November Dreams (M.C.)

My world was spinning, crashing all around me. Suddenly, nothing else mattered but getting to him. I could feel time slipping as I fumbled with my keys, quickly becoming hysterical. My hands were shaking too terribly and I could feel my heart begin to beat faster. I clutched my chest as panic set in; sweat began dripping profusely down my back as I dropped my keys and practically ripped my phone from my back pocket.

My fingers struggled to find the number I was looking for; there was only one person I could think of to call in that moment. I slid down the door to the floor as the phone rang mutedly in my ear, the monotonous tone setting me more on edge as urgency seemed to elude me. When her voice came over the phone suddenly, I couldn't help but burst into a cruel sob.

"Hello?" She answered, her tone wavering a bit at my sudden call. Truth be told, I was probably one of the last people she expected to hear from, besides maybe Luke.

"Cz—Czara?!" I sounded absolutely desperate, my voice cracking and raspy and dripping with regret.

There was a small silence on the other line. I could hear her breathing sharpen; no doubt she was unsure of how to react to this sudden interaction.

"N-November?"

"Czara, Czara p-please I-I need you to come get me," I struggled.

"Why, is everything—are you okay? What's wrong?" For how shitty I had treated her, she seemed concerned about me regardless. The mark of a true friend.

I sobbed harder into the speaker, wiping my eyes and smearing the mascara down my cheek.

"No I-I..."

"November, what-"

"Michael...ho-hospital..." was all I could manage to get out. But she knew, she knew right away.

"I'm coming, Nove. Stay right where you are," I could hear her already grabbing her keys and slamming the front door behind her before she hung up.

I tossed my phone to the ground and buried my head in my hands, pools of tears collecting in them and eventually spilling down the sides and disappearing into the dingy carpet. Minutes passed at a dismal pace, making it seem like an eternity of sorrow and anxiety were ahead of me. I needed to get to him.

And time was not on my side.

//

After what felt like an eternity, Czara came banging down my door. She didn't hesitate to let herself in, looking around frantically for me as she entered. Her eyes finally fell on me, still in a pool of my own tears on the floor. She knelt down to me and grabbed my face, bringing my eyes up to meet hers. They were so filled with concern and dread, her eyes. I wondered how she could care this much after everything we had put each other through.

"Nove?"

She tried to get me to snap out of it, but I was still a bit hysterical. She brought her hand up and slapped my cheek, jolting my attention back on her and away from the many terrible possibilities that were running rampant through my mind.

"November? Are you with me?"

I nodded shakily.

"Okay. We have to go. Can you stand?"

I pushed myself to a standing position slowly with all the strength I could muster, her gaze still upon me.

"Okay, we have to hurry. Lets go, Michael needs us."

She grabbed me by the hand and pulled me out the door, not bothering to lock it behind us. She dragged me to her tiny car and pushed me inside before climbing into the driver's seat and peeling out of her parking space.

The freeway was all but empty as she swerved wildly through traffic, narrowly missing cars as she passed. My legs jittered nervously as I chewed on my nails, a habit I had long since forgotten. The lights around me blurred and all sounds were drowned out in my intense concentration on the road in front of us. All that was on my mind was getting to him in time.

"Stop chewing on your nails, soon you won't have any left."

I stopped and tucked my hands under my legs, which were still thumping rapidly beneath me.

"We're almost there; he'll be alright, Nove. He's got to be."

I glanced at her sideways and her eyes told me everything her words weren't. She doubted what she was saying. Her eyebrows were knitted together intensely, but in a way that showed she was filled with a certain degree of uncertainty.

My heart began to beat faster and an intense and nauseating wave of dread welled up inside my stomach as we pulled up to the giant concrete tomb that was the hospital. I could feel death the moment we stepped out of the car and everything seemed to blur past as Czara pulled me through the blinding, sterile hallways.

We ran through the halls, dodging staff left and right as they yelled at us to slow down, but we ignored them until we ran into Luke at the end of a lonely dead end. He paced in front of a door while Calum and Ashton sat huddled together on the floor, their heads hung low. From far away I could even tell they had been crying; the remnants of new and old tears glistened on their cheeks in the fluorescent lighting.

Luke marched back and forth in short, frantic strides, his hands pawing anxiously at his thick messy hair. He seemed to be muttering things to himself, his eyes trained on the floor as he walked. When we approached him, he stopped in his tracks immediately, his eyes brimming with tears. Luke rushed forward and engulfed me in a tight, desperate hug. His body trembled as he held me, neither of us able to hold back our tears. We said everything and nothing in our silence.

Seeing how disheveled he was alarmed me. People who are given good news at hospitals never looked the way Luke did in that moment, which couldn't mean anything good. He pulled away, his hands trembling slightly as he unwrapped them from around me. We wiped our eyes, trying desperately to pull ourselves together no matter how futile it was.

I glanced behind him at the solid white door, wondering what horrors lay on the other side.

In that moment, I felt suspended between heaven and hell, nervously awaiting my judgment as I lingered in a purgatory of my own design. But it wasn't just I that hung in the balance, it was all of us. Calum and Ashton on the floor, Luke standing hunched and exhausted in front of me, Czara hushed off to the side.

Luke seemed to remember her in the same moment I did, but made no motion towards her. Instead they exchanged nervous glances out of their peripheral vision, each not knowing what to say to the other after a year of unbroken silence.

But all silence was broken in that lonely, aseptic hallway when a man in white emerged from the room, shaking his head disappointedly. Silence fell over us as we all waited eagerly and anxiously for the doctor's words. But when he looked up, we all saw. His eyes said it all.

And what they held shook us to our very core.

Purgatory would seem nice, compared to the hell that we were plummeting into.