Roses Aren't Always Red

Candace's POV

Brittney and my mom are in the kitchen working on dinner and Tyler is in the living room with our dad and Tom when Alice walks down the stairs on unsteady legs. She started feeling sick two days ago after the game and she has been really exhausted. Last night she went to bed around nine and is just now waking up, it's 3 in the afternoon, although she was up a lot getting sick. Tyler was up with her holding her hair back and helping her sip on ginger ale and nibble on crackers. She is in her soffe shorts and has a Pittsburgh Penguins hoodie on with her hair in a messy bun and quite frankly she looks like she feels like shit. She hasn't been able to keep anything down so she has bags under her eyes and she looks sunken in. She walks into the living room and Tyler pools her onto the couch next to him and she curls up in a little ball under his arm.
"What hurts honey?" Britney ask as she and mom come into the living room, she sits on the other side of Alice. Tomorrow was Christmas eve and I think we were all hoping this was just a 24 hour bug, but that obviously doesn't seem to be the case.
"Everything. My throat hurts and" she takes a breath, "I have this deep cough, coughing up mucus," Another deep and wheezing breath, "I think I have a fever but I have the chills and, "Another breath, "its starting to get hard to breathe." She takes another unsteady breath and starts coughing.
"Oh god.. Alice are you ok?" Tyler ask while rubbing her back.
"I'm gonna take her temp again." Brittney says.
"I'll go grab the thermometer." Cassidy says and runs into the hall bathroom and is back in no time. She hands it to Brittney and she sticks the thermometer in Alice's ear and it doesn't take long until it beeps and she pulls it out to look at what it says.
"Oh my god. She is 102. Tyler carry her to the car. We are taking her to the hospital." Tyler doesn't waste any time picking up Alice's weak frame and carrying her to the car. I get in the back seat with her so she can lay her head on my lap and Tyler drives with Brittney in the passenger seat and everyone else is following us in another car. We get to the emergency room and Tyler picks her up again, carrying her inside. Her eyes are closed but she is having trouble breathing. It's a deep breath but she is wheezing and it seems like she can barely get any air in. "We need a doctor! My daughter has been sick for two days and she can barely breath! Her temp just read 102!" Two nurses run over and have Tyler place Alice on a bed in a room but the second she is out of his arms she turns on her side and starts gagging before throwing up, but the sad thing is, there is nothing in her stomach anymore so now she is just throwing up the bottom of her stomach mixed with some red stuff that I'm really hoping isn't blood.
"Please back up!" One nurse calls and Tyler, Brittney and myself stand back against the wall on the other side of the room. Tyler looks like he is going into panic mode and Britney looks on the verge of tears. "Temperature is rising! 104!" A nurse calls and then a doctor runs in.
"Pull blood for a blood test and I want a chest x-ray stat!" He calls and the nurses start running around as Alice shivers uncontrollably on the bed and I see the tears coming down Tyler's cheeks slowly as he stands there helplessly and I can't help but cry in fear as this is probably one of the scariest things I have seen
The nurses cut Alice's Penguins hoodie and pull it off her to reveal her in a sports bra. Her ribs are easily seen and her spine is in clear view. "Does the patient suffer from an eating disorder?!" Is the first thing the doctor calls when he sees her.
"She did but that was almost a year ago." Tyler answers him and the doctor shakes his head. Alice wasn't starving herself, she just hadn't eaten in two days because she was sick and she was already thin, it just made her look thinner I guess. The doctor uses his stethoscope against her back and then her front on her rib cage.
"Check the temp!" He orders and the nurse does it again.
"It's rising! 105!"
"We don't have time for the x-ray!" He tells the nurse he needs some kind of injection and before we even know what it is, he stabs her in the high thigh and injects her with whatever it may be. "I want bags of ice in here now!" He yells and it takes no time at all for the nurses to run in and put the bags of ice on her violently shivering body. "Check the temp." He calls a little more calmly and the nurse checks again.
"104…"
"Let's get her into the X-ray." He says and then turns to look at Tyler. "Is she pregnant or is there any chance that she may be pregnant?" We look at Tyler and he shakes his head no. "Are you sure?"
"I'm positive. Her cycle just ended." Well props to Tyler for keeping track of his girlfriends menstrual cycle.
"Ok I need you to please go wait in the waiting room. We are going to run this X-ray and then I will have a better idea of what's going on. Whatever it is.. Hit her fast. Are you her mother?" He ask looking at Brittney and she nods. "As a young girl did she suffer from any major illness?"
"Well she had the common cold every year and the flue a couple times. She had the chicken pocks and she also had Mono her freshmen year of high school." She tells him and he nods.
"I'm ordering a blood test and we are going to check her white blood cell count." He says and then walks away, leaving us standing scared and worried.
"Come on. Let's go meet the others in the waiting room." Brittney says and leads us back to where Cassidy, Tom and my parents are sitting. They all stand up when we walk over but we really don't have anything to tell them. "Her temperature reached 105 and they injected her with something and covered her with ice. They had to cut off her jacket and she looked so thin..." Brittney can't keep together anymore and she starts crying. Tom pulls her into a hug against her chest.
"Does she have an eating disorder again?" My mom ask but Tyler shakes his head.
"She just hasn't eaten the last two days because she has been sick." Tyler answers before sitting down and putting his head in his hands. I step a few feet away and call Caroline.
"Hey it's Candace."
"Hey what's going on?"
"We are at the hospital. It's Alice."
"O my god what happened? Candace, is she ok?"
"We don't know, she was having trouble breathing and kept throwing up and then she passed out and her temperature reached 105. They are doing a chest x-ray now."
"Oh my god! Ok. I will be right there. Thank you for calling me Candace."
"Of course." I say before I sit next to my brother rub his back. Its twenty minutes before Caroline comes rushing in with Rachelle by her side and they hug me along with Tyler and Alice's parents.
"Have you heard anything new?" She ask and I shake my head. We sit for five more minutes before the doctor walks in.
"Alice Gaglardi?" He ask and we all stand up. "The x-ray shows a decent amount of liquid in the lungs which is a very dangerous thing. She should have come in yesterday. Her temperature also reached its max at 105 which is only two degrees short of when the body and internal organs shut down. We are treating her the best we can with antibiotics but I'm also afraid to tell you that, she slipped into a coma. When the body gets that hot, its so close to frying the brain that it will shut itself down in order to conserve energy and cool itself down. It shouldn't be long term but all we can do now it wait. Her body decides when she ready to wake up. She is in room 217 if you'd like to go see her." Alice was in a hospital bed fighting for her life for the third time in less than two years. How was this fair? Who decided she deserved this? She is a good person! She donates a large sum of money to charity. She helps pay for my school. She cares about people. She doesn't deserve this and neither does Tyler. I look at my brother and see the hopeless look his face. You know you really love someone when you stick with them through all the bullshit. They have stuck together through a lot.. If their love wasn't real, I don't know what is.