—&& He’d hated hospitals for as long as he could remember, the brightness, the cleanliness, but worst of all, the smell. It reminded him of his parents, two people who spent most of his youth at the hospital and the few moments he saw them he was overwhelmed by the smell that embraced their clothes, his mother’s hair, her hands. In a way it made him despise the one place they chose to spend they time instead of spending it with him, how childish, how incredibly selfish, that’s what he was, selfish.
He’d gotten the news late on Friday evening, with a beer in his left hand and laughter surrounding him before that one call had made it all stop with a loud sound of glass breaking against the cement floor, the small amount of liquid left in the bottle saturating the surface while his tears did the same to his cheeks. “We never know what will happen tomorrow, if there will be an atom bomb hitting our city and we’ll all end up dead. All we really know, is that life is now” A line from one of his favorite books, he’d repeat to himself every now and then to make sure he was living in the moment, to make sure he was putting enough into what was in front of him and to appreciate the short moment of happiness those moments could bring him, before it could be snatched away, gone.
Waiting was painful and he found himself rocking back and forth on the cold seat in the ER, covering his ears in a desperate attempt to quiet down his own thoughts that were running way too fast for him to catch up. He was a mess. He’d sobered up but his stomach was now turning and he could feel the saliva production increasing in his mouth as he kept swallowing it back down, too exhausted to move from his spot to throw up. If there was one thing being an idol had taught him, it was control over his body physically. He could ignore physical pain and keep things back momentarily as long as he focused enough and right now it seemed like a blessing. Hours passed and he eventually fell asleep with his eyes still wet, only to be woken up by a nurse in her late forties once it was alright for outsiders to visit. For a split second he forgot what was going on, but then it hit him again like a punch to his chest and he was walking to the room with anxious steps, oh Daise k, please be okay.