Fantasia

LXXXVIII

"Hrrnnnn..."

Eddy turned around, stretched his back and yawned. Five minutes. Just another five minutes. 

He turned around again, pulled the blanket around him tighter and nuzzled into the corner of the fabric, trying to block out the bluish light coming from the window. 

Wait. He frowned, eyes still closed. 

Blue? Since when was his room blue? And why was his blanket suddenly so thin? 

Eddy's eyes flew open in lightning speed while his breathing stopped dead. 

"Brett!", he immediately called into the hospital room with the blue curtains hanging from the ceiling. His gaze searched the place frantically as panic rose within him. 

Where Brett's bed had been, there was an empty space now. Only all the machines, tubes and cables hanging down served as testemony of a patient having been removed just recently, the chaos letting Eddy assume that it had been done in a hurry. 

Where was Brett? Why wasn't he here? Did he wake up and they were having him checked out somewhere else?

Eddy gulped and looked down on himself, lying on one of those light hospital beds the medics used in the ER or to transfer patients from A to B. A makeshift installation for sure. Had they moved him from Brett's side when they had to bring Brett out of here for whatever reason?

He threw the light blanket off him and jumped out of bed, the door already burst open before he even realized that his feet were carrying him out of there. 

"Where's Brett?", Eddy yelled at the first poor nurse he encountered right before the lifts. She looked at him with big eyes. 
"Sir, I don't know who you're referring to!"
"For the love of God, Brett Yang. Room 838. Where is he?"
It would have been better if she'd still be oblivious. If her features would have displayed nothing but surprise like before. Instead, her gaze got hooded, and she dropped her head, not looking at Eddy anymore. 
"What?", he had to ask, "WHAT?"
"I only just came in and I'm not the nurse in charge of him, but...", she hesitated. 
"WHAT?", Eddy practically screamed and it took all his willpower for him not to grab that woman's shoulders and shake her until her grey, curly hair was flying in all directions. 
"Are you a..."
"Friend! I'm on the visitor's list, just... please!", Eddy begged her to spill those God damn beans already.
She took a deep breath. "Again, I'm not totally up-to-date, but I heard that he... his heart stopped beating."

Free fall. Eddy was falling from a cliff so high the bottom was hidden behind dark clouds underneath and around him. 

"What...?", he muttered, tone gone, breathing gone. He might as well be dead himself for all he knew, because his heart had never felt so, so cold. 
"He had a cardiac arrest during the night, which triggered the alarm", her voice from far away told him, "The doctor responsible for this floor on the nightshift plus all the nurses came running and started resuscitation immediately, of course."
"Where is he now?", Eddy's voice sounded from equally far away. Had he hit the bottom at last without noticing and was he under water now?
"First floor. Intensive care unit. If he's still..."

She didn't need to finish the sentence. Eddy wasn't a medic, but even he knew that they gave up reanimation after a few minutes tops. If it had happened in the night and they hadn't been able to bring him back by now, Brett was...

The nurse was still saying something, but Eddy was already storming to the elevators. Pressing the button and hoping for one of the lifts to arrive was too much, so Eddy went straight for the stairs, taking two, three steps together. On the third floor, he almost lost his footing, misstepped once and twisted his ankle, but there was no registration of pain, only his instinct commanding him to get to Brett as fast as he could.

"Where is he?", he asked again when he finally arrived at the reception desk of the intensive care unit, his heart beating out of his chest as every breath tormented his lungs. Not that Eddy cared, really.
"Who are you looking for?", the male nurse behind the computer asked politely, his attitude the total opposite of how Eddy felt. 
"Brett! Brett Yang!"
"Are you..."
"Friend! I'm his friend. Eddy Chen! I'm on the visitor's list!"
"One moment."
In his mind, Eddy had no moment left to give whatsoever and luckily, he didn't have to. Before that guy even moved a finger to type in his or Brett's name, someone grabbed Eddy's elbow. He turned around and stared into the face of one distressed Mrs. Yang. 
"Mrs. Yang...", he whispered and held her arm, hoping his eyes would pose the question he didn't dare to ask. 
"They just called us here", she sobbed, tears streaming down her face, "they said he went into cardiac arrest. Brett... he..."
"Is he..."
Instead of answering, she pulled him along ten meters down the hallway to a room with wide, open doors.

And there he was. Brett. Lying unconsciously on a bed while about a dozen people were mingling around him, yelling stuff to one another. He was attatched to so, so many tubes and machines that it made Eddy want to scream. One guy was giving chest compressions while someone else was standing there with what Eddy guessed, must have been a defibrillator. Another nurse on the EKG shouted something and everyone stepped aside, while the defib-person put two rectangular, metallic things on Brett's bare chest the next second and sent a shock through Eddy's best friend's body. To no avail.

"How did... what happened?", Eddy breathed, unable to blink, not wanting to blink out of fear that he'd miss whatever was happening in front of him. Images from what felt like his past life shot through his mind, of his mum being brought to the hospital, surrounded by countless medics while he, as a teenager, was left sobbing helplessly by himself.

Now, however, there was no strength left to sob or cry, only for standing there, frozen on the spot, observing the scene as a useless spectator. Useless again.

"They said it happend around four in the morning", Eric, standing next to his wife, explained calmly. Eddy hadn't even noticed that he was around. "He went into cardiac arrest and they tried to revive him in his room first. They brought him back and because they weren't sure, what had caused his heart to stop beating, they transfered him here for examination. Since then, his heart had stopped thrice. This is the fourth time."
"Shit...", Eddy mumbled. This was not supposed to happen. This was not part of the deal at all! Hadn't that girl said Brett could go home when they would find their hearts? 

Or, by home, had she meant somewhere else, where it was impossible for Eddy to reach him?

Alan sniffled before adding something Eddy wasn't prepared for. "They said something weird happened though. They guess the machines are broken, but I don't think that's it."
Eddy glanced at him. "What?"
"The EKG, the machine. Normally, there are three lines. One showing the heart rate, one displaying the oxygen saturation waveform and one the respiratory waveform."
Eddy had no idea what the last two were supposed to mean, but he stayed quiet. Of course, Alan as a dentist, would know all these complicated words those doctors were throwing at each other over the still lifeless body. 
"There are five lines instead of three. Five. Also, the position of the lines are different."
"We don't know if that just happens with the machines Brett's hooked onto or if all the others in the hospital got the same problem", Brett's dad said in his neutral tone he was using since Eddy had gotten here. 
"Five lines...", Eddy mouthed, unable to form a whole sentence. 
"They showed when he flatlined the first time up in his room and ever since. Every time his heart stops, five lines appear."

Five lines. Eddy could only think of one thing that got five lines and suddenly, he knew what he had to do. What he had to at least try!
"I'll be right back!", he yelled and was already running to the elevators again.