This was written for The Brat Prince's birthday. She is awesome and I wrote her some sad Kames as her gift. (I also wrote her something else, but it's not fit for public consumption. :P)
Kendall's standing next to the hospital bed, staring down at James's unresponsive body.
He laces his hand into the unmoving one, cringing at the cold feeling that creeps through it and up his body. "It wasn't supposed to be this way," he whispers. "But things never did go smoothly for you, did they?"
Kendall leans back to observe The Face, but the hazel eyes remain closed and the only sign of life, the rise and fall of James's chest, is coming from one of two machines hooked up, the shrill beeping of the other grating on Kendall's already shot nerves.
"Do you remember the time we went fishing? We stood on the bank of the lake and you managed to hook something. The look on your face when you got yanked into the water because you weren't paying attention to your line but your reflection in the water instead, and came up sputtering, was hysterical. I waited for you to pitch a fit and demand that we return home, but you surprised me by grabbing your pole, baiting the hook again, and casting the line. We never did catch anything that day. I swear you must have scared away all the fish within a mile radius." Kendall smiles a little at the memory. "Of course, your insistence that you continue fishing from the water, since you were already wet, did not help matters either. I think you just wanted to be able to see your image in the water, clearer. Your teeth chattered so much on the walk home, I thought you were going to break them."
Kendall rubs his thumb over the back of James's hand, attempting to suffuse some heat back into it. James has never been this cold, not even in the dead of the Minnesotan winters when he'd wear those ridiculous fingerless gloves that kept no part of his hands warm.
This thought fills Kendall with terror, making his own body go cold, so he keeps talking.
"I'm so mad at you right now. How could you keep this huge secret from me, the guys? I should have known something was up. It doesn't take a guy a half an hour in the bathroom to get ready, not even one as pretty as you. And those 'care packages' your mother sends once a month? What beauty product needs to be replaced that often and kept refrigerated?"
Kendall pauses for a moment, waiting, hoping for James to jump in and defend himself, his actions, but the only sounds that come are the steady beep of the electrocardiogram (ECG) reader and the whoosh of the ventilator.
The sounds scare Kendall more than anything right now because Logan had snuck a look at James's chart the previous night, shortly before visiting hours were over, forcing everyone out of the ICU and being informed that they could not return until the next morning as they weren't family. Kendall put his foot down, claimed that he would sleep in the waiting room because he needed to be there when James woke up.
It was at that point that Logan grabbed his arm, and shook his head minutely. Kendall then knew James wouldn't be waking up that night. He allowed himself to be led out of the hospital and placed into the back seat of his mother's minivan. Logan climbed into the seat beside him and spent the ride back from St. Luigi's explaining James's condition and prognosis.
Everything was terribly grim.
"I found your insulin. The syringes are still hidden, but give me time, I'll find them too."
A quick knock on the door startles Kendall out of his next words. "Excuse me, sir; would you like a print made of his hand?"
Kendall looks down at the hand in his and thinks about it for a minute. He thinks about how creepy it would seem to have a handprint of an almost adult, but he knows there will be a time when the only comfort he will be able to take is to press his own hand into the print and remember the smile James would give him whenever he held James's hand.
He nods and the lady disappears, leaving him and James alone once more.
"I need to focus on the good times," he tells James. "I can't let you go while I'm still angry. But just so you know, when we meet again, James Diamond, I'm kicking your butt so hard." Kendall's voice breaks a little over his last sentence as he realizes he has to live his life without James by his side, sharing everything.
"Do you remember how we met? It was raining and your mother kept telling you to get in the car, but you wouldn't because you couldn't run fast enough from school to keep your hair from getting wet. At least that's what you were yelling back. I figured since I had to walk by her car anyway, I'd help you out. 'I'm Kendall,' I said. 'Would you like to share my umbrella?' You looked at me as if I was crazy, but you shrugged and said, 'Sure.' I walked you to your mom's car, held the door while you got in, and waved as she drove off. I saw your face the back window, looking back at me and you waved too. I'm not ready to goodbye wave again, James. Please come back."
Kendall understands what he's asking of James is next to impossible.
As Logan explained, James suffered a stroke followed by a heart attack. If the heart attack had been observed and treated in a timely fashion, James would be better than he is, but he would still have hurdles to overcome. But because James's condition hadn't been discovered until Bitters walked out to the pool side and prodded what he thought was a sleeping James, there was no way to tell how long he had been unconscious. The scan this morning showed that James was now brain dead.
It was the worst news imaginable.
That's what Kendall thought until he saw Mrs. Diamond at the door of 2J.
"Kendall, honey, I need to speak with you."
Kendall brought her to his and James's bedroom, trying to disguise the way his eyes kept straying to James's bed, hoping that if he stared hard enough, James would appear and be as healthy as Kendall always believed him to be.
"Kendall."
Kendall snapped his eyes up to Brooke Diamond, taking in her appearance for the first time since she arrived at the apartment. She was make-up free and Kendall could see that her clothes were less than figure flattering.
"He loves you so much. That night you guys auditioned for Gustavo, he was mad afterward- at himself. He told me about how the two of you had kissed over hot chocolate the week before and how he felt that you were turning down Gustavo's offer so you could stay in Minnesota and be with him even though you were the better singer. He didn't want to be the one to hold you back then and I'm sure he doesn't want to hold you back now."
Kendall heard her sigh before she destroyed his world with seven words. "There's no easy way to say this, Kendall. I'm taking James off of life support."
The anger resurfaces quickly, "You should have told me about your diabetes! I would have looked out for you, made sure you were eating well," and it dissipates just as rapidly. "…and that's why you didn't say anything. You wanted a boyfriend, not a nurse or another mom. I get it."
There's another knock at the door. "Kendall, it's time," his mother says.
The room floods with people.
Kendall looks around and sees all the people James cared about standing near his bed.
Kelly's leaning on Gustavo, sobbing into her tissue; Carlos and Logan are consoling each other; Mrs. Knight is doing her best to keep her eyes on both Kendall and Mrs. Diamond, even if they are on opposite sides of James's hospital bed, with Katie plastered to her side.
Mr. Diamond is the only one who stands as far as he can get from James while still being considered to be in the same room.
The doctor walks in, weaves through the small crowd and switches off the ventilator. She turns and walks out again, leaving the group to witness James taking his last medically forced breath.
The ECG reader doesn't instantaneously flat line like Kendall assumes it would.
Instead, the beeps slow down, get further and further apart as minutes pass, until it feels like they've been watching James die for hours. Kendall can't help but glance up at the clock and think, How much longer do I have to do this?
He will swear until his own last breath, that James's spirit must have heard his painful thought and let go of the body it was clinging to, because that's when the ECG flat lines.
James is dead.
"Goodbye," Kendall whispers. "I love you."