Teach Me How To Live Again

"Ryan, there's an ambulance coming with multiple knife and possible bullet wounds. You need to deal with it, I've got a kid who injested something," Anna says to me as I approach the desk. I pull my hair back quickly into a bun on top of my head.

"All right. Johnson! Follow me, you're scrubbing in on this one!" I call to my best intern. Adam Johnson has potential to be a great surgeon. We rush out to the ambulance intrance. I hear it coming before I see it. The doors burst open and an EMT starts rolling the stretcher out.

"Three knife wounds that we found, severe blood loss, and a possible bullet lodged in his shoulder, we were too afraid to check, he was bleeding so badly everywhere else," the EMT told me as we wheeled into the hospital.

"Okay. Take him to Trauma One, I'm going to scrub up. Come on, Johnson," I say and go into the sterile room.

Five minutes later, I'm covered in green and completely sterile. "Johnson, you're not going to faint on me, are you?" I ask him.

"No, ma'am," he replies. We back into the trauma room.

"His blood pressure is terrible and getting worse, Dr. Iero," the nurse tells me. I walk over to the table and stop in my tracks. It's the first time I've seen his face.

"Mikey," I breathe. It's Mikey Way, one of my best friends, the bassist for My Chemical Romance. "Oh, baby, what have they done to you?"

"You know him?" Johnson asks.

"Yes...Come on, don't waste any more time."

We work for hours trying to repair the damage. Everytime I think I've got everything almost sewn up, something else appears. We've been through ten bags of blood already, and it hasn't helped much yet. Suddenly, and defeaning beep shatters the silence.

"We're losing him, Doctor!" one of the nurses cries out.

"No, Mikey, come on, you're stronger than this!" I start giving him CPR.

After what seems like hours, someone says, "He's gone, Ryan. You did all you could."

"No! I won't quit, he's not dead!" I scream, I can feel the tears coming. I try to shock his heart again and again.

There's a hand on my shoulder. "Come on, Iero. He's gone." It's Dr. Ingheart, the one who trained me.

"No! No!!!!!!!" I scream. Everything went black.

________________________________________________________________

I wake up on the floor outside of the operating room. "Iero, you all right?" Dr. Ingheart asks. The old man is bent over me, concern all over his face.

"Mikey! Where's Mikey?!" I ask, hoping to God it was all a dream.

"He's in a better place, dear. You've got to tell the family, Ryan. They'll only want to hear it from you. Come on now, up you go," he says, hauling me up. I wipe the tears from my face. It isn't like I haven't lost patients before, you know. But this was my friend....

I make my way to the family waiting room. Deep breaths, you can do this, the little voice in my head says.

It's my fault. Ingheart could've saved him...

I push the door open. The whole band is there, and Donna Way, Gee and Mikey's mom. She and Gerard look like they've been crying. Frank instantly knows, he's my best friend, my brother, there isn't anything he doesn't ever know about me.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Way...We...We did everything we could!" My tears poured and Frankie's arms were around me instantly. I heard Mrs. Way wail. Frank dragged me into the hall. "It's my fault, it's all my fault!!! Dr. Ingheart could've saved him, and now he's dead and it's all my fault!"

"Ry! Ryan! Listen to me! It wasn't your fault. I saw it happen, no one could survive that. It wasn't your fault, you did everything you could!" Frank said, shaking me a little.

I manage to stop crying eventually. I find we are on the floor, sitting against the wall, Frankie is holding me and rocking back and forth just a little. "How did it happen?" I whisper.

"We were at a signing for The Black Parade and this guy comes out of nowhere, all angry at us. He was screaming something about his daughter and suicide and her having posters of us all over the place and you know Mikey, he tried to calm the guy down and..." Frank shudders and sighs. "He pulled out a knife and a gun. You can guess what he did. It was chaos after that."

"I killed him."

"NO! That man, with the knife and the gun killed him Ryan, NOT YOU!" he was angry now. "You tried to save him! Mikey wouldn't blame you, you know that." I shook my head.

He gave up trying to convince me otherwise. Someone must've taken Mrs. Way and Gerard to see Mikey, because the were coming toward us. They look oddly composed, or maybe it's just that I'm feeling a bit lightheaded. "Ryan...Thank you for helping my son. He wouldn't've wanted anyone but you," Mrs. Way says. I can't reply. "Gerard, I'm leaving...You can stay here if you want." She walks away.

Gerard sits down and puts his arm around me. I wrap my arms around his neck. "I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry! I did everything I could...." I sobbed into his shoulder while he sobbed into mine.