Chapter 10

                                    

                                          
Do you know that feeling you get when you think there is one more step but there isn't and your foot stomps down and there's that rush, like your stomach feels like it jumped into your throat and your heart stutters until you realize what's happened? That's kind of how Louis felt at the moment except, it wasn't quite clicking in his head at what had happened and that feeling wasn't going away. His heart was beating erratically, and not in a fun way. It felt like someone was holding it in their hands, squeezing it and only letting go when they could tell Louis couldn't take anymore but then they would squeeze again, and Louis couldn't find his breath. It's just... Liam was supposed to have quit.
                          
He told Louis as much this morning, had promise that he would talk to the chief, so why was he in the ICU right now? Why had he been at that fire? Why had he been knocked unconscious? He wasn't supposed to have been there, Louis just didn't get it. He didn't understand and he couldn't begin to wrap his head around it right now as he sat in a crumpled heap on the floor of the hallway in the hospital. People were still standing around him, more people gathering to see what the commotion was but he couldn't get a grip on himself, he couldn't. He couldn't breathe, he couldn't think, he couldn't do anything but wonder how?
                          
He couldn't even cry anymore. At some point Louis had stopped crying into his hands, fairly quickly actually. He stopped fighting Margaret's attempts to calm him down. It wasn't by choice, he didn't mentally decide that he couldn't be having an emotional breakdown in the hallway of a hospital when he was a nurse that worked there. No, he didn't do any of the breathing exercises he usually walked the relatives of critical patients through, he didn't think about the fact that crying in the hallway of the hospital won't help anything, he didn't do any of that. He just kind of stopped crying, he stopped shaking, his body just kind of shut down and the tears that had sprung to his eyes stopped almost immediately after they came as he tried to find his breath.
                          
He thinks it was all too much for his body to deal with, the way it felt like someone was squeezing his heart, the way he couldn't catch a breath, the shaking of his body as he cried into his hands and tried to wrap his head around the scene he had just witnessed. It was just too much so his body just stopped. It just stopped and left him to try and pick himself off the floor.
                          
He couldn't pick himself off the floor in the end so two nurses came to his side, Justin and Philip, and hooked their hands under his arms to pull him to his feet. Margaret instructed them to take him into a room down the hall but Louis had other plans. They didn't honestly expect him to sit by and wait to find out whats going on, did they? Louis had to help, he had to be in that room to make sure Liam would be okay. It was his job to take care of him, not theirs, and he wasn't going to leave Liam's life in someone else's hands who didn't care about him the way he did, who wouldn't fight for his survival like he would. Once he was on his feet, Louis shrugged out Justin and Philip's grip, heading for the ICU but then a pair of hands were on him again.
                          
"No!" Louis shouted, trying to untangle himself from the pairs of hands trying to grab him. "I have to- Liam, he's- I need-" Louis tried to say but his thoughts were to jumbled. Why was Liam in there? He needed to see Liam. Why wasn't he at home? What was going to happen to him? Why didn't he quit this morning? He needed to help Liam.
                          
"Louis, Hun, you know you can't go in there." Came Margaret's voice from beside him, her voice soft and soothing, the one she used on hysterical relatives. She wasn't the one holding him back, Louis assumed Justin and Philip were responsible for that.
                          
"But Liam, he-"
                          
"I know, Hun, but we have to let the doctors look after him. You're no good to him like this." She said calmly, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder. Louis could tell she was upset as well, Liam and her weren't exactly close but they have met a couple times and Louis knew she was quite fond of him. "They'll take good care of him, Hun. He's going to be fine." Louis knew she had no way of knowing this, he knew that, but her words seemed to calm him down and Justin and Philip were able to lead him away with the promise of Margaret coming to see him in a bit.