I Can Taste the Failure

“How is she?” a sickeningly familiar voice breathed. “Is she okay?”

Oliver took in state; my frozen face, my shaking hands, my legs plastered to the blue plastic of the hospital seat, and strode over, dropping to his knees in front of me and taking my chin firmly in his hand, forcing my eyes to meet his.

“Holley, love, I need you to snap out of it.”

The doctor’s concerned face wavered in front of my eyes, obscuring Oliver momentarily from my sight, the memory making me cringe. His words had felt like a punch straight to my gut, but his eyes had been the worst. Worried, concerned, but the worst, wary, because of me. Suspecting, of me.

I blinked and the memory faded away, taking another piece of my fragile mental state with it. I gripped the ugly plastic seat in my hands, the ragged lip scratching painfully against my hands, though I barely felt it. That small, barely noticeable pain was nothing compared to the whole raggedly ripped into my heart.

I swallowed the large, dry lump in my throat and focused back on Oliver’s face, serious, concerned, looking straight at me. “Oliver, Oliver,” I said, gasping though the words shouldn’t have taken any effort. It hurt just to talk. I fitted my arms around his shoulders, bringing his face closer to mine, his eyes searching my wild ones. “You’ve got to-” My voice broke off and I flung my arms around his shoulders, pressing my face into his tattooed neck. Surprised, Oliver hugged me tight, fitting his arms around my waist as I sobbed. “I just lose her, I just can’t.”

“Love,” he said, voice the gentlest I’d ever heard it. “What’s going on?”

“She, they, I don’t know. They said- they said-” I sniffled, hugging his shoulders tight.

“Where is she?” another voice demanded, busting through the emergency room doors, followed by three more guys desperate for answers. Led by Curtis Ward, eyes blazing, the rest of Bring Me The Horizon piled in through the double doors after him; Lee Malia, Kean, and Nicholls. “I’m fuckin’ serious, tell me where she is.”

“Oi!” a restless African American nurse with a head of gorgeous 60’s Hairspray-modeled hair cried from behind the desk. “Will you can it? We’ve got people sleepin’ here.”

“Curtis?” I asked Oliver.

Oliver smiled wryly for a second, “It seems Ward’s managed to… get to know Louise better.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding in understanding like a child.

Oliver frowned, wiping a tear staining my cheek away with his thumb. “We’ve got to get in there…”

Curtis was up at the desk, bantering back and forth with the woman, “You don’t understand, I’ve got to get in there and see her.”

“You and your army, pal,” she said, casually checking her nails.

“Excuse me?” another voice interrupted, distinctly wary and familiar.

“Doctor!” I jumped to my feet, stumbling around Oliver, who caught me gently around the waist in my attempt to run up to the doctor. “Dr. Stoker!”

“Yes, dear?” he asked tiredly.

“Is she-”

“She’s stable, for now, love. You can go in and see her, if you’d like.”

“Oh, thank God,” Curtis breathed before storming up to the doctor. “I want answers, you hear?”

Dr. Stoker nodded, rubbing his forehead gently. “Yes, of course. Follow me. You may all follow, though be careful not to overwhelm Ms. Plaebo’s is she awakens.”

The doctor began speaking again once the hospital door swooshed shut behind us, “She’s ingested quite a lot of poison, a very dangerous amount. She’s stable now, but that may change at any given moment,” a frown tugged at his lips as he said this. “We’ll have to be extremely careful monitoring her, especially her kidneys. Trouble in that area especially could develop at any moment.”

“Poison?” a shocked Lee exhaled.

Dr. Stoker nodded gravely, “I’m afraid so.”

“What kind? How did this happen?”

But before Nicholls’ questions could be answers, a low, demanding voice called out.

“Doctor? May we speak with you for a second…?”

“Oliver, Oliver, I think… they’re here for me,” I breathed dizzily.

Oliver locked his arms like steel cages around me, understanding nothing but my fear.

“They’re not getting you,” he replied viciously, looking at the two officers with challenging eyes.

“Oliver,” I exhaled, and then I felt myself falling into his arms, and after a second, I couldn’t even feel those warm arms holding me up.