AN: And now it's Adam's POV! I love that kid; he's just so cuddly. With a brief Clare POV interlude, but it's like three lines. Seriously.
Warnings:
Disclaimer: I don't own Degrassi.
Chapter Nine
Through the Valley of the Shadows
Adam cries when he hears. Screw man-pride, he cries like a girl.
He holds tight onto Clare, and she cries too. Her hands knot tight in his flannel shirt and she buries her face in his chest, soaking his shirt with her tears. He wraps her up in his arms like Eli couldn't, and holds her because they'll both drown if he doesn't. He holds her; she holds him.
And they cry.
His mom tries to talk to him about it. Tries to convince him that he doesn't have to stay there all the time. That surely someone, Eli's mother or Clare or someone, will call and let him know if anything's changed. She tells him she's worried. And subtly implies she thinks she's found Gracie buried under Adam, as if he couldn't mourn and grieve for his friend with loving him the way Clare does. After that, Adam tells her that he wants to be alone. Alone with Eli, even though he won't open his eyes. Alone with Clare, even though she looks dead inside.
She comes to yell at him for skipping school everyday anyway.
Clare stays at first. For days. Then her mother and father come and forcible remove her from the white walls and slow and steady sound of heart moniters and the raspy sound of machines that breathe for people who can't. She comes back; she always comes back. But eventually, she has to leave again; her parents always come back too.
The nurses all know him by name now. They never ask if he needs help getting a ride home anymore. They used to; now they know he's not going anywhere. They look at him with pity. Like they can see his heart breaking in his eyes and know that it's something the best doctor can't fix.
Brain trauma. Comatose.
No. Adam shuts out the words. He will not believe it. He doesn't care how long he has to stay here, hunched over in a crappy plastic chair, holding the cold and clammy hand of his best friend. He refuses to acknowledge that there's a chance, getting bigger every second Eli doesn't wake up, that the pale goth will never open his eyes again.
"Adam." his mother jolts him awake. He blinks heavily, slowly. He doesn't remember falling asleep. His eyes dart to Eli, checking to see if, impossibly, something had changed while he slept.
Nothing has.
"I brought you some clothes and dinner." She holds up a plastic bag full of clothes he'll probably forget to change into and a tupperware container full of food he'll probably forget to eat.
"Thanks."
"You missed school again today." But the attempted reprimand sounds forced even to him. She's given up, resigned herself to the fact that until Eli gets over this and opens up his goddamned eyes, Adam isn't leaving. He thinks she's known it all along; after all she's never done anything more than talk at him, she's never tried to make him go.
"I know."
"Will you go tmorrow?" There's no hope in the question. She asks him the same thing everyday; his answer never changes.
"If Eli does."
"What if he doesn't wake up?" This is a new question and Adam snaps his attetnion to her, rage dancing in his stormy eyes.
"He will."
"What if he doesn't?"
"He will. He has to." Adam doesn't know what he'll do if he doesn't. Mrs Torres puts a hand on his shoulder,a comforting gesture that he barely feels.
"Call me when you're ready to come home?" Adam nods and doesn't tell her that she'll be waiting for a long time.
He's not going anywhere.
Two weeks and five days later
The longer he stays under, the greater the chance that he won't wake up.
Adam stares at his sleeping friend. And he is sleeping. Because you can add all the fancy letters after your name that you want, you're not changing Adam Torres's mind. Eli will wake up. The cut that starts at his left temple and stretches across his forehead to just over his eye, the reason that Eli is still here instead of plotting evil revenge with Adam and Clare, is bruised and ugly. Adam wishes the doctor's would bandage it again. Except he doesn't, because that always made Eli look so much worse. A glaring white reminder that Eli is a trauma victim whose chances of waking up are getting smaller every second.
"Hoh." A strangled wheeze. Adam tries not to get his hopes up; the doctors have told him before that sounds like that are usually meaningless. The hand in his, limp and deathly chilled, tightens.
Adam's heart decides it would much rather occupy his throat than his chest. He can't remember how to breathe. Eli's eyes flicker.
"AHHHHHH!" Eli screams as he wakes violently: bolting upright, grip nearly crushing the hand grasped in it, eyes wide and confused and scared and open. His chest heaves with shuddering breaths and his whole body trembles.
Adam surges to his feet and envelopes the shaking goth in the tightest hug he can. Nurses rush in, alerted by Eli's blood-curdling scream. And, of course, they pry him off the patient to do the important things like call the doctor and check his vitals and all that otherstuff that Adam couldn't care less about because Eli is awake.
He's pushed out of the room by well meaning people, and Adam wants to stay but knows he can't. Which is when he realizes he has some very important things to do. Right now.
His fingers refuse to remain steady as he types in the number. Half a ring and Clare's voice is in his ear.
"Adam?" He can hear the class around her, can hear the teacher demanding that she hang out and give him the phone right now.
"He's awake." The words tumble out.
"He's awake." the words echo in Clare's ear and then she's snapping her phone shut and running. The teacher is shouting and her classmates are staring. But for once in her life, Clare honestly couldn't care less.
Eli's awake.
That's all that matters.
The connection goes dead and Adam knows Clare's on her way. More numbers, more people to inform. Eli's mom, his mother, Drew. And then, they're letting him back in.
"Hey Goth-boy."
"Machismo." The smirking smile he shows is a hollow imitation of the old. Something dark and haunting hides behind his emerald gaze.
"Scare me, much? Geeze dude." Adam tries for levity, but for once Eli's having none of that.
"What do they know." And Adam can't help notice that he doesn't sound like he wants to know so he can plan bloody vengeance; he sounds like he's terrified of them knowing anything.
"You were jumped after guys night..." Adam's eyes slide away. He doesn't want to tell him the rest; that he knows about the rest. About the...rape. He's not supposed to know. If he hadn't been practically living in the hospital, he wouldn't. He wishes he didn't. But he does.
"You know." Adam doesn't think Eli could have put more pain in those two words if he had tried.
"Yeah." Because there's no point in lying now. "Do you...do you know...who?"
"...Fitz..." and there is such pain in his best friend's eyes that Adam considers hunting the bully down right this very second and sliting his throat. "Don't...don't tell Clare."
Adam wants to tell him that she'd love him anyways, that she wouldn't, couldn't, blame him for this. But Eli has so many scars, under and beneath everything he's become, and he's scared.
"Okay, man." Adam says with the obligory fist bump. "I won't."
AN2: Hey, I've got a vidder on youtube willing to do an Elitz! Everybody be happy! But I don't have a song! Everybody be sad! So, at the fabulous Vladdiechica's suggestion, I'm opening it up to you, my awesome readers. Some ideas: "So Help Me God" by Fireflight, "Safest Place" by Thousand Foot Krutch, "Apologize" by One Republic, and "Victim" by Trapt. Drop a review and let me know what you think!
