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The wide corridor of the hospital’s second floor erupted into noises. Footsteps from a handful of nurses fell heavily over the linoleum flooring as they ran past the lounge room where Josiah had fallen asleep hours earlier.

Startled by the shouts coming from the hospital staff, Josiah snapped out of his slumber. He sat up so quickly he felt all the blood rush to his head and he had a powerful impulse to vomit. The boy who had skin the colour of toffee and eyes resembling the shade of dried sage leaves gently shook his head to clear the dizziness.

A few seconds later when he felt well again, he looked to his sides to see the reactions of the people in his company. Josiah’s parents had left the hospital around ten p.m. and even Faith had gone home as she was needed at work the next day. In his groggy state, Josiah recalled that Keri and Carson were both sleeping in Ayden’s room, so his wide, sage eyes only landed on two older men.

“What’s going on?” Josiah asked, voice still very much thick from his sleep. That didn’t stop the undertone of alarm that was buried in his question.

Neither Walt nor Eric gave an answer, as they had none. Instead, they shot up from their own equally uncomfortable waiting room chairs and ran for the doorway to the hall. Josiah didn’t even give himself a chance to think clearly as he was soon on his own feet and chasing after them.

The shouts grew louder as the three men neared Ayden’s room. Josiah’s stomach exploded in nerves and fright. About five feet from the room, Josiah could see the door was wide open. The frantic beeping of machines was trickling out into the hallway and falling heavily upon the ears of the three figures as they approached the source.

Eric stopped first and then Walt did the same. They both seemed frozen in their tracks, but Josiah pushed past them, his heart beating uncontrollably in his chest. He dodged past the arms trying to hold him back from getting any closer to the room where pandemonium was ensuing, and kept moving forward until he was stood fixed in place about a foot from crossing the threshold.

Those sage eyes locked onto a seizing body, twisting in the blue hospital sheets. Blonde hair flew through the air in a yellow blur and nurses arms were attempting to turn the girl onto her side without crushing her cast-covered arm. The young spectator’s jaw slackened and his eyes went increasingly wider as the sight shocked his system. Josiah forgot to breathe and his body turned numb as if he suddenly had nothing but jelly for bones.

He didn’t see anything but the writhing form of his girlfriend until a body was abruptly thrown into him. Josiah stumbled back and looked down to see that what the nurse had shoved at him was his best friend. Keri stumbled out of the room--the same nurse pushing at the small of the woman’s back--with terrified awe the sum of her expression.

In the next instant the nurse slammed the door in their faces and Josiah realized that what had felt like hours of watching Ayden’s seizure was really nothing more than five seconds.

Keri erupted into a fit of tears as her husband drew her into a strong circle of arms. Eric was stunned by what just occurred and his first instinct was to pull his son to him protectively, but when he saw the way Josiah was already holding Carson's back tightly to his chest he just stood there staring at the boys.

Keri sobbed, unable to give any sort of explanations for what had just gone on in that room a few feet away from their distraught group. Walt tried his best to comfort his wife even though he was going through an equally disturbed thought process as she was.

Josiah had an arm wrapped around Carson’s chest underneath one of the shorter boy’s armpits after catching him from the nurse’s toss. The brunet was holding onto the darker boy’s wrist and forearm so tightly that his short and slightly jagged nails were digging into the skin in half crescent moon shapes.

Josiah’s brain was locked in a realm of fog and he was completely unaware of the pain in his arm. Carson and Josiah both held unblinking stares of dread on the smooth fake wooden door. It was almost safe to say that neither of them could fathom what was going on around them as they were eventually dragged away from the hall as a pair and numbly pushed onto the one, couch-like seat in the lounge on the other side of the second floor.

*

Half a day passed and not a single word was uttered past the pale, pink lips of Carson nor the plump, dry ones of Josiah. Neither boy slept or cried. They only left the dismal lounge room on two occasions to use the bathroom and neither time did they go without the other. But even still, not a word was exchanged between the friends who were as opposite as the stars and the moon.

The events that took place just barely after three in the morning haunted the eyes of the boys and aged them a good ten years at least. All six parents of the three despondent young adults were going out of their minds with the all-consuming grief and concern for their children. None had ever thought in a million years that something like this would be a thing any of them would have to encounter firsthand.

Trying to comfort a child through a tragedy the likes of which spanned over the last four days was equivalent in their eyes to scaling Mount Everest with having no experience in rock climbing. They were at a loss for which actions to take, and the numerous talks they had out of earshot from Josiah and Carson got them nowhere nearer to addressing the issue in a productive manner.

As noon rolled around, the group of eight had heard hardly any peeps from the doctors or nurses who were caring for Ayden. Keri, and especially Walt, were growing incredibly frustrated with the lack of contact from the hospital staff. They thought for sure that being the parents of a girl who just suffered from a seizure during their care, they would at least be told what the doctors were doing to help her. But clearly that wasn’t how things were going to work that day.

Carson and Josiah did seldom more than stare blankly, blink drowsily, and speak to no one as the morning wore on. In fact the only semi-communication that occurred was passed between the two in the form of facial expressions and an exchange of looks in their eyes that only the two of them could even begin to understand the meanings of.

For the owners of the blue and sage eyes it was as if the capacity of their brains couldn't handle processing anymore messed up events. They were left to sit there in the aftermath of that last scene they had bore witness to, with nothing but empty minds and swollen hearts. For they cared too much and that offset the balance, resulting in the muddling of their depressed thoughts that only each other could ever fully really understand.

“Look at them,” Kevin, Josiah’s father who looked so much like his son it was uncanny, whispered harshly. He gestured to the two boys laying on that couch-like seat they had claimed hours ago, facing away from the cluster of adults out in the hall. "They can't take much more of this. They're not handling it anymore, they're just shutting down."

"This is clearly affecting them in ways we can't quite grasp," Lanai insisted in a low tone. "In twenty-one years I have never once seen my son act like this. It is completely out of character for him."

Gently, Faith said, "What they need are answers." The woman flicked her eyes between Walt and his wife. "Just like you and Keri do. It's what you deserve."

Walter sighed. “I know, but what do you expect us to do? We can’t just run around like chickens with our heads cut off demanding they tell us everything they know.”

“We kind of already have,” Eric offered. “And it hasn’t worked.”

“Exactly,” Walt said, accentuating his words with his hands. “We just have to wait, as much I hate to admit it. But if they won’t tell us anything yet, there’s not much more we can do.”

Not a single one of them were satisfied with that answer, not even Walt himself. Yet even so they all knew it was the truth. Hospitals were quiet and tricky like that. They told you what they wanted you to hear and nothing more. They let you see only what they wanted you to see and left you blind to the rest if they could help it. Apparently, right now, this hospital didn’t want any of them to know or see much, and it left them all in a disheartening rut.

Over on the couch in that blue and cream themed waiting room, the two boys stirred as their parents and Ayden’s disappeared from the doorway. They hadn’t really been asleep for long. They maybe got about five minutes of real rest before the unmistakable sounds of strained and hushed whispers came drifting over to their ears.

Josiah and Carson didn’t hear any distinct words, but the tones of their voices were enough to know that they weren’t having a cheerful chat about anything.

Carson and Josiah both had legs too long to fit on the short couch, so in addition to them being slightly tangled, they were sticking out over armrest. It was a tight squeeze, but with Carson laying nearly half on top of Josiah, they made it work.

The brunet lifted his head off of the older boy’s chest by roughly a centimetre. The movement startled Josiah, for even though they were both awake, they hadn’t known the other wasn’t sleeping anymore. The older of the two started to sit up so the seat could better accommodate them, but Carson quickly laid a hand on his chest to still him.

Josiah craned his neck at an awkward angle in an effort to see Carson’s face. It was a failed attempt so he just settled his head back down into the makeshift pillow he created from both his and Carson’s sweatshirts.

Carson licked his dry lips and opened his mouth to speak. His voice felt foreign to him after not having used it for more than nine hours. “Josiah?” he croaked barely louder than a whisper.

The sage-eyed boy cleared his throat and hastily responded with a scratchy and low, “Yeah?”

Carson swallowed the fast-growing lump in his throat. He snuggled closer to Josiah’s body, knowing fully well that he wasn’t just complying with their current position so easily because he needed the comfort of someone who really understood what he was feeling. Carson couldn’t escape the butterflies having a riot inside of him as Josiah held him so closely--as if letting go of the younger boy would be the end of them both.

As selfish as it was to be having these thoughts and feelings at a time like this, Carson didn’t know how to stop them, so he just went with it and tried to pretend that he wasn’t insanely pathetic for liking someone who couldn’t like him back.

Josiah found his best friend’s hand and easily laced their fingers together. The action brought Carson back to the present and he remembered what it was he was going to say.

In a small voice, the brunet said, “She’ll be okay, won’t she?”

Josiah had to think for a moment before he answered the boy in his arms. He quickly recalled telling himself that he was going to look out for Carson. He wanted to take care of him and he concluded that in order to do that, he couldn’t lie. So even though it was exceedingly difficult, Josiah gathered up the nerve and told the truth.

Josiah closed his sage eyes tightly and rested his cheek against Carson’s hair-covered forehead. “I don’t know, Car. I really don’t.”

Carson finally closed his own eyes and it was all he could do stop his eyes from welling up. “Okay.” Josiah squeezed his hand, and, if it were possible, Carson pressed himself closer to the taller frame laying, to some extent, underneath him. Pushing away his fear of sounding ridiculous and pitiful, he added, “Please don’t leave me, too, Joe.”

Surprising himself, Josiah abruptly came to the realization that he couldn’t. He already knew he was in love with Ayden by the third month they were together. But somehow it had taken almost eleven more to fully understand that he cared about Carson nearly just as much.

Josiah was incredibly fond of the brunet. They had grown as close as two guys could be over the last year, but he also loved him like he hadn’t loved his idiotic high school friends. Josiah loved him so much more because he had never been closer and more connected to a person that he wasn’t romantically involved. It made Josiah see that not all friends just came and went. Some of them stayed forever.

Josiah knew that Carson was that for him. And when he spoke next he knew that he had never believed something he said as strongly as he did this.

“I could never, Car. Never.”

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