Phil had stayed at the hospital until the nurses had started bringing around the dinner trays. None for Dan, of course. Dinner trays were only for conscious people. But someone came around and changed over his IV bag, and he'd looked away as they changed over his catheter bag, partially out of modesty and partially out of embarrassment. Dan would be mortified. Or wrathful. Or some mixture of the two.
The surgeon had come around to check on his progress and had stayed to answer some questions. Phil understood very little of what was exchanged during those times. The medical terminology was dense, and the parts he did manage to grasp were so foreign they may as well have been fictional, like something from House, or Grey's Anatomy. All the terms and injuries the surgeon was describing, they couldn't possibly be borne by one body, let alone his best friend. That, and the surgeon was wearing pineapple socks, so by the time he'd gotten over the surprise of seeing fruity socks on a surgeon, the conversation was too deep to follow.
Through all this, Dan's face was peaceful. It was half covered with an oxygen mask, and the other half was covered with bruises and gravel rash, but his expression was relaxed, and his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm despite the tube poking out the side. He seemed to be blissfully unaware of the poking and prodding of the nurses, and the hushed conversations and the din of the trolleys rattling past. Once again, that was probably for the best.
Time moved strangely as he sat at Dan's bedside. Sometimes the minutes seemed to crawl forward with exhaustive effort, and at other times, whole hours sneaked past while he wasn't watching.
For the most part, it was just Phil sitting around being awkwardly silent, trying not to give in to the urge to play animal crossing on his phone, and his mum talking to Dan's mum in reassuring tones. She had relaxed a bit since he'd first arrived. Her expression, which had been as brittle as glass when they'd arrived, had softened to show a complex knot of emotions. Grief, anger, sorrow and fatigue. But the two that seemed to creep through her guard most often, were worry, and fleeting moments of anguished hope.
Phil finally gave in to the temptation to check his phone and made the mistake of looking at his twitter feed, and was immediately assaulted by a storm of anxious dm's and messages from friends and fans alike.
"What was that, Love?" his mum turned to look at him, and he realised he must have groaned aloud.
"Nothing Mum," he replied automatically. "Well, not nothing," he amended.
There were rumours flying around on the internet already. Somebody thought they saw someone who looked like Dan in the Royal, one other person was on the street where it happened and thought they heard his name, and apparently Phil had been seen going into the hospital later on, looking anxious.
There was nothing concrete. No pictures. No tweets from either of them. Just radio silence, and rumours. And naturally, it was taking off like a rocket.
Dan's mum was looking expectantly at him now. Phil sighed.
"Dan's subscribers might have caught wind that he's in hospital," he said, and her face grew rigid again.
"It's none of their business," she snapped.
Phil pressed his lips together and flicked his eyes up to Dan. This could get out of hand very quickly. Honestly, he could understand her reaction, especially after the whole thing with Dan's brother, but in this case...
"I don't think ignoring it's not going to make it go away," he spoke as gently as he could, but he still felt like he was kicking a puppy. "We've learned this from past experience. And besides, we already teased the release date of the video we were going to make, so when that doesn't come out -" Phil grimaced and shrugged. "I don't want to do this any more than you do, honestly. But they're like bloodhounds when it comes to sniffing out information."
That sounded wrong.
"Well, not like bloodhounds, more like detectives – a whole network of Poirots and Sherlocks, Morses, all detecting stuff together," he stumbled, watching her expression darken. He stopped rambling, and quickly decided that describing the best crossover that never happened wasn't going to win him any points. Time to switch tactics.
"The point is, they already suspect something's wrong, and when we don't release the video, they'll figure it out anyway, and then it'll be too late. We'll be swamped by a tidal wave of well wishers and worried phans."
He'd have to type up something official, at least an appeal for space while they sorted everything out. He'd have to address it before the date they teased for the cooking video, otherwise the rumour mill would go nuclear. Of course, addressing it directly would probably garner the same reaction, but at least then, they'd have some control over it. But from underneath his quiff, he could see Dan's mum getting frostier by the second.
"Look, Dan's shared a big part of his life with them. He's helped a lot of people, and they care about him," he started, expecting to be turned into an ice pillar at any second.
"They don't know him," her voice was tight as she cut him off. "Not really. Not like we do. Not like his family."
There was silence for a few tense seconds, punctuated by awkwardly loud breathing. Phil found himself nodding. Neither of them shared every part of their lives with the internet, because no one wanted to see a live-stream of Dan shoved in a sofa crease for hours on end eating chips directly from the bowl with his face, and likewise, no one wanted to see Phil making his 18th coffee of the day, or struggling to put in his contacts. But there were things you just didn't share with your family either. Phil was about as close to Dan as a person can get, but still -
"I'm not family, either," he said into the quiet. He knew she would argue that normally, but he could see the exhaustion pulling her shoulders forward in defeat. "But if someone I cared about was in trouble, I'd want to know if they were going to be ok. I'd worry." Kathryn gave him a small nod of encouragement, and he shot her a grateful smile.
"But I think I'd worry more if no one would tell me anything."
"The imagination of a worried person is a scary thing," his mum said sagely.
Phil clenched his hand reflexively around his phone – a portal to the thousands or people out there worrying about his best friend alongside him.
"And the imagination of a million worried people is terrifying."
In the end, they managed to convince her to leave for the night so she could rest, and Phil and his mum followed her, weary but cautiously optimistic about Dan's recovery. Well, at least he was. He had to be. The other alternative was too heavy for him to bear thinking about.
Kathryn had insisted on picking something up for dinner, rather than ordering in. For obvious reasons, neither of them felt like cooking. She'd shooed him back into the flat before setting off down the street again, making him feel both guilty and grateful.
Phil had almost decided to ignore the kitchen bench in favour of the computer, but the thought of writing that horrible, heart-rending official statement made him feel like procrastinating. And there was something else tugging at the strings in his mind.
He knew his mum would try and clean the writing off the bench when she got home, to protect him from facing his own vulnerabilities. Or to keep him from going mental. More mental, that is. He also knew that it would take a bit of muscle work to get it completely clean. Sharpie doesn't come off easily. His fingers were testament to that. Either way, he knew he wanted another look at it before it was gone.
The kitchen was exactly how they left it. The bill with the scribbled note on the bottom sill sat on the corner of the bench, as did the uncapped sharpie, and upside-down, the message on the bench was still clear as day. "I'm a ghost, - Dan." And, of course, the PINOF whiskers.
Phil looked at the ink still caught in the creases of his fingernails. Did he really do this? Could he really have done this in his sleep? We wandered around to the other side of the bench to view the writing the right way up.
The letters were crooked and crudely drawn, as if it had been written by a kindergarten student with a pen shoved in their fist. But the spelling was correct. And none of the letters ran into each other. If he'd been writing in his sleep with his eyes closed, chances were, he'd have overlapped some writing. The slant to the letters was odd, too. It looked like a left-handed slant. Without the smudging. But the ink was on his right hand only. And on his face, but that was besides the point.
Phil's nose crinkled as he tilted his head, puzzled. Something was off about this.
"Time for an experiment, then," he declared to the silence of the kitchen, wiggling his fingers. In a flurry of movement, he sifted through the mail on the bench until he found a blank envelope. Then, with the sharpie, he tried to recreate the writing.
It took a few goes to get it writing properly, after having been uncapped for so long. He tried with his right hand first. The slant was difficult to get right, bending his wrist at an unnatural angle, and the shape of his letters was all wrong.
Next he tried his right hand, with his eyes closed. When he opened his eyes, the letters were still the same shape as before, just jumbled together where he'd had to take the pen from the page to switch lines. As he'd thought.
Next he tried his left hand. It took a while to fumble a proper grip on the sharpie, and the writing was awkward going. It felt like he was writing backwards in the wrong direction. When it was done, the angle was more or less right, and the level of writing did look like it had been written by a toddler, but they were the only boxes it checked. The letters were still the wrong shape, and the writing style was completely different.
Finally he tried with his left hand, and his eyes closed. It felt like trying to rub his tummy and pat his head. Nearly impossible. The finished result looked like a dog's breakfast, and his left hand was smeared with ink along the side where it had dragged across the paper. He hadn't had any ink smeared on his left hand when he'd woken up.
Phil compared the four samples to the writing on the bench and frowned. None of them even came close.
"I didn't write this," he mumbled to himself. He looked around at the empty flat suspiciously. It was eerily quiet, but he had the strangest feeling that he was not alone. He told himself that he wasn't scared, but in truth, he was almost hyperventilating.
"I didn't write this, did I?" he asked the flat, his voice wavering, but loud.
Something hit the floor behind him, and he jumped out of his skin with a little 'gya' of fright. It was the sharpie. It must have rolled off the bench after he'd put it down. He let out a huff of air that turned into a relieved chuckle. Maybe he really was going mad. He bent down and picked up the sharpie again, sitting it next to his note.
He still had no explanation for the writing. It was not his. He was almost sure of it.
A rattle came from the bench, and he jerked his head up abruptly. The sharpie was rolling along the laminate towards the kettle. He hadn't pushed it.
"Oh my god," he yelped, and all the air left his chest like he'd been punched in the gut. The sharpie ignored him and kept rolling merrily across the bench. By itself. He was definitely hyperventilating now. And...were his hands actually shaking?
The sharpie came to a stop against the side of the kettle. Phil stood, slack-jawed as the kettle started to boil, with the switch in the 'off' position.
He felt goosebumps prickle the skin on his neck and the hair stood up on his arms. This wasn't the TV. This wasn't his mind playing tricks on him. This was the kettle boiling all by itself. He wasn't sure whether to scream or jump up and down in wonder. So he swore. A long string of expletives mixed with a nonsensical array of dog names, royal family members, and royal family dog names. Something that would definitely not have made it onto the Amazing Phil channel, anyway.
The kettle stopped, and he pressed his lips together. It took all of two seconds to decide whether or not to risk looking like an idiot and speak to a kettle.
"Ok. So don't do anything scary, or kill me, or anything." He took a deep breath. "But is there someone there who wants to...umm...speak to me?"
There was quiet in the flat for a second as he held his breath, waiting for the horror movie jump-scare moment. The sharpie stayed where it was. The kettle stayed the same temperature. However, in the background, Phil started to hear the a beeping, increasing in volume with every beep. It sounded familiar, but he couldn't immediately place it.
Then, a familiar voice wafted down the hallway.
"Hello internet!" it said, and there was a pause. "It's me, ya boi. It's three am, the witching hour of the internet spooks, and here we are, yet again..." there was a longer pause. "Fucking it up, apparently."
Phil's heart was almost beating out of his chest. It was Dan. Dan's voice was coming from the bedroom.
"Let's try that again," the voice continued. "Because what's three am for, if not pacing a hole in the floor and repeating the same words ad infinitum, until you die?"
Phil found his feet moving towards the corridor of their own accord, and the voice got louder as he got closer.
"Well, pacing, and internet porn. Because let's be honest, at least 70% of you probably have an internet history that would make your grandma roll over in her grave. And the other 30%...well...are you even human? Just saying."
There was a muffled snort of a laugh as Phil got into the corridor. "Yeah, I probably shouldn't say that. DELETE!"
Phil followed the sound, his stomach churning, partially with elation, and partially with fear, because Dan couldn't possibly be here. He'd just left him in the hospital, where he'd been attached to the wall with so many tubes he'd have needed Dab with a machete to cut him free. And yet, a part of him hoped...
"Anyway, that's not what I'm here to say. Today's video, and maybe I should warn you - this is a Wholesome Howell announcement, so get ready for it: Today's video, is about love. Yes, that funny little feeling you get in the pit of your stomach - and I'm not talking about that cheeky Nando's feeling that we've all experienced at one point in your life – don't even try to deny it, Kathy, I'm looking at you. No, the feeling I'm talking about, is love."
"Also, it would be very awkward right now if none of you are called Kathy. Probably delete that too..."
Phil stepped into Dan's room, his eyes immediately drawn to the source of the sound. Dan's laptop.
"Also, I'm not Nando's shaming anyone, because like love; haven't we all been there at some point or another?"
Dan smirked from out of the laptop screen as the video paused itself. It was a recording. One he hadn't seen before. Probably the one he'd copied over the day before. The beeping was the volume being turned up.
"Ok, I might be getting a bit off topic," Phil jumped, as the video un-paused. "So why am I talking about love at three in the morning, you might ask? Am I possessed? Am I re-branding? Have I eaten too much chocolate and now can't get to sleep? Could it be all three?" Dan grinned. "Well, it could."
The video paused itself again, and Phil saw the progress bar drag backwards on the screen. Then the video played again.
"...well...are you even human? Jus-" the video paused again, and the progress bar dragged forward. Phil stood with one hand covering his mouth, preventing a scared-puppy whine from escaping.
The video played again. "-ing you might ask. Am I possessed?" it played, and then paused.
"Dan?" Phil's eyes were wide and wet as he addressed the empty room.
The progress bar dragged backwards once more, to the very beginning of the video, and played. "It's me, ya boi-"
The video stopped, and Phil breathed hard into his hands as he tried his best not to sob. "Oh my god," he whispered. On the screen, the video minimised and the Pages app popped up on the screen.
On the top of the page, words began to appear, letter by letter, as if someone was typing. Phil forced himself to take the three steps towards the piano, where Dan's laptop was sitting on the corner. The air was freezing cold as he leaned forward to read the message.
No, just me. Daniel 'I'm-a-ghost-but-somehow-not-dead' Howell.
"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god-" Phil shook his hands out like he was trying to dislodge the fear that had suddenly electrified his body. It didn't work, and he groaned into his clenched fists.
Sorry sorry sprry. Don't freak out. It's just me.
Phil watched from above his clenched fists as the cursor then moved backwards to delete the 'p' in 'sorry' and replace it with an 'o'.
It was Dan. If nothing else proved it, that did.
"Dan?" he asked, a little timidly.
Yes.
"Dan?" he asked a little louder.
Yep er rooney - The line of writing immediately deleted itself to be replaced with: Still yes. Never let me write that sentence again.
Phil giggled, at first nervously, but then it overcame him and he collapsed onto the piano stool in relieved laughter. This was definitely Dan. Talking to him on a laptop. As a ghost. This was ridiculous. "Oh my god," he said again, for good measure.
They've not elevated me to godhood yet. But give it time.
"Holy fuck," Phil swore as the words typed themselves out.
Not had one of those yet, either. The sentence appeared on the screen, and set him off laughing again. He could feel the tears streaming down his face, but at this point, he didn't care.
"You're a ghost!" Phil exclaimed.
I'm a ghost. Dan confirmed. Or something like it.
"This is insane!" he barked out as he laugh-cried into his hands.
Phil let the giddiness run through him like a balm, soothing the tension he hadn't know he'd been holding. When he finally finished laughing, he went to slump backwards into his chair and almost fell off the back of piano stool. One day he'd remember that not every chair with a computer in front of it was a computer chair. When he righted himself, the screen read:
Ffs, Phil. Sit on the floor.
"Bossy," he remarked, still shaking his head in disbelief. Then after a pause. "So I'm not going crazy then?"
Hah. 'Going'.
"Hey! Shut it, Howell," he replied in mock-offense. This really was absolutely insane.
But, no. You're not going crazy. Me? Possibly. You? You're just along for the ride, mate. - Wow. Not sure I've ever typed the word 'mate' before. It's weird.
"Ok, weirder than talking to a ghost on Pages?"
...No.
Phil sniggered. His mind was trying to go in a million directions at once.
"Ok so I have questions," he started. "Like - a lot of questions..." he trailed off as he saw the screen continue typing.
I might need your help. But I'm not sure how, yet.
"Right," Phil's mind sobered. "Maybe you should start from the beginning," he prompted, and watched as the blinking cursor finally moved forward.
I'm going to need to get back to my body...