Brian and Kyung stood in Lizz’s room and watched Lizz being pushed down the hall to back to the OR.

Kyung noticed Brian glancing uncertainly at the blood that had soaked the sheets and the small pool on the floor.

“It’s less than it looks.” She said. She tried to convince herself along with him.

“I hope so cause that looks like a lot.” Brian said, frowning.

“Come on, let’s go out of here so they can clean up.” Kyung suggested. She didn’t miss the look of relief that Brian showed.

“Nick should be on his way to his room. We could go check.” Brian said.

“Okay.”

They were silent until they reached the elevator. “I can’t believe she did that,” Remarked Kyung. “That was a pretty dumb move.”

Brian nodded. “I think she realizes that now. At the time she just wanted to try to find Nick. She said she thought if she could just see him, then she would know he was okay.”

Kyung frowned. “They are going to put in a graft to start the dialysis. A fistula is the preferable method, but her veins are already shot from all the meds she used to get through them when she was younger and had to have peripheral IV’s. Instead she has to get a graft. They are going to do that while she is already under anesthesia from sewing her back up again.”

“What is a graft exactly?” Brian asked.

“It works the same way as a fistula, but the difference is that with a graft, a piece of synthetic tubing is inserted under the arm to sew the artery and vein together. They use grafts when the veins aren’t strong enough for a fistula.” She explained.

“This is a permanent thing?” He asked.

“Yes, until she can get a transplant.” Kyung said softly.

Brian nodded. He couldn’t believe that she was going to have to go through this. They approached the ER and he desperately hoped that Nick was doing a little better. He also dreaded having to tell him what Lizz had done.

I laid watching the fluid drip down into the IV line. There wasn’t much else that I could do since I woke up. Brian was no where to be seen and I was a little ticked to think that he left and hadn’t come back yet. With each drip, all sorts of thoughts sprang into my head. The first and foremost one was the fact that I had screwed up again after I had promised Brian that I would talk before I tried something this stupid again. The second thought was that I messed myself up so well that now I was having medical complications. That had never happened to me before, so naturally, now I was really scared. I had done this too many times before, but Brian always bailed me out and I never had to go to a hospital, but this time it was different. This time I mixed the meds I took. This time I was really dumb.

My eyes fell onto a monitor next to my bed. I immediately started thinking about my online chats with Lizz. I wondered how she was doing. No one was telling me anything definite and it was starting to bug me.

“Hey Nick!” Brian grabbed my foot and squeezed it, “how ya feeling?”

“Crummy but ready to get the hell out of here,” I mumbled, knowing that he wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say about leaving. I noticed Brian wasn’t alone and I could tell that the girl that was with him dressed in hospital scrubs wasn’t with Brian on business.

“Nick, this is Kyung, Lizz’s roommate,” Brian introduced the girl with a nod in her direction.

“Hi Nick,” Kyung smiled.

“God, how is she? Is she okay?”

Both Brian and Kyung sighed. Brian raked a hand through his hair again. God, he had been doing that a lot since I was in here. He only did that when he was stressed out or upset about something. I decided he was just stressed.

“She is in OR right now,” Kyung began. “They had to sew her back up after she tore her sutures out. She was trying to get up to see how you were which was dumb on her part because she was weak to begin with and she fell down. It was a miracle that Brian and I happened to be at her door when that happened, otherwise who knows how long she would have laid there, bleeding.”

I could tell by the tone of this girl’s voice that she was not particularly fond of me currently. She was very protective of Lizz and I assumed that she blamed me for all that was happening to her friend. She didn’t need to worry about that though; I had blamed myself as soon as I came to and found out that Lizz had done what she threatened to do with the albuterol. I had also decided that if anything bad happened to Lizz, I would finish out what I had started. I wouldn’t deserve to live.

“Shit, but she will be okay, won’t she?”

“They are putting a port into her body for her infusions while she is on dialysis until a matching donor can be found for a kidney transplant.”

“Shit, I caused that, oh shit,” I whispered.

“No, you didn’t cause that, her system was compromised to begin with, this albuterol just took it over the edge,” Kyung explained.

I nodded slightly to indicate that I understood and accepted her explanation. I was also nodding to the fact that my life wasn’t worth shit at this moment.

“The surgical team is taking Lizz back to her room, I’m going to check up on her,” Kyung excused herself.

“Brian, I need to see Lizz,” I stated with urgency in my voice.

Brian pushed me back as I tried to sit up.

“Whoa, Nick, you have to stay here for now. When the time is right, you can see her.”

“No, you don’t understand Brian, I need to see her,” I stared him straight in those blue eyes. The eyes that looked back at me were not the familiar eyes I was accustomed to looking at, they were bloodshot, and pale if that was at all possible. I took the life from him.

“Nick, you are sick, please try and understand that. What you did to your system has knocked it out of sync. You are having seizures and they don’t know why yet. You need to rest and let the meds work on you that they are giving you, okay? I called your mother and she and your father will be here in the morning.”

“Oh god, no Brian! Why did you call my mom?” I was hoping I misunderstood Brian.

Brian looked away from me. “When I called her Nick, I thought you were gone,” Brian sighed. “I..I thought we lost you forever.”

“Call her back and tell her I’m fine and we will be touring again,” I begged.

Brian shook his head no. “Can’t do that Nick, they had a right to know.”

“Brian you never told them about the other times---”

“Because I could fix the other times, Nick. This time it’s not gonna happen, okay? It’s in the Enquirer and they will be finding out. This is something you have to face now, get it?” Brian hissed.

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!” I yelled at Brian. I hated him at that moment more than anything at that point and time in my life. He crossed the line involving my parents and there was no turning back now.

As I watched Brian turn to leave, the room started turning a funny gray color like when your TV set gets zapped in a storm. Then I could hear something off in the distance.....

“NICK! OH GOD!”