates?" Liz asked, hopeful.

"Nothing more than last time," Dr Greenwood said, giving them a smile. Her version of reassuring was a lot more convincing than Luke's father's. "He's in stable condition. It's lucky we got to him when we did."

"And you still don't know who called in? Or what happened?"

Dr Greenwood sighed. "I can't tell you that. It's anonymous information unless they give us permission to speak. I'm sorry."

"No, it's okay," Liz said, nodding, but her voice didn't sound okay. It just sounded sad, and tired.

After a moment Dr Greenwood walked away, leaving Luke and his parents in silence. There were other people in the waiting room -- nurses and doctors going back and forth between locations, forlorn members of different families praying that things wouldn't go wrong -- but nobody made any effort to speak to them.

Luke checked the time. 1:30pm.

Luke checked the time. 1:37pm.

Luke checked the time. 1:41pm.

"You shouldn't just stay sitting here, Luke." That was his mum again. He didn't bother looking over. "You'll bore yourself to death."

"I'm not bored."

"Go get some air, honey," she said softly. "The time won't get any faster if you keep checking it." And that was that. Andy dropped his hand from Luke's shoulder, giving up entirely on the false pretense of strength, and Luke stood.

"I'll be back in a bit," he muttered on his way out. He didn't know where he would go. He didn't know this hospital at all; other than the death of his grandmother when he was five, Luke had never had any cause to visit. He supposed he and his family had just been lucky. For a while.

The whole hospital was the same colour. Didn't they get bored of white, and the smell of cleaning antiseptic?

He hardly watched where he was going, just stared down at his feet, monotonous step after monotonous step, left right left. There were people approaching him, he could see them in his peripheral vision, but he didn't look up.

And then he heard her voice say his name -- why was she here? He didn't know she would come -- and for a second he just froze and stared up at her. Her hair looked darker than normal today, her skin white, her eyes as grey as thunderclouds.

He breathed her name ("God, Ellie . . .") and like ice his body melted, almost collapsed, and he rushed to her, into her arms. He didn't care that Morgan was next to her, pale and clean-faced, or that they were in public and there was people around them. He didn't care. He clung onto her as tightly as he could, she was heat and she was melting the ice from him, in him, and for the first time since Tuesday morning Luke allowed himself to cry.

~:~

They sat against the wall outside the front door of the hospital, Luke's head on Ellie's shoulder as she ran her fingers through his hair. There were still some tears on his cheeks, in his eyes, but they were fading, now.

"They're saying he was lucky." Luke rubbed his eyes and tucked his knees up to his chest. "He didn't do any damage to his organs that his body won't fix over time. He won't die."

"Well, that's good, right?" Ellie said. She had stopped running her fingers through his hair while he was talking, but Luke leaned back and she started again. He closed his eyes. It felt good. Calming.

"I don't know, Ellie," he said, his voice cracking. "He's in a fucking coma. You should see him, with all those tubes everywhere, and the heart monitor, and he's so limp. . . . It's like he's already dead."

And then he was crying again, and she was holding him, whispering quiet reassurances and letting him know it was okay, it would be okay. He noticed that she hadn't said anything about how she was feeling about the whole ordeal, and wondered in the back of his mind whether this was how she acted towards her little brothers, when they were feeling down. Do everything she could to make them feel like things were alright, to make them think she was strong, and never let them know she wasn't.

That just made him feel worse, and he wanted to say something, but the tears were clogging his eyes and his throat, and he couldn't speak.

Once he'd calmed down, Ellie said, "It was my mum that called the police." Her voice was flat. "She was with him when it happened, her and some friends of theirs. She was shaken up about it all through yesterday. They had all taken stuff, not just him, and then all of a sudden they were shouting and she went over and he was vomiting everywhere, said he couldn't see, he was dizzy. Then he collapsed. She asked what he'd had and her friends had lost track. They didn't want to call in -- they were scared they would get hung up by police for illegal drug use -- but she just did it. It made no difference anyway. They ran before the cops got there."

Luke moved away from her, so he was sitting normally again, and wiped beneath his eyes. "It was good of her, to do that," he said honestly. He never thought those words would come out of his mouth, but now found himself with grudging respect for Ellie's haphazard mother.

"She didn't want to let him die." Ellie stared out across the front of the hospital, at the people and the parked ambulances and the busy street just outside. "Imagine having to watch that."

"I don't want to," Luke murmured. For the middle of the afternoon, it was dark outside, the sun shielded by heavy grey clouds. It was almost as if the whole world was feeling the same way Luke was: flat, grey, melancholy. He cleared his throat. "Why aren't you at school?"

Ellie smiled humourlessly. "Morgan didn't really care about making me go after hearing about her boyfriend's drug overdose."

"And your dad? Does he know?"

"He's in Melbourne, I think," Ellie said. "I'm beginning to lose track. Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide. There's no difference. But no, he doesn't."

"Hm." He glanced at her, and his face softened. He liked her so goddamn much, and it hit him all over again each time he saw her. "Thank you. For being here, I mean. It means a lot."

And she just looked and him and sent him this secret little smile, like the whole world was theirs and everything would be okay.

~:~

so i went like 100 years of my life not liking nicki minaj and then the pinkprint comes out and bam in love

cOmMeNt!!¡! vOtE!¡!! stay gold