Show Me Where it Hurts

“Harry?”

Louis timidly peaked his head around the corner of the door of the hospital room Annie’s limp body laid in. Harry hadn’t moved from her side for three days. Her condition showed no sign of improvement or progression. Despite everyones best efforts, he had stayed, shower less, clean-clothing-less, and completely numb.

“How is she?” Louis braved a step into the room and clicked the door behind him. He bit down on his lip, wondering if Harry wanted anyone here at all.

“She’s not moved.” Harry said, a tiny bit of confusion evident in his voice, his lip upturned as the raspy, voiceless words left his throat.

Louis bit down on his thumb and took the seat behind him. It was the first time he had been back here since he found Annie. Anne had been beside Harry for as long as she could but 72 hours later, she needed sleep. She couldn’t expect Eleanor to take care of the pairs two children alone. Besides, Harry had barely spoken or moved since he took up residence at Annie’s bedside.

He was clinging to Annie’s wrist as he finally brought his head up to acknowledge Louis, a move that startled his best friend. He wasn’t expecting words from Harry, he knew that was too much to expect at this point.

“You know,” Harry paused to clear his throat, dry and sore. “I keep wondering why I don’t deserve to be happy like all of you."

Louis didn’t even think to open his mouth. He wanted Harry to vent.

“Was I ever unfair to anyone in our career?” The colour surrounding Harry’s eyes startled Louis. He dropped his eyes to the floor and shook his head.
“You know you weren’t.”
“I know. At least, that’s what I thought.” Harry frowned and shook his head, staring down at the cotton of the hospital bed. “I’ve always tried to treat people well. So well, too well. Better than they deserve sometimes. I guess I always thought that it would win me some sort of good karma but here I am. The one who always kept his mouth shut to avoid trouble and now I’m drowning in it.” Louis heard the aggression and upset in his chest. “Why do you all get to be happy? I’ve got two children that might not have a mother by the morning.”
“Harry,” Louis winced at his words. “You don’t know that.”
“Even if she’s still here we’ll never get over this.”
“You will. Of course you will. You can get through anything.”
“All of the things I’ve done.” Harry shook his head and Louis knew that his best friend was about to drop his walls and cry. He watched as Harry turned over his own wrist and studied the place where the Things I can’t tattoo had been, years before. “Shouldn’t have got that removed because I can’t do anything. I can’t look after them on my own, not like she does."

Harry had turned his attention back to Annie’s sleeping, surprisingly peaceful looking face. Louis didn’t want to push him too far, he felt his sorrow with him. Harry was punishing himself in the worst possible way.

“I’ll be lost without her, if she goes.” Harry’s voice was so dark and deep that it almost vibrated the walls of the small room. He swiped at his eyes and brought his t-shirt up to cleanse the stress from them. “She can’t go, there’s so much.. there’s so much we could have done. Look at me, I spent all of my time away from her. I should have been there.”
“You weren’t to know, Harry, don’t do that.” Louis had never seen him this way, or anybody this way for that matter. Suddenly and selfishly he felt thankful for Eleanor at home and their baby inside of her and wondered how he could ever have been angry or disappointed at that thought.

“Should have been there.” Harry repeated, barely more than a whisper. He pressed his lips to the back of Annie’s hand, careful not to dislodge the horrible looking cafetter inserted into her vein. He never wanted to see her this way again.

The knot in Harry’s chest was heaving. Louis was right, he was punishing himself. He was so blind with the pain of all the things he had done wrong to land Annie here that he didn’t even notice when Louis excused himself. He sighed and looked up at Annie again, scooting closer to her face. His cruel mind was telling him to study her features deeper than ever before, just incase he had to say goodbye to her and they became nothing but memories.

He kicked himself for never even noticing the freckle on the underside of her chin. All the times he had kissed roughly over it. His mind started to torture him with all of the good memories and Harry didn’t know what was worse. When she came back to his house for the first time all of those years ago and slept in his bed and crawled into his lap first thing in the morning. He had never told her how much that had meant to him. How much it had overwhelmed him that his house felt like a home for the first time since he bought it. He’d never tell her about all the times he’d sit and watch her sleeping or even the photograph he took of her splayed across his pillow one morning before he left to work. He knew he’d see her in a few hours or later that evening but he needed the image to get him through the day and even when the boys saw it, adorning his iPhone wallpaper, they didn’t mock it. All of his bandmates had been the main components of his life and knew him better than anyone. They knew how deeply Harry fell in love and how sensitive he had become since meeting her.

“Please wake up.” He winced and let the tears stream down his cheeks. He felt ashamed for crying in front of her. “I don’t know what I’ll ever do if I lose you. I need you so much, Annie. I need you to help me use the washing machine, I need you to iron my shirts otherwise I’ll just wear them creased and I know you hate that. I need you to remind me to call my mum every week and to set-up Noah’s bottles before I go to bed. Noah, Annie.” Harry sobbed and struggled for breath at the realisation that if Annie left this world now, Noah wouldn’t even remember her. He’d be that child who had a beautiful loving mother that people can only tell him about. He wouldn’t remember how she fell asleep with him in the rocking chair beside his crib practically every night since he was born. How she had pulled herself from bed in the middle of the night to warm bottle after bottle for the overly-hungry little boy. She adored him and he felt like Noah was being robbed, especially since Ivy would remember her.

Ivy.

He didn’t know what was worse. Noah’s ignorance or Ivy’s awareness. He would be faced with telling his first child that her mother whom she adored and looked up to and laughed and joked with wouldn’t be coming home again. That she had gone to heaven and was happy and always watching her. How could he tell a four year old that?

He was pleading with God or whoever was up there to give her back. He knew she was too special for him and for this world but he needed her and he wanted her. In his mind he was creating all sorts of bargains. If he’d give her back Harry would never let her out of his sight again. They’d have another baby and Noah would start walking and following Ivy around and Harry would never leave the house if it meant that Annie could be there amongst the circus, with them.

Harry dropped his head down into the soft duvet of the hospital bed, exhausted with no more than 10 hours of sleep in three days under his belt. He was so completely zoned out that he didn’t even notice the deafening sound of the heart monitor. He barely had time to get to his feet when the nurses rushed in. He felt like an ant on the floor, a fly on the wall as they crowded around her. It took one look at the screen and one vivid memory of Grays Anatomy to realise that her heartbeat was failing. She was finally giving up, and Harry’s world came crashing down around him.

He didn’t hear the nurses telling him he had to leave, he was blinded by the pain. She’s dead. She’s really gone. She couldn’t make it, not this time. He had always sort of believed that she’d pull through, she had to, didn’t she?

Louis tore Harry away from the small glass slit in the door where he knew the situation completely. Doctors were pressing against Annie’s chest and pumping vigorously and although he was smaller and weaker than Harry, he had to try and restrain him at least somewhat from seeing the moment his wife might die. The moment he would become a widower at 24 years old.

“FUCK!” Harry screamed from deep in his stomach, an ear-splitting roar that dropped to a pathetic cry. Louis felt tears spring to his own eyes and all he could keep thinking was that Harry would never get over this. As he held his best friend away for as long as he could, he saw the drop in activity in Annie’s hospital room. He watched as the first Doctor they had come in contact with wiped his brow and let out a deep sigh, and tore his eyes away, afraid of learning the truth before Harry did, and guilty for making him wait for it.

Notes

HIIIII!
I’ll update hopefully over the weekend again!
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