AN: Wow, super amazed by the response I've gotten off this. Because of that, I'm giving you a super fast update, so you can all find out what actually happened to Artie that put him in the hospital. Also there is some very, very mild and passive swearing in this chapter, but I'm keeping the rating at K+ because like I said, it's really pretty tame as far as swearing goes. If it offends anyone let me know and I'll boost the rating.
Also, I wanted to say that I'm open to suggestions for a better title for this story. "No Air" is just a working title for now because I couldn't come up with anything original. All suggestions are welcomed!
Chapter 2
After I hang up the phone I sit on the floor of the hallway for a while, letting my reeling brain catch up with the rest of my body. There's a sort of numbness in my chest and something in the rational part of my brain tells me it's shock. It also tells me that if I don't get a move on and get my ass to that hospital before it wears off then I'm going to wind up a hysterical mess somewhere between here and there.
Hauling myself up, ignoring the twinge in my kneecaps which I'm sure are bruised, I bolt out of the school before any teachers can come across me and try to send me back to class. It's not until I'm out in the parking lot that I realize an issue I hadn't considered: how I'm getting to the hospital. I turn in the direction of my house before remembering there's not a car there I can borrow; Mom's taken hers to work and Dad's is at the airport parking garage in Cleveland. There's always the bus, but who knows when the next bus heading for Lima General will come through and there's no way I can just stand around waiting in a bus shelter while my best friend's in the OR.
Gritting my teeth, there's really only one solution. Without even considering the irrationality of what I'm doing, I take off running toward Main Street, which I can follow all the way up to the hospital. I'm suddenly feeling really grateful that I only had the time to put on my sneakers this morning instead of the boots I'd been planning on. And in a way, the motion of running is actually relaxing. I'm so close to panic that the simple act of doing something keeps it at bay. I try not to think of Artie or what could be happening with him right now. All I focus on is not stopping.
I've gotten most of the three miles between McKinley and Lima General, and I can see the hospital looming up ahead of me. I ignore the fact that my lungs are burning and my legs are starting to ache. I fix my eyes on the huge white building.
Someone steps out of a business next to me and I hurriedly dodge to the side to avoid running into them. My ankle turns funny underneath me and I can't catch my balance, hitting the ground on all fours and buckling to my side. Before the person can even finish asking if I'm alright, I'm on my feet and moving again. The stinging in my ankle is pushed aside for the fact that the hospital is only a block away.
I keep going all the way into the reception desk and the nurse behind the counter is giving me a half-concerned, half-terrified look. I lean against the countertop, trying to catch enough breath to ask her where Artie's at, and the nurse is asking me "What's the matter, miss?"
"Tina!" I spin on my heel to see Mr. Abrams get up from one of the plastic chairs in the reception area. He has Artie's same big blue eyes and it sends a horrified pang through my chest. What if I never see those eyes again? I try not to think about that as I stumble over to meet him. He looks at me in alarm. "Did you run the whole way here?"
"Mom – has – the – car," I gasp out, clutching the stitch in my side. "Where – is – he?"
"You should have said something, I'd have come to get you. Come on, come with me." Mr. Abrams looks like he'd still like to say more about my sudden interest in cross country sprinting, but he shakes his head. Placing a hand on the back of my shoulder, he leads me down some of the scary blank, utilitarian halls.
"Is – is – is he – he-?" I am still breathing so heavily I am having a nightmare of a time getting a sentence out. This is even worse than having a stutter, I think in awe.
Thankfully, Mr. Abrams speaks 'winded and panicking teenager.' "He's still in surgery," he says grimly. "We haven't heard anything yet." Not exactly the sort of reassuring answer I'd been hoping for.
I'm pretty much blind to everything else in the world as we make our way farther into the hospital. The weird thing about these hallways is that they never seem to stop twisting, and we're always turning another corner. And they never end so we can just freakin' be there already. The only plus is that the time gives me the chance to get my breathing back to relative normal.
"Oh Tina!" I look up and manage to focus on Mrs. Abrams' face, pale and tear-stained. She summons up a faint smile for me. We're in another waiting room like the one at the reception area, and Mrs. Abrams stands up from a chair. She walks over and touches my other shoulder, steering me into one of the chairs that lines the room.
I sink into it gratefully; my legs are shaking, my knees sting, and my ankle is starting to throb. I can feel the adrenaline of my fear seeping out and as it does I become aware of all the places I'm hurting. Besides my legs, my chest feels unnaturally tight, every breath sharp, and my left arm is stinging where it scraped the cement when I fell. Not to mention, I've got a monstrous headache forming. And the worst part is that the numbness of shock is wearing off and I can feel the panic rising in me.
Mrs. Abrams rubs a hand over my back, her smile sad. "I'm so sorry for panicking you, honey, I just – I knew he'd want you to be here."
"Th-thank you," I ask and my nerves make my stutter come back for real. "What - wh-what happened?"
"Pulmonary embolism." That sounds like a term I might have heard before but I've got absolutely no inkling as to what it means other than it sounds bad. Mrs. Abrams must notice I'm clueless because she says, "It's when a blood clot gets into your heart and lungs." Okay I'm no doctor but even I can tell that having a hunk of congealed blood pushed through your vital organs is not a good thing. "He's prone to the clots in his legs because of his paralysis, but we never expected something like this. He seemed fine one minute and then…" She trailed off with a haunted look in her eyes.
I look down at my hands, not able to keep her gaze anymore, and see that they are shaking. My pulse still feels ridiculously loud in my ears as I try to digest what she's telling me. "Will he-?"
"We're not really sure," Mrs. Abrams says and I can hear her voice starting to get emotional, her maternal strength facade fading away pretty fast. "It depends on how things go in surgery."
This has got to be the least encouraging answer in the history of suck-ish answers. Now that I'm just sitting and waiting, helplessness floods into me and the last of my shock disappears. The true terror of the situation attacks me like a rabid animal. Artie, my best friend in the whole world, is behind those white doors marked 'OR' getting his chest whacked open and no one has any idea if we'll ever see him alive again.
Before I'm even aware of it, I'm crying and shaking so bad I'm almost slipping out of my chair. I don't pull away when Mrs. Abrams puts a hand to the side of my neck and guides my head onto her shoulder, and she wraps me in her arms, letting me cry on her. I feel so helpless, like I little kid, and I force myself tighter into her embrace. I can feel her tears dripping onto my neck, and a few seconds later Mr. Abrams has kneeled down in front of us and puts an arm around both of us so we're all crying together. It doesn't make anything less scary, if anything it makes me more scared because the strong adults are just as freaked as I am, but it does feel good to not feel alone.
It seems like it's been hours when I'm finally out of tears and we eventually all pull apart. Mr. Abrams goes to sit in the chair on the other side of his wife, taking her hand. I straighten up in the chair, wiping my face on the backs of my hands. Mrs. Abrams glances sideways at me and gives a watery chuckle, fishing a tissue out of her purse and handing it to me. "Your make-up is a mess, sweetie," she informs me. I look down at my hands and realize they are black with streaked eyeliner. "There's a bathroom right over there," she says kindly and points at a door in the hall outside the room.
"Thanks," I say and stand up. It's only now that I'm on my feet again that I feel the real agony of my legs. My ankle is trembling like crazy under me, but I manage to hide my limp as I go into the restroom. Once inside, I take the time to get a good look at my legs. My bare knees are skinned and bright red, already turning black in the middles, but thankfully they aren't bleeding. Over the rim of my sneakers, my right ankle looks swollen.
Shaking my head, I turn to look in the mirror and almost flinch back at the sight of my reflection. My eyes are puffy and red, my skin is really pale, and my make-up is running in streaky lines down my face and even onto my neck. I know there's no point in redoing it, because I can still feel the shuddering in my chest that warns me I could very well start crying again at any moment, so I turn on the sink and wash off my face. When I look up at myself again I look weird without make-up, not to mention that I sort of look like I'm twelve. But at least I don't look like the fifth member of KISS anymore, so that's definitely something.
Taking the extra time to wash off my knees, hands, and the rough red scrape on my left arm, I finally judge myself as suitable as I'm gonna get. It's not like I've ever really been as obsessed with my looks as the other girls my age anyway. Besides, there are just a couple things that seem way more important right now, or really just the one thing. Or one person.
It's not until I'm back out in the waiting room that I realize I'm still hauling around my schoolbag. When I sit down beside Mrs. Abrams again I take it off and drop it onto the floor under my chair. Mr. Abrams is gone, but he comes back ten minutes later with three steaming cups of coffee. I have never been so thankful for a hot drink in my life, and I don't even mind that I scald my tongue as I take a drink. None of us talk, all of us too tense but every time the doors to the ER open all three of us simultaneously look up and then down in disappointment when the doctors walk over to someone else.
This anxiety is driving me insane and it takes all of my will power to not get up and start pacing circles in the middle of the room just to be doing something. I check my phone and see that I've got a concerned text from both Mercedes and Kurt, asking if I really did ditch Mr. Spencer's class and where I'm at and why I'm not answering. I'm really not up to explaining to them, not right now when I don't really have any definite news to give. Shutting off the power to my phone, since I'm pretty sure there's some sort of rule saying I'm not actually supposed to have it on in the hospital, I stuff it back into my bag.
My hand brushes something else and I pull out my mp3 player, gratefully stuffing the headphones into my ears and turning on the music. Music has always been my solace. This time it fails me; almost every single song on there is one I got from Artie or one that we're singing in Glee or just one that reminds me of Artie somehow. It's not even five minutes later when I bury the player back inside my bag in frustration.
They have to know something by now, don't they? He's got to have been in there for ages now, although a glance at the clock tells me it's not actually near as long as it feels. How long does surgery usually take? I don't know, I've never actually been in an OR waiting room before. The only time I've been in a hospital was when we went to see my grandma before she died, and that's not exactly giving me the most optimistic outlook.
I'm not really religious (my family's religious views are a weird blur because both of my parents belong to different religions but neither of them are really active members), but as I sit there and stare determinedly at the plain white doors with the stupid little narrow windows in them, I'm praying. Please, whatever god there is, please oh please just let Artie be okay. I'll do anything, as long as he's okay.
I jump as the doors open and I try not to let my hopes get up. The female doctor looks around the room and then her eyes land on our group and she heads for us. In a flash, all three of us are on our feet. Mrs. Abrams grabs my hand and I squeeze it back.
The doctor gives me a bit of a confused look and I can guess why (a family of white people and a random Asian) before she looks back at Artie's parents. "Are you the Abrams?" the doctor asks when she gets to us, taking off the crinkly paper shield over her mouth. She looks sort of happy and I feel my heart jump. Please, please, please…
"How's Artie?" Mr. Abrams asks immediately.
"The surgery went well," the doctor says and Mrs. Abrams is squeezing my hand so tight I can't feel my fingers anymore even though I'm squeezing right back. "There was a bit of trouble draining his lungs, his left lung collapsed from the pressure, but it was fixed easily and it shouldn't be any more trouble. Other than that, everything went really, really well. Your son is very strong. As long as no complications come up, he should make a full recovery."
"Can we see him?" Mrs. Abrams asks in a small voice.
"He's just coming out of post-op right now, and they're moving him up to a room in ICU as we speak," the doctor says. "He's still under the anesthesia and we expect him to be for several more hours, but you should be able to go up to his room. I'll have a nurse come get you when he's settled in."
My head feels really light and I think for a moment I'm going to faint. If it weren't for Mrs. Abrams holding onto my hand so tight I'm pretty sure I would have. Either way, I slump down into my seat and fight back another wave of tears. Artie's okay. He's going to be fine. I glance skyward and think, Thanks.