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Blues collapsed at 3:27 pm Saturday evening, while getting slushies from the local 7/11 with Bass, holding hands with the taller boy until his chest tightened and he finally fainted to the warm summer pavement.
Bass had panicked, immediately calling 9/11. They loaded Blues in the ambulance and he just looked so fragile, lying there, barely breathing. Brittle, like he was made of glass. And to tell the truth, his health had always been fragile. A hairline crack tapped in a thin window, slowly spreading across the pane until it finally shattered.
Bass had no idea how severe his heart defect was until Blues’ father told him about it during the ride to the hospital.
X and Zero sat in the backseat, where a teary-eyed X interjected with the occasional factoid about his condition- they called it a congenital heart defect. Apparently, there was an issue with the muscle fibers in his heart- it wasn’t pumping as efficiently as it should. And to make matters worse, his aortic heart valve was too tight, making it difficult to distribute blood as quickly as necessary.
To at least make the issue easier to manage, Blues had been using a wheelchair and a cane in rare cases for his entire life. This put less strain on his heart, there was less blood needed to pump to his limbs, as he wasn’t allowed to run or walk long distances without assistance. Of course, Thomas Light had always known that Blues would eventually need a heart transplant. The doctors told him when the condition was first diagnosed an odd eight years ago.
He just never figured it might eventually try to kill him.
The condition was rare, yes, severe, yes, and most people with the condition weren’t unlucky enough to be cursed with two forms, but Lady Luck was not on Blues’ side when he was born, shaky and blue-skinned.
He was sixteen now, old enough to operate on, definitely, but it was dangerous. And Blues didn’t want it when he was first given the OK.
So they didn’t.
And his family simply hoped for the best.
After years, he had finally learned to cope with a life confined to being helped by others and given pitying looks on the street when a sibling rolled him along the sidewalk. There was always moments of not being able to breathe, going numb, being hospitalized when his lungs filled with fluid or his heartbeat fell off rhythm. He was used to it. Blues was used to issues and complications and moments of feeling like he was going to die.
But a sense of cold dread filled his stomach when he began to shake at 3:26 in the afternoon, moments before he thumped to the pave and loss consciousness. Something about it felt wrong.
And he was right.
He was rushed to the hospital in the midday sun, with his boyfriend left sobbing as he notified Blues’ family of the situation, tears still dripping from his eyes as they drove to the children’s hospital.
They began to drive at 3:49 that evening. Arrived at 4:03, when Blues was placed in the Cardiac Surgery department among other sick, shaky, dying children and teens.
Bass was told this was the best children’s hospital in the state. #1 in heart surgeries. High survival rates, lots of staff, praise and all that shit. He couldn’t help but be worried. What if he died? He was already in the unlucky <200,000 to have his condition, what if he was part of the unlucky 16.7% that didn’t survive?
They said Blues might need a cardiomyoplasty and an aortic valve repair, both open-heart, in order to fully recover from his condition.
They took Blues’ dad to talk in a cold hospital room.
Bass, X, Zero, Rock, and Roll were left alone to wait. They weren’t allowed to come in.
X sobbed quietly as Zero stroked his back, one earbud in each of their ears, plugged into Zero’s phone.
Rock and Roll whispered animatedly under their breaths, hiccuping and crying.
Bass’s gaze drifted to them. Such messy criers. His hands are shoved deep in the pockets of a black motorcycle jacket, decorated with sloppy hand-stitched patches that he and Blues had made long ago on a lazy sunday morning when Mrs. Lalinde and her daughters came over and the girl with long brunette hair tried to teach them how to make something nice when Roll and her father went out to pick up ice cream.
He glances at the clock. 4:16.
Every second that passes feels like lost time with Blues. Every second that passes feels like another moment where Blues is dying. Every second that passes feels like Bass is dying himself.
4:22. X’s head was laid in Zero’s lap, playing with a lock of his ponytail. They quietly murmur to each other and Zero swipes tears from X’s cheek with his thumb. Rock and Roll hug each other. A mother in another room screams and cries.
At 4:27, Mr. Light returned to the room close behind a wiry-looking employee.
He hands a paper to Rock, who passes it to Roll, who passes it to X, who passes it to Zero, who circles around to hand it to Bass, whose eyes had long since glazed over from trying not to cry.
Blues wouldn’t want him to cry.
No, that was a lie. Blues would only make jokes about dying and try to comfort him. Blues didn’t know shit about how to act like a cliche dying love interest in a romance novel.
On the crisp white sheet of paper are the details of Blues’ condition, treatment, and a long paragraph about the hospital’s experience in open heart surgery.
Without speaking, Bass shoves the paper back at Mr. Light. Tears are bubbling over the edges of Bass’s eyes and he could barely handle reading about happy children in happy families with happy lives who had Terrible Heart Issues, but are healed. He didn’t care about Mikayla or Cayman. He just cared about Blues.
Blues.
The hands Bass stuffed into his pockets tighten into fists. He’s shaking. Since when was he shaking?
Since when was he crying?
At 4:30, the group is told by a nervous-looking intern that immediate family may speak to Blues before the surgery began, as he had regained consciousness.
Rock and Roll immediately take the opportunity to leap out of their seats. X looks at Zero, silently asking if Zero would be okay if he left him here for a bit. Zero nods and X takes out the earbud in his ear, handing it to Zero and following his little siblings.
Bass and Zero are left alone in the waiting room. Zero’s gaze travels to his brother sitting in the seat across from him.
“Bass.”
He jumps, hurriedly scraping away tears.
“What do you want, Zero?”
The blonde’s eyes soften at Bass, standing from his seat to move next to him. Bass sighs, tears free-falling from his cheeks. Zero gently rubbed his back as he cried, holding him close.
The older of the two definitely wasn’t as involved with Blues as anyone else- X, Rock, and Roll were his siblings, and Bass was his boyfriend, while Zero was more of a surrogate older brother of sorts to Blues. However, he cared about Blues and the people he cared about cared about Blues and he still felt grief for him.
Mr. Light’s family didn’t deserve most of the hardships they were hit with- poverty, theft, illness…
They’d struggled through most things a well-off middle class family couldn’t imagine experiencing, but this was probably worse than a lot of it.
Zero was told, a couple years ago, that Blues was in the hospital. X had frantically called him in tears, and Zero had sprinted all the way across the city to their house to comfort him and see what was going on. He was nearly as uninformed on Blues’ condition as Bass was until that point when he got an explanation from a much calmer X during the drive home with Blues safe and sleeping in the backseat.
He simply sits and comforts his brother as he cries. Come to think of it, Zero hadn’t seen Bass cry in front of him before. Ever. This was kind of a shock, to see the tough and rocky exterior break away, if just for a moment. Bass pulls his knees up onto the seat and buries his face in them, hugging himself. He just wanted Blues to be okay. He just wanted to be there with him. He just wanted to make sure Blues could be safe and healthy for the rest of his life.
At 4:40, Rock and Roll are carried back into the room by X, kicking and crying, protesting about how they didn’t want to leave Blues. It was as much of a shock for X to see Bass break down as it was for Zero to see it. It’s not every day he even showed much emotion at all other than anger, although Blues had a habit of bringing them out.
“He’ll be in surgery for a while. They said it’ll probably be six hours or more,” X murmurs, wiping tears from his own cheek. Rock and Roll are comforted by their father, held tightly, eyes red and puffy from crying. Zero nods.
And they wait.
At 5:21, Zero receives a call. He makes a look of distaste at his phone and ignores it. X is back in his lap. He gently strokes his hair.
At 6:19, Mr. Light takes his children back to the car to grab their coats, as the building was beginning to chill.
At 9:31, X had fallen asleep with his head in Zero’s lap, having always been quite the early bird. He had the most stable sleep schedule out of any of them. Fortunately, that meant pranks at midnight while X was sleeping. Unfortunately, that meant pranks on the rest of them when X got up a solid two hours earlier. By 9:56, Zero was asleep too, soothed from his boyfriend’s presence in his lap. Bass’s eyes are red from tears, similar to the youngest in the room. The twins were held in Mr. Light’s arms snugly, and they’re beginning to drift off. It was past their bedtime anyway, last time Bass checked.
It’s 10:32. Should be done soon. Bass was growing drowsy. They’d probably be asked to leave soon, anyway- if he remembered correctly, most waiting rooms had curfews. The noise of the building was muted as his head falls onto his knees, legs still pulled close to him. The lights are dim and he’s emotionally exhausted.
Bass ends up falling asleep in his seat.
Sunday morning, 7:19 AM.
Someone shakes him awake. Zero’s warm hand gingerly rests on his shoulder and he can conclude that his older brother was indeed the culprit.
“Bass, hey. C’mon. Wake up.”
Bass stirs, lazily sitting up. He rubs his eye with one hand, cracking his neck back and forth. He can hear X make a noise of protest. He knew all too well that the older boy hated the sound of cracking joints.
On a normal day, he would’ve continued just to spite him, but he stopped.
Bass felt more docile. He wasn’t quite sure why.
Oh yeah.
The surgery.
Blues.
Nope, Bass isn’t sleepy anymore. He jolts, gaze turning to meet Zero’s.
“Is he-”
“Yes. Blues is fine. Everything went well, and he’s sleeping right now.” The teen smiles and Bass feels relief emanate through every single fiber of his body. Blues is okay. Blues is safe. Blues is alive. Blues is unharmed.
Everything is going to be alright.
A couple days later, Blues is propped up against a white pillow in a hospital bed. His thin, pale hand rests in Bass’s dark, strong one.
And at 3:27, Thursday afternoon, everything is okay again, if just for a little bit.