A/N; Ahhhh, so okay, I've been really really intensely into writing this fic, so I don't think I'm even going to apologize for the quick-ish update. I will, however, apologize for the amount of sadness that his chapter brings. Little sad puppy Carlos hurts my heart, but it was a necessity for the story (and I won't lie to you it's only going to get even more emotional from here on out.) As you'll see indicated below, the POV this chapter is Carlos's, and next up is Kendall's chapter, so hopefully that's looked forward to or something. This chapter's also a little on the longer side, but hopefully that's not an issue either.

Thank you so much to the few of you I've see interest from thus far for this fic, I appreciate it loads!

Enjoy~

-Kay.


Chapter 2-

(Carlos)

As if James leaving for a week wasn't enough "abandonment" for one day, Kendall and Logan had both decided their plans with their girlfriends held more importance than keeping Carlos company. Even Katie had shot down the opportunity to potentially destroy him and his high score record on Zombie Slayer. So what did he do instead? The best thing he could think to do when his friends had better things to do: attempt to beat his own high score. After a variety of self pep talks complete with lucky taps to the hockey helmet on his head and a handful of different button mashing techniques, he was still entirely unsuccessful.

Huffing, the Latino boy tossed the controller down on the couch beside him and flopped facedown on the cushion on his opposite side. God, he was so bored. Potentially, he could have gone down to the pool and done a few cannonballs to impress the recent influx of new kids, but oddly enough he didn't feel like showing off at the moment. Groaning, he sat up again and glared intently at the grimy font reading "game over" on the large flat screen TV.

"Oh, I am so going to beat you." He declared aloud.

His stomach rumbling audibly cut him short in reaching to pick up the controller again.

"After I have a couple corn dogs." He finished.

He tried to ignore the dinosaur chicken nuggets tucked in the freezer with the corn dogs, frowning as instinct almost led him to turn toward the couch and ask the currently absent brunet if he wanted some. Because if James wasn't off on Diamond family vacation he definitely would have been playing video games with Carlos instead of being like Logan and Kendall and ditching him for girls, obviously.

After scarfing down the couple corn dogs he made for himself, Carlos was back to the couch once again, back to his relentless attempts to beat the high score he had created. Several tries went by again before he finally managed to beat the score by a mere 43 points. Pumping a fist up in the air with an enthusiastic cheer, he turned to the other couch with his hand held up in the air expectantly. It dropped once again as he frown, realization hitting him for yet another time.

It wasn't that he was clingy with James, it was just that James was always there. Not to say that Kendall and Logan weren't there for him or didn't hang out with him, but it was different with James. James never had the 'Jo and I have plans' lines. James didn't look at him like he was crazy when he asked imaginative questions like whether or not he could manage a cannonball from the Palm Woods roof. More often than not, James and Carlos were hanging out, and they got each other. The brunet had only been gone for a few hours and the smaller boy was already struggling with his absence.

"Carlos, sweetie, have you seen my-" Mrs. Knight's voice cut off as she came out of her room and found her phone vibrating on the table.

He looked over inquisitively at her, noting the look of question on her face as she looked at the caller ID on her phone screen before picking up finally. Carlos's attention diverted to the video game once again as he scrolled through letters and punched in his name for yet another high score in zombie killing.

"Oh my god."

His attention immediately snapped from the video game on the TV in front of him over to Mrs. Knight, concern filling his dark eyes. The woman brought a hand up to her mouth, her eyes visibly welling up with tears that the boy could notice even from across the room. He hurriedly stood and moved over to her at the table with a frown.

"Mama Knight?" he questioned carefully.

She didn't acknowledge him right away, pulling her hand from her mouth only to nod stiffly as if whoever was on the phone could actually see her do so. A moment later she was rushing to grab her purse and car keys, muttering into the phone how she was 'leaving now and would be there as soon as possible.' As soon as the phone call ended, the woman's tear-filled gaze fell on the teenage boy that was still looking at her worriedly, awaiting some sort of explanation.

"There's been an accident…" she said softly.

His breath caught in his throat momentarily before his brow furrowed further in confusion. Kendall was down at the pool with Jo, Logan was over at Camille's helping her run lines for her most recent audition, Katie was helping Buddha Bob with some cleaning ritual he was doing for the weekend, which only left-

Brown eyes widened as realization dawned on him.

"J-James?"

The subtle nod in response suddenly had him feeling dizzy. James? An accident? James in an accident? He felt nauseous, like he had just gotten off one of those scrambler carnival rides he always felt the need to go on when there was one. He needed to sit down before he fell over, he thought. However, he also needed to know what had happened, what the phone call was about.

"Is he-" An overly breathy laugh full of nervous hysteria escaped the seventeen year old. "I mean, James- he's okay, right?"

Mrs. Knight's jaw trembled as she remained quietly, looking at him sadly.

"Ohhh, I'm gonna throw up."

He bent over the back of one of the chairs at the table, forehead pressing against the cool surface as he attempted to take a couple deep breaths. They ended up being short and quick, doing absolutely nothing to help the sickly turning in his stomach or any of his oncoming panic.

"I have to get to the hospital right away." Mrs. Knight spoke unevenly.

Standing up again, his stinging brown eyes, brimming with tears of his own, landed on the woman.

"I'm coming with you." He started to not, but then a thought occurred to him. "Kendall and Logan.. They don't-"

She shook her head. "No time. I should be gone already as it is. You can either come with me now and we'll call them once we know what's going on or you can stay here for now, but either way I have to leave right now."

There was no time for him to give it any extensive thought. It really only took him a matter of seconds to decide. He wanted to know what was going on, he needed to. Kendall and Logan deserved to know, too, and they would, soon enough. But this was James, there was no way Carlos would be able to continue to stay at the Palm Woods knowing something was horribly wrong with his best friend. He was going. That was final. With a nod of affirmation, he hurriedly followed Mrs. Knight as they rushed down to the car to get on their way.

Mrs. Knight let him out of the car in the drop off area, leaving him to sprint his way into the Emergency Room waiting area as she went to park. Immediately, Carlos darted passed other people to the receptionist desk, slightly short of breath as he practically leaned over the counter into the woman's face.

"My friend- was in- an accident." He got out between short breathed, his chest feeling tight as the threat of crying persisted. "James Diamond. His name's James Diamond."

"Son, I'm going to need you to calm down." The woman spoke gently and for some reason that frustrated Carlos.

"No, don't tell me to calm down!" He raised his voice. "Where is James? I need to see James."

The receptionist looked far from thrilled while simultaneously like she was no stranger to this sort of situation. She looked over a scrawled on clipboard on her desk before typing what Carlos vaguely recognized was James's name into her desktop computer.

"Mister Diamond was brought in an hour and thirty-seven minutes ago and rushed into immediate emergency surgery, I'm sorry, so, but you can't see him right now." The sandy haired woman explained.

The boy's hands curled into fists at his sides, a slew of random demands and questions lingering on the tip of his tongue, threatening to escape between the teeth he ground tightly together to try to conceal some of the trembling his jaw was doing. Once again, his eyes welled up with moisture, tears he angrily blinked back. He opened his mouth to ask at least one more question, but he was cut off as Mrs. Knight finally joined him at the counter.

"I'm Jennifer Knight, I was the emergency contact for James." She explained.

It only occurred to Carlos then that the fact that Mrs. Knight was contacted at all raised a different series of questions. James had been in the car with his parents, they were there. The lack of mention of them was very slowly starting to sink in. With a faint, barely lingering hope, the boy turned to let his eyes roam over the waiting area. A little girl sat with her mother, cradling what was probably a broken wrist against her chest. A young couple with a wailing baby that through the screaming and crying even Carlos could recognize sounded like he had a cold or something of the like. An elderly looking man with an oxygen machine hooked up to tubes at his nose. There was a variety of people scattered about the generic waiting room setting, but not one of those people was Matthew or Brooke Diamond, waiting for news on their son and the support of extended family.

Very slowly, Carlos turned back toward the two women who were seemingly discussing any of James's known medical information. He kept his voice low, much, much quieter than the frantic yelling that had left him a minute before as he spoke up again.

"Where are his parents?"

The receptionist's eyes flicked sideways to Mrs. Knight, as if to determine whether or not she should actually answer the question in front of the teenager. He felt almost sure that he already knew the answer. It made him start to feel nauseous all over again just thinking about it, he didn't think the confirmation was going to help that at all, but he needed to know for certain.

"Only one patient was brought in from their vehicle." The woman –Kathy, as he finally realized her nametag indicated- answered solemnly.

That seemed to be the straw that broke the camel's back. His resolve crumbled in a moment. His tear-brimming eyes fell closed as he barely gave a nod just before turning away from the counter. He breathed in shakily as he walked a little ways away from the reception desk, his hand coming up to run back over his head. He had completely forgotten he had removed the typical helmet from his head, leaving it in Mrs. Knight's car. A tiny, insignificant detail, yet enough to help him understand the seriousness, the absolute severity of the situation. Jaw trembling, a sob broke out from between his teeth, his hand quickly moving from his head to clasp over his mouth.

A hand gently touched his shoulder and as he turned to meet a familiarly teary gaze from Mrs. Knight, he crumpled entirely. In an instant, his head was buried against the woman's shoulder, warm tears soaking into her blouse as her arms moved to wrap around him and hold onto him tightly, comfortingly. She simply let him cry against her for several moments, barely managing to maintain her own composure.

It was all too much. James was in emergency surgery for god only knew what. Brooke and Matthew were both dead. It felt like it shouldn't be real, it was too cinematic. This stuff was only supposed to happen on TV and in movies, it wasn't supposed to be real. James wasn't supposed to be in the emergency room. His parents weren't supposed to be just gone from the world in the blink of an eye.

They weren't Carlos's parents, and as involvement went, Brooke and Matthew were probably the least involved in things having to do with all of them out of the rest of their parents, but that didn't change that he somehow felt overly broken up about their being gone, still. James's relationship with his parents had been rocky at best after the divorce, Carlos knew that. He had been one of the constants in James's life at the time, all three of them had been, always making sure he was dealing okay, that he didn't need anything even if it was as simple as a distracting game of street hockey. Despite that period of time, and despite the way that the two adults had always come off as pretty intense and mildly terrifying, they were still James's parents, they still had something to do with each of their lives for a time. And now they were just gone, no coming back, and that was hard to swallow, it hurt. Carlos couldn't even imagine what it was going to do to James once he knew.

They were sitting in the waiting room for what felt like days. Carlos situated in the seat as close to the receptionist's desk as possible, waiting impatiently for news that never came. Mrs. Knight stepped outside to make phone calls at one point, filling in Kelly and Gustavo on what she knew about James so far. When she came back into the waiting room, Carlos didn't even look up from the gray tiled floor when she sat down beside him again.

"Kendall and Logan?" he mumbled.

Mrs. Knight sighed. "Kelly suggested letting her tell them."

Carlos squinted.

"I thought it best not to pick unnecessary arguments right now. There are more important things at hand." She explained tiredly.

The boy caught his trembling lower lip between his teeth as he nodded slowly. Kendall would probably be upset he didn't get the news straight from his mother, but Carlos knew that the news wasn't going to be taken well no matter who it came from. Either way, it wasn't going to be easy for the blond to get to the hospital on a moment's notice, either. The accident happening in San Diego County, James had been rushed to the nearest hospital in the area. LA was a good two to two and a half hours away from San Diego, depending on traffic. For a moment, Carlos wondered if he would be bothering with a trip home from the hospital later on. He wasn't sure he wanted to be that far from where James was. What if something happened while they were all the way back in LA still? No, he would talk to Mrs. Knight and Kelly, find a hotel if he absolutely needed to. Later. He would bring it up later.

For now, though, he had no intention of leaving that hospital. He would sit in that waiting room chair for however long it took until someone came and told him what was going on with his best friend. He just wanted to be able to see him. Carlos knew he wasn't a genius, and by no means a medical professional –the doctor thing was definitely more Logan- but he still wanted to be able to gauge for himself how James was doing. He just needed to hear his voice, everything would be okay then.

James was always good at talking. Whether it was being smooth with girls or sweet talking his way out of having to do something or an uplifting pep talk. Kendall got the vast majority of credit for lectures and pep talks, and he was good at it, but on more than one occasion Carlos could remember the brunet had come to his figurative rescue and brought him words of wisdom –however unconventional they might have been. The Latino was sure that as soon as he heard the other boy's voice, telling him everything was going to be okay, he would feel better, he might believe that.

Mrs. Knight was in and out of the waiting room a few times, having to take phone calls from Gustavo and then Kendall, he imagined, based on the way the woman came back in with fresh tears after one particular call. He thought he probably should have comforted her with at least a hug, if nothing else, but he didn't. He felt stuck sitting stiffly and quietly in his chair. It was so absolutely unlike him. In fact, it was always a sign for his friends to know that something was really wrong if Carlos was quiet. He always had some kind of energy to keep moving, always some kind of tangent to create an enthusiastic conversation out of. Now there was none of that. He didn't seem to have it in him. His tired, still-stinging gaze slowly moved sideways beside him, watching as Mrs. Knight sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with a piece of tissue.

"Kendall's on his way here." She said after clearing her throat.

Carlos wordlessly nodded his head.

"Tried to tell him I didn't really want him driving right now, all things considered, but-" Her voice shook with more oncoming tears as she tossed a hand up in a semblance of a shrug. "You know Kendall."

He nodded again, because, yeah, he really did know Kendall. He knew how absolutely stubborn Kendall could be, how once he had his mind made up about something there was no changing it. Beyond that even, Carlos understood the feeling, the inability to not be propelled forward to be there as soon as he could be. Because this was James. This wasn't just something that could be brushed to the side and put off until later. Kendall could keep it together for long enough to get there in one piece, Kendall was good at keeping it together, that was why he was the leader. Maybe Carlos would start to feel a little better once his other best friend joined him in his waiting.

It continued to feel like time was dragging on sluggishly –in reality he and Mrs. Knight had been sitting there for two hours before a nurse finally stepped out into the waiting room and quietly announced the last name Diamond. Carlos practically sprinted over to the woman, brown eyes blown wide incredulously. He didn't get to let out any one of his several lingering questions before Mrs. Knight was standing there with him and the nurse half turned toward her to speak.

"An emergency blood transfusion has become a necessity." The woman explained delicately. "Between initial injuries and surgery, he's lost a lot of blood. We have his blood type in our blood bank, but it is protocol to verify transfusions, because of the risks of blood work."

"Risks?" Carlos's voice sounded more like a squeak than an actual voice.

Mrs. Knight nodded in response to the nurse. "Do what you need to. Did- Was the surgery alright?"

Carlos was hyperaware of the careful intake of breath the nurse took before answering the question.

"The patient suffered a splintered fracture of two of his ribs on the right side. There was damage done to lung tissue that had to be treated. That sort of surgery is very complicated, as the chest has to be open-"

Turning away for a moment, Carlos felt like he might vomit. It was bad enough concocting things from an endless list of possibilities that could have happened to James, but the reality? He had the horrifying image of the brunet cut open on an operating table unable to be cleared from his mind now. Mrs. Knight was still nodding and listening along, but Carlos couldn't seem to hear anything passed the hurried echo of his pulse in his ears. He was definitely going to puke, he could feel it. Half stumbling, he found his way outside through the automatic doors.

The contents of his stomach paid an unfriendly revisit into the planter a little ways outside the doors. He winced, wrinkling his nose as he cleared his throat and grossly used the back of his hand to wipe at his mouth, then wiping what little mess he's gotten on his hand on the side of his jeans. Barely managing not to trip over his own two feet, he slumped down in a sitting heap on the cement, back against the brick structure of the planter he had just been doubled over.

"Here."

Carlos jolted at the unfamiliar voice and the half empty bottle of water being held out to him. Eyes following up the length of the arm, he was met with a dark haired woman, probably not a lot older than Mrs. Knight. She was wearing peach colored scrubs and he guessed, based on the purse over her shoulder and the car keys in her other hand, that she had just finished her shift. He hesitated another moment but then, deciding he really did want to rinse the nasty taste out of his mouth, finally took the water from her. Swishing the liquid in his mouth momentarily, he wrinkled his nose again before reluctantly swallowing.

"Anything abnormal? Blood? Extra solidity?" She asked and it took him a moment to realize that she was getting technical about his throwing up.

Instead of speaking, he settled for shaking his head slowly.

"Are you on your way in?"

Again he shook his head. This time she nodded in response, a seemingly knowing 'ah' leaving her mouth.

"Family?" she questioned.

Carlos's voice wavered as he croaked out, "Best friend."

The woman nodded a second time. "Drink some more water."

For a moment, he followed instruction and sipped at what was left of the water in the plastic bottle. As he sat quietly drinking, eyes staring blankly out into space, the overwhelmed feeling began to creep back up on him again. He wasn't about to up-chuck a second time, but as he pulled the water bottle from his mouth he thought he might start crying again.

"Surgeries, they- I mean, when people get surgeries, it's so they don't die, right?" he asked, voice sounding faintly frantic.

A vaguely sad smile crossed her face. "That's the idea."

"But-" His lower lip quivered. "But they don't- they don't always work…"

"We have extremely skilled surgeons here, fantastic doctors and nursing staff, too. But sometimes there's only so much that we can do. We do the absolute best that we can, the rest depends on the patient."

The boy nodded his head solemnly. He took a moment to chew thoughtfully at his lower lip before he finished off the last little bit of water in the bottle still. Afterwards he sighed, rubbing at an eye.

"I'm scared." He admitted softly.

With a sigh and a still faintly sad smile, the lady glanced over her shoulder for a moment, as if checking for something, before she moved to sit on the ground beside him. He was admittedly a little surprised by the gesture, but he looked over at her anyway, gaze inquiring.

"It's normal to be scared." She noted.

"Are you supposed to tell me I don't need to be scared?" Carlos mumbled.

"Actually, as a nurse having the knowledge of uncertainty that comes through here all the time, that's the exact opposite of what I'm supposed to do." She replied.

The teenager sighed again and tilted his head back against the brick planter behind him. After a few seconds of quiet thought on his behalf, he glanced sideways at her again.

"I'm Carlos, by the way." He muttered.

"Oh, I know who you are." The woman let out a light laugh. "My ten year old has you and your friends plastered all over her bedroom."

By some miracle, he managed a faint breath of a laugh. He as momentarily grateful for the fact that, despite knowing exactly who he was, she had treated him completely normal, like anyone else in a similar situation. It probably had to do with age, he figured, the lack of being star-struck or over excited. That and the situation at hand, anyway. It was nice, refreshing.

"My name's Melissa." She said finally, her facial expression gradually dropping a moment later. "Your friend, the one who's here, it he one of the other boys from your group?"

Suddenly Carlos felt like crying again as he nodded stiffly and cleared his throat. "James, yeah…"

"I'm sorry." Melissa said quietly.

"It's-" Carlos cut himself off from the automatic response, looking down.

It wasn't okay. It was so far from okay that he couldn't even think of a bad enough word for it. Which, okay, wasn't so shocking because he didn't exactly have the widest vocabulary as it was, but things were still really super bad. He hadn't even gotten through everything the nurse lady inside had been telling Mrs. Knight, for all he knew things were even worse than the earful he had actually managed to get before needing to duck outside. Admittedly, it was a lot less stressful feeling outside anyway, hospitals weren't a great place to be.

He remembered once in fourth grade in particular there was a trip to the hospital that he hated. They had been climbing a tree in the Knight's backyard. He and Kendall were climbed up in the tree, attempting to determine whether or not there was enough room for them to build a tree house for all of them up there. Logan was still his shy and quiet faze with them then, having only been living in Minnesota for a year still at the time, but Logan's being quiet didn't stop James from chattering away like everything coming out of his mouth was the most important thing to ever be spoken. Carlos didn't even remember what he had been talking about, just that he wouldn't stop.

Kendall had been so frustrated. He kept trying to get James's attention and James only ignored him and continued to talk to Logan. That was what had led the blond nine year old to chuck a pinecone from the tree down at the brunet. James had been far from amused when the thing knocked him on the back of the head. Glowering up at the thrower, he had picked the pinecone up and thrown it back up into the tree.

Of course, as good as James was in their pee wee hockey league, having good throwing aim didn't go along with that. He threw aiming for Kendall, but it was the side of Carlos's head that ended up hit, startling him enough to topple backward off the branch he was sitting on. He didn't fall out of the tree, but fumbling backwards into another thick tree branch upside down totally was unkind to his shoulder. The popping sound of the bone had caused them all to wince on impact. He had cried the whole rest of the way out of the tree, James climbing up to help Kendall get him down to the ground as quickly and carefully as they could manage while Logan ran inside to do the smart thing and get an adult.

The x-rays were the worst part of that hospital experience, Carlos thought. He had this irrational fear of looking inside of himself, it was just weird. Plus, he had been required to stay a night to make sure that he could sleep okay with the super awkward brace he ended up in. That was the worst experience. Even though he had been in and out of hospitals on behalf of his best friends due to various sporting and other such injuries, that dislocated shoulder experience had been the worst. James had said he was sorry at least thirty times. Of course, it was never something Carlos was really mad at him for, he just didn't like the hospital part.

He had thought that was the worst. That being stuck in a stupid brace in a hospital bed for a night after halfway falling out of a tree was as bad as it could get. None of the trips for Kendall's slashing gashes, or James's broken bones, or Logan's- Okay, so Logan was smart enough to know his limits and not injure himself, but he had had pretty awful, hospital-status food poisoning once in the sixth grade and that was a far from fun experience, too. The point was that none of that ever seemed quite as bad as his dislocated shoulder, nothing topped it on the horrible scale.

This did.

He wasn't even the one directly affected this time and it was still a hundred times worse. Because there was so much more than a few stitches or a cast or some pain medication and being sent on their way. James was getting surgery and blood transfusions. He was still unconscious and not at all making the "I'm so cool, imagine the stories I'll be able to tell about this" jokes that he would in any other instance. There was so much uncertainty now, so much time ticking by just sitting there waiting. Carlos wasn't particularly good at being patient even on a good day, this was even worse.

"I just want him to be awake and- and telling me that I'm acting like a girl for worrying so much." He let out a barely there chuckle as his voice shook, his brown eyes brimming with tears again.

"I'm sure you do, sweetpea." Melissa patted his bent knee in a manner that he assumed was meant to be comforting. "For now, what you do is you be strong for him just like he has to be strong for the rest of you."

Clenching his teeth together in an attempt to still the trembling of his jaw, Carlos nodded once. Melissa had to leave after that. He stood up and thanked her for her help a couple times and told her that her daughter was real lucky to have a lady like her for a mom. The woman smiled, thanked him too, and let him know what hours she usually worked in the hospital "just in case."

Once again, he ended up sitting with a very tired looking Mrs. Knight for what felt like an eternity. He told her about what had happened outside and how he had met Melissa, and she filled him in on with little detail to graphic imagery on what was going on with James. They wouldn't know if the surgery was effective entirely until after the blood transfusions were done successfully. All the stitches that had to be done away from the operating spot were done and sterilized. The broken arm he had had to wait to be casted until all operating was finished. Carlos winced his way through the explanation, each tacked on problem making him start to feel sick all over again.

By some strange miracle, he managed to doze off against Mrs. Knight's shoulder for a little while. When he groggily shifted in his chair and blinked his eyes to clear them some, he realized the other tenants in the room had changed again. They had been in the ER for nearing six hours now, he supposed he couldn't expect there not to be different people coming through. As he shifted and woke up a little bit more, Mrs. Knight murmured a quiet 'Kendall's here' that had him practically jolting alert in an instant. His gaze moved toward the receptionist's desk where the blond in question was having a calm conversation with the woman on the other side of the counter. When Kendall turned finally, Carlos stood in a hurry to rush over to him.

"Kendall, he's-"

"I know." The other boy nodded stiffly, his voice sad.

"What do we do, Kendall? What are we supposed to-"

Somehow his being in the presence of his other best friend brought on yet another wave of hysterics. Carlos choked out a few mostly unintelligible syllables before the tears were back. One of Kendall's arms securely encircled the smaller boy's shoulders as he cried into the fabric of the blond's gray t-shirt. Kendall was shushing him delicately in between murmuring quiet reassurances about how it was all going to be okay. It was what Kendall always did, he treated keeping it together and making sure everyone else was alright like it was his job.

Carlos could almost believe him. The level sounding voice saying the reassuring words paired with the firm, almost protective grip around him very nearly had him convinced, but with their torsos pressed so close and tightly together, Carlos could subtly feel Kendall's rapid heartbeat. The hurried tempo that was the telltale sign of his nervousness, his fear. He didn't know if things really would be okay either, none of them knew with absolute clarity, and that was exactly what made it all so terrifying.