Hide the Truth From My Eyes

That's when the phone rang.
A violent urge to vomit took me, but I had to answer. It wasn't like Jamie could anyways. 
I seized the god damned device and pressed it to my ear.

"Hello?"

"Mr Richard Oliver?"

My breath got caught in my throat. Fucking hell.

"No. Stuart Richardson. M-Mr Oliver is not in the state of... Of talking. But you can tell me. Does it concern... L-Lee Gaze?"

"Yes."

Oh my god no. No. No. No, no, no.

"Tell me. Mr Oliver is near me, we live with Lee... Tell me straight what's going on." I stuttered.

"Well...He's dying."

No.
No. He can't.
Somebody kill me.
Somebody wipe me off of this world. 

"D-Dying?"

"He has a chance out of five to survive. He's in a alarming state. His family has to come. I'll be frank with you, if we don't manage to turn him back on the good road, he'll be dead in two days."

"Two days?" I murmured blankly.

"Yes. Please come. We have got a sterile room for the family to visit him, in case..."

I burst into hot tears before he could finish his sentence.

--

When Jamie and I walked in the hospital where everything had started go shit, it was hard for me to contain my usually bottled up emotions. What with this nurse leading us through the hallways I just saw like a hell, a place of suffering and death?
My ribs were compressing my lungs, my entire body was shaking, my head felt like it was going to explode, but I carried on.

I held Jamie firmly by the shoulders, knowing he was ready to collapse. Poor man.
I would never have thought it would end up like this. I mean, Lee was going to die, wasn't he? One chance out of five. It's nothing. 

When I met the guys I would never have even imagined that. And now here we were, our teenage dreams crushed, poor, afraid, torn apart, stumbling behind this nurse. Living the life we were destined to live. Broken, betrayed, abandoned.
I wasn't even sure Lee's family wanted to see him.

We were so pathetic. In our cheap clothes, looking like living deads, in this world all painted white. 
Jamie was trembling too, shaking all over under my fingertips. I could almost feel his despair. Something said me that if I stopped holding him he would fall to his knees and yell out in fear, sadness and frustration. I knew he hated himself for not having fallen ill when Lee had. It was irrational. But he had to hate someone.
I thought of Mike, recovering at the other end of Cardiff, his large dark eyes, his soft hair, his comforting smell.
It was enough to keep me walking for now.

And the nurse finally dropped us in front of a room.
We already had masks, she gave us new ones, gloves and opened the door. 

It was difficult to say it was Lee on the bed. Lee was almost always moving, smiling, laughing, not always talking but enjoying listening to the conversations. The man on the bed didn't move, didn't smile. He was immobile, except from his chest, rising and falling heavily. He had a voluminous gas mask strapped to his head, diverse tubes and wires were connected around.

He looked like those human test subjects in sci-fi flicks. 
The sound of his ragged, loud breathing filled the sinister room. 

I dragged Jamie over to the bed. He seemed to have turned into a statue seeing his boyfriend in such a state.

I stopped softly on the right of the bed, and horror seized me briefly as my eye stopped on Lee's hand.

Usually his hands would be tanned, even if they were bony, his skilled fingers always fiddling with something. Now the skin was of a ghostly white. You could see the green veins sticking out. His skin had lost its golden gleam. An IV was plugged into his wrist, making me shiver. His face was so pale, his blue eyes lidded, circled of violet, his longish hair seemed so tern. He looked like he wasn't going to move ever again. 

This little slip of a man, once happy and full of life, lied here, motionless, relying on machines to live. Just a body, too weak to survive on its own, and a desperate, dying soul.
Because it was clear. It was so fucking evident he was dying. The smell in the air -- it smelled like death was already there, waiting for its time to take him. 

I felt Jamie shake harder and heard his strangled sob. I shuddered. The man let out another strange little sound.

"Lee..." he choked out. "Lee... Cariad. Wake up. Please. Don't...don't die."

I let his shoulders go and he went to take Lee's hand, soon realising he had the gloves on. I watched him throw them to the ground, and grab back Lee's fingers.

"Lee... I love you, dw i'n caru chi. D-don't leave me all alone."

Silence answered. What did he expect? That Lee was going to jump on his feet and it would be alright just because he said him he loved him? As much as I wanted it to happen, it was delusional. 
Jamie sobbed softly as he realised Lee wouldn't answer. 
Maybe he would never answer again. 
Yes, he was merely dying. Just the sight of him could say it to you.
Lee was apparently on a lot of drugs, to make him sleep or to keep the pain away. 
Even if he could hear Jamie, he couldn't understand. 

Jamie sobbed again, waiting for Lee to do something. Anything. 

Nothing happened.
So this was goodbye?
Goodbye to one of my best friends.
Yes, it was, I guess. The end.

Slowly, Jamie stepped away, not leaving his boyfriend of the eyes, and bent over to Lee's ear shakily. His fingers intertwined with the blonde, shine less hair, the other hand still holding Lee's palm and he started to murmur things. And though I didn't understand what he was saying, I'm pretty sure he was talking in Welsh.

And there, as he caressed Lee's blonde locks, something I had abandoned hoping for, happened. 
The tortuously slow beeps started to fasten.
The ragged breathing too. And it was becoming less and less loud and harsh.

Jamie and I looked in awe at the little man in the bed. 
The door opened and the nurse came in, frowning.

"What's going on? His tension is rising again... How..."

She started to check the electrodes, the IVs, as apparently Lee's heartbeats accelerated.

"He's going back to normal..." She murmured. 

And suddenly, Lee took a sharp intake of breath in, almost like a spasm, all his body jolted back to life, and his eyes opened wide. 

We all stared at him. It wasn't possible. 
He was inhaling like he was out of breath, his trembling fingers gripping at the sheets, apparently panicked. The nurse rushed to strap off the gas mask. 
Lee took in a long breath of normal air, his breathing calming,  his eyes staring at the ceiling.

"Oh my God..." the nurse mumbled.

"L-Lee? Lee, cariad." Jamie stuttered. 

Lee turned his head towards us.  And that's when I realized. He was actually moving. He was back to life. 
My entire body warmed up. I wanted to laugh, to scream, to hug someone. Lee wasn't agonizing anymore. He was alive, he still had all his life in front of him, and he was alright. Alright. Like Mike. 

Jamie fell to his knees, trembling, I knew he had realized too, and looked into Lee's eyes.

"Lee... Lee I love you."

And that's when the best happened. Lee coughed a little, and a hoarse voice came out of his throat.

"Yes. I know. You told me. To death and back."

And he took Jamie's hand in his own, squeezed it, and offered the boy the most beautiful smile I ever saw graze his lips.