Author's Note: I'm back! I had a school function over the weekend, so I couldn't update. Please review! And thanks to my writing sister, Baby-M-xo for lots of help on this. Like, half of this chapter is with her help, so I highly recommend you look at her fantastic fiction!
Disclaimer: Gosh, I hate these things. How could I own any of this?
You're The One That I Want Chapter 5: Two Lives By musiclover94 and Baby-M-xoRecap…She was positive that she would die from the pain in her heart. She crossed the waterlogged street. Just hearing the past couple of weeks events said by the perpetrator were enough, to Sharpay, permanently break her heart. She crossed a 4-way intersection as a dangerously swaying SUV came speeding toward her. She had a millisecond to respond, but she moved too slowly. A sickening crunch of metal and Sharpay's watery and broken world went black.
Troy was pouring over his vast load of homework when his phone rang.
"Hello?"
"T-Troy…something hap-hap-happened…" a voice he barely recognized as Kelsi's sobbed into the phone.
"What happened?" he asked worriedly, holding the phone closer to his ear.
"S-Sharpay g-got hi-hit b-b-by a bu-bus…" Kelsi wailed.
Troy felt as if a lead weight had hit him squarely in the gut. He actually lost breath for a few moments but then finally choked out, "W-what?"
But the timid pianist was bawling too hard to say any more.
"Where is she?" she asked after several minutes of puzzled thinking.
"United Christ Med-med-medical Center," she sobbed.
"I'll be there in two minutes," he said and hung up.
He backed his car out of the well-worn driveway path, his mind a confusing cloud of worry and panic. He forced his mind to not stray to the possibility that she might be…no, she couldn't, not now…
"I'm looking for Sharpay Evans?" Troy breathed, clutching a stitch in his side and facing the front desk in the barren waiting room.
"And who are you?" the unfriendly receptionist said, cracking her gum with an annoyed expression on her face.
"Her boyfriend," he said shortly. He thought it best not to say ex-boyfriend. He needed to stay sorry, before it was too late…no, he mustn't wander to that unthinkable possibility…
"She's in Room 56," she said, pointing a claw-like finger down the hall.
"Thanks," he said and headed off.
"50…53…54…55…" he stopped dead at the sight of the slightly off-kilter '56' hanging from the door. He hesitated in front of the doorknob, wary of what may lay behind it. He slowly opened the door with a slight creak.
Sharpay Tamora Evans, who was always so strong, a rock wall against anything, was lying in a hospital bed, her prone figure covered in deep cuts and welts, her head like a mummy's, covered in thick bandages, some sections with dark scarlet patches. Her eyes were closed and the electric beeps emitting from the machines keeping her stable were the only sound in the room.
Troy stood frozen where he stood, paralyzed by raw shock. And then, as if his legs were acting on their own accord, he ran to Sharpay's side. He looked at her scarred hand, knowing that looking at her even more scarred face would be unbearable. He took her hand in his and squeezed it, hoping against hope that she would squeeze back. Her pale and cold hand hung loosely by the bed. He lifted his heavy head to look at her face, which looked as if it had been etched messily out of wood. He thought it turned a little paler as he gazed at it.
"Sharpay….no…this can't be happening! Wake up!" he said downright hysterically, giving her an unavailing shake. She turned paler still. He thought he saw one of her eyelids open to reveal a sparkling brown eye, but then one of the machines gave a monotonous beep. Her eyelid closed and she was frozen.
Troy, now all-out panicking, looked around for something to contact the doctors with. He finally located a bright red button and seized it. He pressed a shaking finger to it. Almost at once, five or six medics burst into the room and thrust Troy aside like a random passerby. They pressed multiple buttons on the machines and all wore matching expressions of worry on their creased faces. Troy, knowing nothing about medical equipment, could do nothing but stand there.
A couple minutes later, a haughty looking nurse walked up to him and asked. "Are you Troy Bolton?"
"Yes," he said.
"Boyfriend of Ms. Sharpay Evans?" she asked, consulting a battered clipboard.
"That's me," he lied.
"You're girlfriend has gone into a coma," she said, looking at him seriously.
He once again felt the blunt blow to his ribs. "What?"
"She's gone into a coma," she repeated.
Troy glanced at Sharpay still lying unmoving on the bleached hospital bed sheets, her blonde hair fanning out around her mauled face like an eerie halo. He turned back to the nurse with enormous difficulty. She was cracking her gum, which, Troy was sure, was against some hospital sanitation rule. Troy silently wished they could have put Sharpay in better care.
"How long is she in a coma for?" he asked, feeling slightly foolish, because, surely, doctors couldn't tell how long someone would be in the long, still sleep.
The nurse looked skyward, as if looking through her brain for the answer. "About a week, we think," she finally said, and again cracked her gum and walked away.
Troy was once again left alone with his ex-girlfriend. He had no desire whatsoever to leave the hospital, so he resided to a slightly battered-looking hard chair beside Sharpay.
He looked at her once-flawless complexion. It looked pale and as if someone had taken several slashes to it. Seeking some sort of support, he held her cold, dead-feeling hand. As he did this, a sudden surge of visions formed in his clouded mind, as if her clammy hand was a portal to some crystal ball.
He saw a blonde, slightly older woman, maybe late 20's, walking along a quiet country road. The sun was just setting, casting a reddish-glow over the pair. The man striding next to the woman looked very much like him…
"Can I ask you something?" he asked, looking at his companion.
"Anything," she replied, smiling.
"Will you love me forever, no matter what?" he asked, looking into her brown orbs unblinkingly.
"Of, course!" she smiled a huge grin and laid her head on his arm and sighed.
They walked a little bit more along the path. The sun was really setting now; a midnight-blue haze was spreading on the horizon.
The man stopped again and looked at the woman. He pulled something out of his pocket. A velvety, ebony something. The girl looked at it and then at her boyfriend's face, than back to the box. She started to open her mouth to say something, but the man stopped her.
"Will you marry me and make me the happiest man alive?" he asked, looking into her eyes again, the blue-gray meeting the wide-eyed brown.
"Yes! Yes, I will marry you!" she said ecstatically, giving him a huge hug and passionate kiss on the lips. The man strengthened the embrace by hoisting the girl up a few inches off the ground and spinning her around in a circle, still kissing her.
When they had broke apart, he slipped the diamond-encrusted band on her finger. She was practically sobbing with joy at this point, covering her right hand over her mouth to stifle the sobs.
They both looked up into the now dark sky. A single shooting star flew over their heads, as if waving to them from high above. The looked at each other and kissed again, both wishing the same thing…
But now the scene had switched to a much solemner scene. The same man, now looking much younger and more like a twin of the present Troy, was sitting in a black draped chamber. Troy spotted a wild-haired teenager, a small pianist, a silently sobbing African-American girl, a blonde teen who was sobbing more than Chad was, wearing a black beret, and a tan teenage girl who was not weeping, but was keeping her tears inside, her long dark curls in a bun atop her head. A small, squat man stood in the front of the room and cleared his throat, but there was no need. The room was silent as death. The Troy seeing this saw a dark brown casket, the upper part open. Troy walked nervously to its side, as if afraid of what lay in it, but his feet knew he must see it…
Troy stopped dead in his tracks, swaying slightly on the spot with the abruptness of his halt. Sharpay Evans was lying in the casket, her eyes closed, forever closing the brown eyes he had adored, the eyes that had looked at him with love and contempt. She was wearing a pink dress and her hair was in a side ponytail. She was neither smiling nor frowning. Her small mouth simply made a line where it was. Her face looked very much like the present face, scarred and roughly sewn.
And now her body was being covered by the thick wooden exposed half of the coffin. Troy tried to stop them, but his body was bound tight as if invisible roped were holding him together. One by one, the mourners walked right past him, as if he were no more than a memory to them…he was gliding away from the world, the gloomy chamber, back to the present, the bleary hospital room.
With a jolt, he surfaced from the vision. He looked at Sharpay's figure, checking that it was still there, that it had not been covered in a coffin lid…It was still there, uncovered, but as tarnished as ever. He suddenly knew what those visions, or whatever they were. meant, as if it had come to him in a great wave of understanding…One was life with Sharpay, a happy beacon in a otherwise dark pool of despair, and one without Sharpay, a world that was so close to coming true…
"Sharpay," he said, trying to be calm, but his voice was shaking slightly with the maybe life-altering words he was going to say, "if you can hear me right now, please give me a sign, if you can." He waited a moment, but nothing came except the continuous beeping of the monitors. He continued, choosing his words carefully, "If you can hear me, I want you to know something, possibly before it's to late," He took a deep breath before continuing, "All that stuff between me and Gabriella, it isn't true. I know that if you were here, you would retaliate with something, but I want you to hear it, nothing but the truth." Still the blonde remained still and silent. But before he could tell her the truth, and nothing but the truth, the door opened with a loud creek. The same haughty nurse came in, still cracking her gum.
"Visiting hours are over, Mr. Bolton," she said. Troy rotated his head to look at the clock; it was 8 p.m. How did time fly by so fast, as if in the blink of an eye, or, perhaps a changing of a vision…
"Okay," he said, standing up. He gave Sharpay's frail hand one last squeeze, trying to convey hundreds of emotions in one. He grabbed his coat and walked out the door, facing new hardships, new obstacles.
Author's Note: Okay, I feel horrible for not updating a lot but this 8-page chapter should make up for it. Please review! And if you have any ideas for Everyone Has a Problem or We're Just Two Footprints in the Sand, or any of my stories for that matter, please send then to me in a PM. I will credit you fully. Thanks!
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