The following silence took so many seconds before Liam asked with the most anxious tone in his voice that felt so heartbreaking: “What do you mean? What else has happened?!”

The rest of us just glanced around at each other struggling to believe that something could possibly beat the hurt of what the doctor had already told us.


Once again he took the annoying liberty of hesitating a bit before answering: “When she was found her body had been cooled down remarkably and the lack of oxygen in her brain for several minutes can have an effect on the full function in it afterwards.”

“You mean…” Niall began but didn’t have the strength to finish the sentence, so instead the doctor continued:

“Nothing is definite, as far as we can tell now everything looks fine, but we haven’t done all the tests to be absolutely sure. Things like significant memory loss we still don’t know about, not until she wakes up.”


At this point there weren’t people left in our group having any energy or will power to be strong for the rest of us, both Niall, Harry and Louis all took a deep breath at the same time struggling to fight the tears that were now slowly but steady finding their way out of their eyeballs.

I squatted down on the floor and covered my face in my hands and therefor didn’t notice much of what was going on around me, until it at some point – and I have no idea when – I discovered that after that deep breath that had went through the group of people everybody was quiet.

Absolutely quiet.


Even though everybody was crying now, nobody made a single sound. The thought of all these terrible things happening to one person in one night seemed so unreal, I don’t think any of us would like to realize it. Especially not the fact that Em was the most innocent and honest person, I couldn’t think of anyone who deserved this less than her. And that was the thought was pretty much what was killing me as I sat there on the floor going the doctor’s words over and over in my head.


“Memory loss as in…” Aida began with a trembling voice but had trouble finishing her question, “… as in… she might not remember any of us or what?”

“Could be,” he answered. “Could be many things, but remember: We don’t know about that for sure yet, we will have to wait. But it shouldn’t take too long for her to wake up and I suppose that you would like to be here when she does? I suggest you stay here in the hospital until then. You can see her now, if you want to.”


He didn’t have to say those words more than one single time, before Liam jumped up asking where she was and literally running towards a room that had the number 14 written on the door.
I, on the other hand, walked incredibly slowly towards it, somehow being very afraid of what my pretty girl would look like after having had all these terrible things done to her. Seemed like the rest of the guys felt the same way, and also we at least wanted Liam to have just a few seconds on his own with his beloved girlfriend before we would all interrupt their moment.




She looked beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Her long blond hair lying on the pillow around her flawless face with her eyes closed peacefully.

Her beauty only made the tubing around her hands and nose, the bruises on her face and the pale color to her lips even more misplaced.



Liam was sitting at her bed brushing her hand lightly whispering comforting words at her even though she probably wouldn’t hear any of them. The tears were silently travelling down his face over and over again in an endless stream that had every emotion in his body written in them.
And so it wasn’t only the sight of my dear friend, but the sight of the two of them together again, that made me break down once again in Niall’s arms. I could tell that he was now crying as well, by this time everybody was, even Louis, who I saw out of my canthus was holding Eleanor tightly with a few tears running down his cheeks as well.


Aida and I were the first ones after Liam who walked over to the bed. I sat down on the edge holding her other hand.


“She looks… so… beautiful,” I sobbed with several heaves of breath in between the words that came out of my mouth.

Aida sat right next to me with slightly shaking shoulders and did an agreeing nod not letting go of Em with her eyes.


After a few minutes of just staring at her we both stood up at the same time and hugged each other once again, but still feeling the same anxious need to feel each other’s support as much as possible in a situation like this.

Eleanor and Louis were the next ones to brush Em’s hand and this way we were all doing it on shifts, except for Liam who didn’t look like he would let go of her other hand for anything.


Even though we were all completely exhausted from having been up all night, feeling anxious and sad all the time and crying for hours, none of us seemed to be able to find any rest at any time. I was sitting in a small chair resting my head against Niall’s shoulder watching the sun rise out of the window, the bright yellow color from the late autumn sunlight filled the room and made everybody feels less resignedly despite the awful situation that our precious friend had been put in;

Drugged, beaten, raped, humiliated, left out in the cold for hours and now stuck to this bed for God knows how long.

By this time none of us were crying anymore, no one had the slightest bit energy left in their body, we just sat around the room closely packed in the sofa and a few chairs.


Or at least that was until the person lying on the bed started moving her head out of the blue.

Liam, who had been resting his head against the edge of the best the exact same way Niall had done it with me almost a month ago, now immediately looked up at her jumping off his chair at the same time.


“Em?!” he asked obviously trying to use a softer voice instead of screaming that he probably wanted to. He stood up and brushed her hair as she kept moving her head around.

Aida, who’d apparently fallen asleep for a second fell off her chair as she tried to jump up as well. Within the next half a second everybody was standing at Em’s bed watching her get more and more to her senses. Louis had pulled a red string just like the one that I’d had used during my stay.


“Wait, we’re too many people around her, give her some space,” Niall said concerned and some of pulled reluctantly away from the bed a bit, so that it was now only Liam sitting close to her as she started making a few sounds like those you make when you wake up and don’t want to get out of bed.


She opened her blue eyes widely and at first she just looked like she couldn’t see a thing as she kept closing them again.

“Em?” Liam asked again softly holding her hand.

She turned towards him with a confused expression on her bruised face. She glanced down at her hand in his. And immediately pulled it away from him.



At that moment the doctor walked in.


“I see you’re awake,” he said smiling as he pulled out some of things that he’d brought – probably to do those tests that he’d been talking about.

We all just stared at each other in shock of what had just happened, Liam was just sitting on his chair looking incredibly hurt and sad thinking that what Em had just done might be because of memory loss.

She couldn’t remember him.


“Don’t touch me!” she suddenly screamed as the doctor moved closer to the bed and making all of us look at her again with worry. The tears were now streaming down her cheeks as well as she looked more afraid than ever with her shaking hands and wide open eyes.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to touch you,” the doctor said and seemed completely unaffected by what she’d just screamed. “Can you tell me your name?”

“What?” she asked still not looking convinced about his intentions. “No, I won’t!”

“It’s okay, he’s a doctor,” I heard myself say as I stepped forward closer to the bed. My instinct told me that she wouldn’t find me as scary as the male figures sitting that close to her.

“Maja,” she sighed reaching out her arms for a hug. I tried to smile as comforting back at her as I walked all the way over to her and giving her a hug. She felt weak, but at the same time like she wouldn’t let go for dear life.

“What do they want?” she whispered in my hair.

“It’s okay,” I just whispered back. “It’s okay. You don’t have to be afraid, you’re safe now.”

“My head hurts,” she said. I could tell she was crying heavily as my t-shirt had a wet stain on it at the shoulder once I finally pulled away. I moved to the side for Aida to have a hug as well.

The relief on her face once she saw that the two of us were here was tearing my heart apart and I discovered that somehow I did have a few drops of liquid left in my eyeballs as I felt it on my face.


“You can tell him your name,” Aida said in a calm voice that I admired so much. When she spoke like that she could make everything seem so easy, she could make me do whatever she said whenever it was said in that special tone.

“Em Olsen,” she mumbled after a moment of hesitation.

“Good,” the doctor replied. “Do you know the names of these people around you?”

“Maja, Aida, Niall, Harry, Louis, Eleanor, Zayn and Liam,” she said frowning at him. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Em, do you remember anything of what happened to you last night?” he asked.


It took her a few seconds before the answer to that question started showing on her face as she once again started crying and nodding embarrassed looking down at her hands. At that moment Aida and I both rushed over to her again to hold her hand and show our support.


“Good, that’s very good Em,” he said. “There are a few police officers here who would like to talk to you about that. It would be really great if you could tell them what you remember. Do you think you are capable of that?”


She again waited a few seconds before nodding. I think it helped that she felt her two friends sitting right next to her.

“That is really good. I’m going to send them in here now, is that okay?”

She nodded again and at that point I looked over at Liam who still sat with a worried and extremely sad expression on his face, I tried to send him a comforting nod but he couldn’t take his eyes off his girlfriend that couldn’t bare the touch of his hand on hers.



It was a man and a woman that walked in a bit later, luckily it was the woman who did the questioning and she seemed so nice, I could feel Em relax a bit more after having tensed up her body when she saw another male.

“Hello Em,” the woman said reaching out her hand as she sat down on the chair that I’d been using moments earlier. “I’m Officer Green and this is my partner, Ashton Wood. I’m going to ask you a few questions and you just answer the best that you can, all right?”

Em nodded.

“Do you want people to leave the room while you speak to me?” she asked but then Em shook her head.

“No. No it’s fine,” she answered but still only looking down at her hands and not around the room.

“Okay, good. What do you remember from last night?”


It took a few minutes of frowning with closed eyes that had tears escaping them all the time before she started speaking:


“I was at this nightclub, Fabric, with Aida, Harry and Liam. We were having fun, the party was really crazy and I had gotten very drunk. I remember dancing around among the many people with Aida, but then… suddenly… somebody grabbed me from behind. It was a guy. Or two guys, I think. Yeah. They were talking to me and asking me something I couldn’t hear because of the loud music. I was sweating a lot so I just walked towards the door to get some air… I’m so stupid…”


She was now sobbing in between almost every word and Aida and I did our very best to try to calm her down by rubbing her back, brushing her hair and holding her hand as she took a break to take a few deep breaths.

“I know this is hard, but try if you can describe as much in details as possible, then we can increase the chances of finding these criminals,” the woman said and so Em continued the best she could:

“Apparently they followed me outside. No, only one of them did. Yeah, and he offered me a sip of his drink and without thinking…”

The next few words she was saying in a tone so shrill and agonized that it made the rest of the room move around a bit at the uncomfortable sound of it: “I just took a sip of it!”

I glanced around everybody to see that Eleanor was crying heavily, Louis just looking at us without much expression on his face, Harry and Niall staring at their uneasy hands and Liam looking like he was about to go out of his mind for not being able to touch his girlfriend, to comfort her, to let her know that he was here for her.

“And what happened after that?” the officer then asked.

“I… I’m not sure. Everything is very blurry from now on, I only remember a few different glints. I remember going back in to the club. But then I started feeling a bit sick so I went back outside again. And then there were two guys, the one with the drink and another one. They caught me from falling in my heels and helped a bit further down the street and it probably looked like we were just friends, but as they took a turn in to a dark alley one of them lifted me up to carry me and then they walked very fast suddenly. I remember telling them to put me down, but they didn’t and I was too dizzy to make any resistance at all.”


More sobbing before she continued:

“When they finally put me down I was in another dark street that I didn’t know where was and the one with the drink started… touching… me. I pushed him away the best that I could but then the other pinned me up against the wall of a tall building, I think it was some sort of factory. And then… the first one… took off my clothes… It was cold.”


I had to bite my lip in order to listen to her horrifying story and I could tell that Liam was now clenching his fists together tightly from the anger that was awakened in him by the sound of her words.


“I… I then don’t remember much of what happened, besides the cold that almost hurt my skin. There’s a glint of one of them having… sex… with me. I don’t know where the other one was at that point.
He had a knife. And said that he would kill me if I told anyone… I think he slammed my head towards that wall a few times because I bit his tongue when he tried to kiss me. I remember the taste of blood.
But then I’m not sure about the rest…”

“That is very good, Em,” the officer replied. “Can you tell me anything about their looks?”

“The one with the drink was tall. And very… buff. I think he had brown eyes, but I’m not sure. The other one was disgusting. He had bad teeth and was skinny. He smelled.”

“Did they both have sex with you?”

Em nodded crying harder than ever.

“At the same time at any point?”


Hesitation. Agonizing hesitation. And then another nod.

Notes

So sorry for not updating! I've been travelling for two days and haven't had any time left.. But I will update again tomorrow, don't you worry <3 Remember to vote and leave a comment and subsribe!