What Happens Next

disclaimer: I do not own any of this, all the characters and original plot belong to Colleen Clayton

I knew I shouldn't have ripped Corey apart like that, but he didn't understand what I went through. He couldn't anyway, as I haven't told him, but like that would make a difference. I just walked away from him. I can't run anymore anyway, my legs are suffering horribly from the hours a day that I run. So I walk to an out-of-the-way grocers, and get two punnets of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. As I feel the frosted plastic container against my hands, I realise how hot I am, on a particularly cold day as well. It was as if that frozen feeling in my hands had heightened my senses slightly, and I became aware of a pain in my abdomen. My breath came in short gasps. 'It's the adrenaline', I told myself. I carry on, ice cream slowly melting, my feet slowly scuffing the pavement, all the way to the beautiful house by the lake. It still sits there, unsold. I don't know why. I enter the alarm code and I'm in. I sit in the middle of the large empty sitting room, scooping out my Häagen-Dazs with a dessert spoon I find in a kitchen drawer. Though swallowing was becoming an issue for me, painful even, I end up eating over one and a half punnets of ice cream before I get The Urge. I try to stop it, just putting down the spoon and curling up in tight ball, all ribs and knees. But I still feel bloated, guilty. Before I can stop it, I walk towards the bathroom and kneel before the toilet. The rank smell tickles my nose, and I can feel the nausea rise up my throat without even sticking my fingers down it. But I do it anyway. As soon as I'm done, I'm rocked with waves of guilt. Guilt over what I said to Corey, guilt over binging, guilt over the vomiting. I crawled out on my hands and knees, back to the sitting room, and I tried to stand. But I couldn't properly rise. There was something wrong, and the pain in my abdominal area was increasing at such a rate, my breath was coming out in short, sharp gasps and it hurt to breath all through my chest. I could feel my heart beating in my ears, and then I truly started to panic. My vision blurred, and in some part of my slowly departing consciousness, I wondered if I was having a heart attack. The last thing I remember feeling is somebody's cold hands wrap around me and lift me up…

I breathed. It felt like my abdomen was being shredded open from the inside. It was pure agony. "Sid? Sid? I think she's waking up!" I wanted to wake up, but my eyes just wouldn't open. The voice though, it sounded like Corey's, and more than ever, I just wanted him with me. I drifted back into the realm of unconsciousness.

When I awoke again I opened my eyes immediately, and though it wasn't entirely pain free, it was easier to breathe. A pristine white ceiling came into view and I became aware of a steady beeping. Hospital. Why am I in hospital? I was able to move my head slightly to the left, stopping just before the wooziness overtook me again and spotted Corey, his lanky frame sprawled over the peppermint couch, snoring lightly. Seeing him at peace like that was in such strong contrast to when I last saw him, his face twisted with anger, anger at me, I felt tears wet my cheeks. He stirred. I tried to call out to him but found my throat was raw, unable to make a sound. It was as if I'd yelled though, as he suddenly flicked his eyes open, jerking with such force he all but flew off the couch! As his eyes rose and met with mine, he jumped up and ran to my bedside. It scared me to see his eyes had a slight, teary shimmer to them. "Oh Sid, I thought we were going to lose you, oh God, you're so thin, and you should've told me about that creep at the ski trip, I wouldn't of been mad at all! And now you're sick, and have to have surgery and I should have noticed!" I don't know if my utter confusion showed in my eyes, but he kindly elaborated; "Your mother and I arrived at the house by the lake and the door was unlocked, and we rushed in because we heard retching, and you were lying there on the floor, with blood pooling at the side of your mouth, and oh Sid, you were so pale, and your ribs were jutting out all over the place, and so we called the ambulance, and they came and took you away and I wasn't allowed in the ambulance with you because I'm not family, and they wouldn't let anybody in for the first hour you were in here, for a proper diagnoses I s'pose, and then I was allowed in, and they told me you had an esophageal rupture, and that it's terrible, caused by forceful vomiting, oh Sid I knew you were sick and I did nothing, and what it is, is a rip in between your lungs and your throat or something? Anyway, it requires surgery, and it's dangerous, and I've been here ever since, waiting for you to wake up." As soon as he breathed out, it was like he was ten years older. He looked beaten. I hated that I was responsible for that. "Sid, you could've died". At this point, I couldn't summon up much comfort, the painkillers were kicking in again, but I tried telling him how sorry I was with my eyes. I don't think it got through. But it was becoming so hard to keep them open…

I briefly awoke again, only once, and I was being wheeled out of my room. As soon as an assisting nurse saw I was awake, she did something to one of the many tubes emerging from me, and my consciousness was off again like the flick of a light switch.

Cory

She wasn't coming out of surgery. In fact, more people, doctors and such, were running in. I was scared. Something was going wrong in there, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I stared numbly at the door from the small out-of-the-way waiting room; it was flapping from the last swarm of doctors converging on her. Another doctor came barrelling around the corner, and I didn't realise what I was doing until I had stood up and grabbed his arm.

"What's going on" I asked in a low voice. The doctor just sent one scared look at me, tore his arm out of my slackened grip and hurried off. I slumped back on the plastic chair, and at some point must have drifted off to sleep. I awoke with Sid's mom leaning over me, gently shaking my shoulder, and her tear stained face right up close to mine.

"Corey?" she whispered my name.

"Yeah?" I mumbled back, still a little groggy.

"Something's gone wrong with the esophageal surgery" her lip quivered.

"She's going into cardiac arrest, and they're trying to get her hearts arrhythmia working properly again, and it's possible that she could die within minutes…" she broke into a sob and ran down the corridor, her footsteps pounding like my heart.

Sid

I was asleep. No, I was unconscious, and despite my brain being slightly awake now I couldn't seem to make my body obey anything. It felt like I was floating, floating into nothingness, with bright white balls of light dancing around me. As I became more alert, I became vaguely of pressure on my chest, voices rumbling in the distance, a tinge of panic to them. Suddenly, I was on fire, I couldn't breathe, it felt like my lungs were having the life squeezed out of them, and the worst thing was, I couldn't feel my heart beating in my throat. It had stopped.

Corey

I couldn't move from the seat. I just sat there, replaying all the moments we'd had together, how I would look at her from the corner of my eye when we first watched TV down in the school basement, my birthday on the boat, and all I could think was

"She's going to be ok, she'll survive this, she'll start eating again, and we'll be together forever."

I repeated this mantra in my head, trying to keep the pessimistic side of me locked up. It still reared its head from time to time though.

I must have drifted off again at some point, only to be woken by the screams of some poor patient. I opened my eyes, careful not to look into the harsh hospital overhead lights, dragged my head up from the back of the chair and cricked it. The screaming was still going strong. As I looked around to see where it was coming from, I spotted Sid's mom.

But as I watched her, I realised I had heard her far before I saw her.

Her screams were screams of pure agony, the gut wrenching cries of someone who had lost their love.

Sid

I was up and running towards her, and when I reached her, she turned and clung to me, tears pouring down her face. A doctor stood slightly back from her, a look of sympathy on his face, awkwardly playing with his I.D. tag, like he wasn't usually confronted with grief stricken family.

He looked at me pityingly, and with an almost straight face, he told me that her heart had stopped. They had tried to get it going again for 40 minutes, but it was futile, and she was gone.

She, was gone.

Dead.

Never to return.

I'm not too sure what happened after that.

I suppose it was like what happened when I was little, when our neighbour's kid killed our kittens. But that was of rage. This memory hole is from utter pain.

Everyone from our school attended her funeral.

Starsha, the girl who tortured Sid since they were little, was sitting right up front, a rather low-cut little black dress as mourning wear, and sobbing into a tissue, careful not to smudge her impeccable make up. I sat in the back to the far left corner. I watched the procession stonily as one by one, her class stood up and recited something cliché and impersonal. The after-funeral gathering was an upbeat affair, with people having had the doom and gloom put to the back of their minds. I couldn't stand it. I saw Sid's mom sitting in the corner, with what I'm pretty sure is her third bottle of beer this afternoon. "She doesn't need me right now" I think. So I leave. I just walk where my legs take me. I think about 'Dax Windsor'. Sid's mum told me about him, what he did to her "this is all his fault" I think bitterly. And it is. If he hadn't raped poor Sid, she wouldn't have gotten sick. And she wouldn't have...died. Grief was rolling around inside me, and I walked towards the docks, thinking the sea air would help me clear my head. 'Dax' will go to prison now, it was inevitable. He'd go away for years, at least for numerous rape charges if not second- degree murder. I stood on the edge of the sea wall, leaning towards the water. The road was empty behind me, and I contemplated jumping in. Ending it all. I was almost mentally preparing myself for the end already. Life without Sid was nothing at all. As my muscles started tensing of their own accord, I thought about Sid. How she wouldn't want me to do this. How it was cowardly. Just as I was about to step back from the edge, a car came speeding around the bend, and as it past me, the force knocked me in.

I fell into the deep bottomless blue.