Not Afraid to Die

"Why is it taking so long?" Dante grumbled, taping his foot against the carpeted floor of the waiting room.

"Maybe they just got held up on the way to tell us she's okay," Rian suggested.

"For three hours?"

"Dante, chill. It's going to be alright."

Sighing, Dante ran a hand over his face. He couldn't calm down. His sibling was somewhere in the hospital, possibly near death, and he had no idea what was going on. When the group of band members rushed Lolita to the hospital, Doctor Cart had taken one look at the young girl and rushed her away without explaining. The only word he had gotten regarding his sibling's state was the paper he needed to sign to allow her to have a blood transfusion.

That had been three hours ago.

"You know, you can go back to the studio if you want," Dante commented.

"I still can't believe you forced everyone to go back there."

Dante, being Dante, sent the members of RxN and All Time Low back to the studio. There was a record to finish, he could handle waiting on his sister by himself. Of course, they put up a fight, but Dante wouldn't have it. Rian had been the only one to manage to get Dante to let him stay.

"What can I say? I'm just as stubborn as Lolita."

"It’s a family trait, then?"

"I like to believe so," Dante faced him, "Why are you still here?"

"Because I'm just as stubborn as you are."

"Funny, you don't act that way around Lolita. You treat her a good deal like you treated Kara, actually. I couldn't imagine why that is," Dante smirked, "Unless you have a crush on her."

Rian didn't get a chance to respond. Doctor Cart walked into the waiting room. Dante and Rian stood from their seats and approached the woman immediately, conversation abandoned. Weary smile on her face, she greeted the two with a short nod.

"How is she?" Dante asked.

"Stable," Doctor Cart returned, "The blood she's receiving is working properly with her blood type. Her body isn't making any moves to attack the new blood. She doesn't seem to be having any allergic reactions to the transfusion. She had a fever, but that's common in blood transfusions and it cleared up pretty quickly."

Well, that was always a good thing to hear. Dante was hoping Carter wasn't one of those doctors that gave the good news before the terrible news.

"So what's wrong with her?"

"I'd like to talk with you about that in my office, for privacy purposes. I'd prefer not discussing patients in the waiting room. Rian can come, too."

"Yeah, okay." To Rian, Dante asked, "You coming?"

Rian nodded. With a quick swish of her hand, Carter motioned for them to follow her. They walked through the various hallways of the hospital. In her office, Carter closed the door firmly and took her place at the oak desk.

"Have a seat," she said.

The two did as ordered. She slid a paper to Dante.

"I'm going to need you to sign this, too."

He glanced over the paper, face blanching when he realized it was an agreement to allow his sister to stay in the hospital during her treatments. Outlined on the paper was a set of rules he already knew, ones he has memorized during her last extended stay in the hospital. Grabbing a pen from Carter's mug of hospital themed writing utensils, he signed the sheet and slid it back.

Lolita would like the pencil with the ambulance shaped eraser.

"Dante, your sister has something called sepsis. To put it simply, it’s a blood infection. Normally, it occurs in people with illnesses like pneumonia during their stay in the hospital. It's not all that uncommon for people suffering from HIV to catch it unprovoked due to their malfunctioning immune system. What happens is a severe infection is spread through the blood stream and the sufferer's body tries to fight it. This causes a fever, rapid heart beat, low blood pressure, confusion, disorientation, agitation, dizziness, and pain in certain joints."

"That's Lolita on a daily basis," Dante stated.

When was his sister not experiencing at least one of those symptoms?

"Exactly. This is something that can be hard to catch in people with HIV because they experience symptoms they connect with HIV, take their medications, and don't feel the pain till around the time for their next series of medications. That cycle is normal for someone with HIV. They and the people taking care of them don't notice the infection until it's become fatal, though the death rate tends to be high regardless of how the patient attained the infection."

"Oh God," Dante mumbled, putting his head in his hands.

His sister was going to die. After years of fighting to stay alive, she was going to die. This was it, the moment that had been looming over her head since birth. He couldn't handle this.

"Dante, she still has a chance at survival," Doctor Cart assured. Dante raised his head to look at the doctor, hope gleaming in his eyes, "We're pumping her with antibiotics, fluids, and nutrients. We have the proper support in the event her organs dysfunction. All that's left for her to do is fight, and I know she’ll do that. With the HIV, it'll be difficult but she can do it."

"So she'll be alright?"

"She might be."

Dante nodded to himself. This could be okay. He still felt he needed to be prepared for the worst. He always had to be prepared for the worst.

"I'm obligated to ask this, so don't start panicking. Does Lolita have a living will?"

"Yes," Dante responded.

Of course she had a living will. She updated it as frequently as she could. There was some sort of enjoyment Lolita found in updating it. She liked being able to give away her worldly possessions to people who needed them more than her.

When she was five, she promised to give her stuffed cow Mr. Moo to Dante. It had been a given to her at birth by their mother. It was one of the only things Lolita had that reminded her of their mother.

"How did you know she had it so quickly?" Rian asked, "We walked in here and Lolita was conscious, er semi-conscious."

She had staggered into the hospital and promptly started claiming there was a bird on one of the chairs in the waiting room, trying to persuade her to overthrow Lady Gaga. And then, Doctor Cart walked around the corner and swept Lolita into a stretcher before Dante had the chance to sign her in.

"I didn't."

"But you took one look at Lolita and ordered a blood test and transfusion almost instantly. I mean, it took you less than ten minutes to get the paper work to Dante."

Carter sighed, "I had a patient last week. He was HIV positive, had been for about three years and took great care of himself. He came to me last week with a sickness we hadn't been able to diagnose immediately. We don't normally run sepsis tests first. By the time we had run the test, it had been a few hours into his admission."

"What happened to him?"

"There's a theory in the medical world about sepsis. For every hour delay in administration of appropriate antibiotics, the mortality rate rises seven percent. It happens to be pretty correct. He passed away because the sepsis hadn't been caught soon enough. All things considered, he didn't have much of a chance when he came to us. He had the infection for at least three days before seeking medical attention, but we would have been able try to save him had we known what it was."

"Wow. I'm sorry to here that."

"It happens in the medical world. When Lolita walked in, spouting something about a bird in the hospital, I knew there was a possibility that she had it."

"But she descended into it quickly," Dante said, "She was fine all day and passed out right before she had to take her medicine."

"There's a possibility she had it earlier but didn't separate the symptoms from her HIV. Like I said, it's difficult to tell them apart."

"So all we can do is wait to see if the medicine is working?" he asked.

"Pretty much."

"Can we go see her?"

"Most definitely."

It was nice to see Lolita had family that cared so dearly for her.

Carter rattled off the room number to Dante and Rian. Thanking her, the pair left from the room and walked down the hall to the ICU. When they reached the door leading to her room, they paused and looked at each other.

"I don't know if I'm prepared to see her lying motionless in a hospital bed," Rian commented.

Snorting, Dante said, "Trust me, she won't be lying motionless."

Rian nodded, believing Dante's statement entirely. Dante pushed the door open. From the corner of his eyes, he could see Rian's mouth drop in shock. The sight of his sister standing on her hospital bed, reaching for a fork stuck in one of the ceiling tiles wasn't remotely shocking to Dante.

That was Lolita.