Holy Mother of God! Pain rimmed the edges of AJ’s world in bright colors. They were like fireworks exploding behind his eyes. Every move he made, every breath he took, was more pain than it was worth. He tried to push it down and rise above it. It was hard to think around. One thought was clear in his mind; clear even through the pain, through everything. Where were the other guys? There was no disorientation in his mind concerning what had happened. He remembered the accident clearly. Every bit of it; in startling detail. Was everyone ok? Had they all survived?
No, he couldn’t think like that. They had to have survived. They had to!
Pain rose up like a tidal wave, wiping away his other thoughts for a minute. He shifted, but that only brought up more pain. He felt as if he was on fire in a line from his throat down to his side. Oh, fuck, it hurt! He gritted his teeth, squeezing his eyes shut.
There was the sound of movement near him, drawing his attention to the world around him for the first time. A beeping sound reached his ears, along with the footsteps, and he knew where he was. A hospital. He was in a fucking hospital. Almost instantly the panic started to kick in.
His breathing started to hitch, bringing the pain up another level. No, no, he couldn’t be at a hospital. He didn’t want to be here! They couldn’t make him stay. There was no way. He had to get up. He had to get out of there!
Someone touched his hand, startling him so badly that he jumped. His eyes flew open, locking onto the nurse that was at his bedside. He tried to scream, to shout and pull away, but nothing came out his mouth. All it did was make the fire in his throat intensify. Pain rolled over him in waves but it was nothing compared to the panic he felt. Heedless of how much it hurt, he tried to scramble up in bed, to pull away from the hand that was now gripping his wrist.
“Mr. Mclean, please!” The nurse cried out. She looked panicked as she pressed a button on the side of his bed. Her hand still gripped him tightly. “You need to calm down. You’re going to tear out your stitches!”
He didn’t care. Panic had him in its grip and wasn’t going to let go. All he could think about was getting away from her.
Suddenly the door burst open and three more nurses ran in; a female and two males. AJ’s breathing grew more labored as they rushed straight to him. No, no! He tried to pull back but they were all there, grabbing his hands and his feet, forcing him to be still. He bucked against them, gasping as the pain in his side doubled, almost knocking him out.
They held his wrists down, one of them holding his feet, one of the men trying to push on his shoulders to force him onto the bed. No, they were trapping him! He had to get away from them. He couldn’t be here! A wheezing sound filled his ears and he realized that it was coming from him.
One voice suddenly broke into the midst of the panic. To AJ it was like a lifeline he could cling to. Overtop of the nurses shouting and the beeping of the machine at his side, AJ heard Brian. “Alex!”
Even as he still struggled he found his eyes seeking him out, needing to find him. If Brian was here, he’d keep AJ safe. He wouldn’t let them hurt him.
Then he found him. Brian was moving past the nurses, not hesitating to push his way in. He took hold of AJ’s wrist, pushing the one nurse’s hand out of the way so that he could grip AJ’s hand. “Alex, baby, breathe for me. Come on, I need you to breathe.” He spoke softly and urgently.
Sweet God, he was there. He was alive, too! Thank God above! AJ found his body stilling at just the touch of Brian’s hand. Shifting his grip, he clenched tightly to Brian’s fingers.
“That’s it, baby. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
Other voices spoke, but AJ couldn’t seem to hear them. He saw, though, that someone dropped the rail on the side of the bed. Then they were helping Brian sit. The whole time, Brian didn’t take his eyes off of AJ. “I’m not going anywhere, Alex. I’ll stay right here with you, ok? But I need you to stay calm for me. You’re going to hurt yourself, panicking like that.”
AJ opened his mouth to say something but found that he couldn’t speak past the fire there. It had him gasping and wheezing slightly. Someone whispered something in Brian’s ear and then Brian was pulling his hand from AJ’s. At first AJ started to panic again, but then he watched as Brian lifted that hand and grabbed something from AJ’s chest. A second later an oxygen mask was covering AJ’s mouth and nose. It made breathing just a little bit easier.
Once that was on, Brian reached back down and took his hand again. For the first time, AJ noticed all the bruises and cuts on Brian. He saw the big brace on Brian’s arm. Since his voice wouldn’t work, he tried to use his eyes to ask his questions.
Brian had always been able to read him well. His eyes crinkled with a smile that set AJ even more at ease. “Everyone’s alive, Alex. A little banged up, but ok. I broke my arm, that’s why I’ve got this brace on. They had to do some surgery, put in a plate and some pins. A few of my chest wires broke, but they fixed me up and I’m fit as a fiddle.”
The talking was bringing AJ back down more and more. Brian must have sensed it, because he kept talking.
“Nick broke the femur bone in his right leg. Kid’s in a cast, and they have him in a wheelchair so he doesn’t try walking on it. You know him; he’s terrorizing the halls in that thing. But he’s fine. Howie sprained his wrist, got stitches in his head and on his arm. Kev got some glass in his back, fractured a couple ribs, and broke two fingers. Got a bruise on his dome, but, well, he’s always been hardheaded. Didn’t even need stitches for it.”
So everyone was hurt, but nothing too vital. They’d all survive. They were all alive. Brian was here, holding his hand, smiling a dopey little smile. Now that he was calmer, AJ saw the slight glaze to Brian’s eyes that said he’d taken some pain medication.
“You’ve been out for a while.” Brian told him gently. “I woke up the next day. Apparently I’d had surgery that night to fix my arm and my chest. The meds kept me under the rest of the night and the morning. Once I was awake, they moved me here. I’m sharing a room with you.”
Oh, thank God! If Brian was sharing a room with him, he wouldn’t have to leave. But at the same time, that meant they had to stay here. AJ didn’t know if he could handle that. How long would they keep him? What was wrong with him? Brian hadn’t said that part yet. God, was it bad? Was he going to be stuck here?
Brian kept talking. “They kept you under for a while. This is the third morning since I woke up. But they wanted to give your body time to heal.”
Three days? He’d been out for three days? Shit! What the fuck was wrong with him? AJ locked gazes with Brian, pleading with him to say something. The pain was going back down again, enough that AJ felt a little clearer in his mind. He didn’t know that the nurse had used Brian as a distraction so she could put a little medication into AJ’s IV.
A soft sigh slid past Brian’s lips. His grip on AJ’s hand tightened for a second. “You…you got banged up pretty good, baby.” He finally said. His eyes looked so sad that it had AJ wanting to panic again. He held it back by sheer force of will and listened to what Brian had to say. “You got cut down over your chest, stomach and side. It tore your spleen. They had to take it out and stitch you back up.”
Holy shit. Well, that explained the ache in his side. But he knew from the look on Brian’s face that there had to be more. One of the nurses stepped up, putting a hand on Brian’s arm. “Mr. Littrell, are you sure…?”
“Yes.” Brian told her gently. “Better now than later.”
Brian turned to look back at AJ again. “Your ankle was broken, but it’s casted now. They say it should heal fine. But there was, well, there was some damage to your throat, baby. The phone cord…”
As Brian trailed off, images came back to AJ’s mind. They’d been pushed away for a while by his panic attack but now they were flooding back into him. Singing into the phone. The crash. Spinning around, that cord spinning with him, tightening around his neck. Trying to breathe and not being able to. Seeing Brian lying on the ground, bleeding, as the world started to go black. Sweet God, he’d been strangled by his own cell phone charger!
Wait, damage? What kind of damage did he mean? Dear sweet God above. Everything inside of AJ locked down in that single instant. He felt his eyes go wide, felt his breathing start to hitch. “No” His mouth formed the word, but no sound came out. “No!” He forced his throat to move, to push beyond the fire, trying to shriek the word. All that came out was a strangled rasping sound, barely audible.
Brian’s grip tightened even more on his hand, trying to pull him back down to reality, but AJ couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything. Instead of panicking by lashing out, as the nurses that stood around had fully expected him to do, AJ panicked in the way that Brian had known he would. He locked every part of his body down, going completely still, his eyes closing. He held his breath, trying to stop the words from screaming their way out of his throat. Trying to stop himself from forcing his voice to work to prove them all wrong.
Damage to his throat. Those words echoed over and over inside of his mind. That could mean so many things. But most of all, his voice. It meant that there would be problems with his voice. Would he ever sing again? Would he ever be able to speak again? To tell Brian that he loved him? To call his mom on the phone? Trembles ran through AJ’s body. He felt them but couldn’t stop it. No, they had to be wrong. They had to.
He pulled up the hand that wasn’t holding Brian’s, bringing it to his throat so he could feel, needing to feel it for himself. A bandage sat there, something he hadn’t noticed until then. They must have numbed it because he couldn’t feel, even touching the bandage over where the wound should be. He couldn’t feel it. Screams and sobs threatened to break free. He ignored the dizziness that came from holding his breath, from holding them in.
Brian’s hand shifted in his, moving up to his face. AJ ignored it. At least, until he felt Brian smack his forehead. That had his eyes jerking open wide. The surprise had him sucking in air, which burned its way down his throat.
That seemed to satisfy Brian. He took AJ’s hand again and glared at him. “You can’t just not breathe, Alexander James.”
Not breathe? Oh. He’d been fighting to keep those screams in so hard that he’d forgotten to breathe again. The pain of it hadn’t registered. Automatically he tried to say something to Brian, some smart ass retort for hitting him in the head, but as he tried, nothing came out.
Reality slammed into AJ like a fist to the gut. He might never talk again. Might never sing again. That last line repeated over and over in his mind. Never sing. Never sing. Never get up on stage before hoards of fans and sing his heart out as they screamed to him. Never wander around the house and sing to himself as he cleaned just for the sheer joy of singing.
Small little gasping sounds were burning at his throat as they tore from him. Not actual noise, but the sound of air trying to pull in and out of his damaged lungs. His eyes slid closed. Wave after wave of pain and grief rolled over him, threatening to suck him under, to erode the very foundation of his world. If he lost his voice, if he could never sing again, then what was there for him in life?
As if to remind him that there were other things, the grip on his hand suddenly shifted. Then AJ found himself pulled forward gently and pulled into a one-armed hug. Even with the hospital smell almost burning his nose, AJ recognized that scent that was all Brian. He’d been held in this embrace so many times before. Held against a shoulder that had always been there, even as just friends. The love in that embrace, the love evident in the way that Brian pressed a kiss against his temple, reminded AJ that he would always have something in his life. Someone.
The comfort of being hugged by Brian was enough to break down the last of AJ’s defenses. Heedless of his or Brian’s injuries, he brought his arms up and clung to his partner. All of this was just too much. The crash, everyone’s injuries, this horrible news about his voice, being trapped in a hospital, it was just too much. In the place where he had always been safe, AJ broke.
There was almost no sound to his cries but the sound of air pulling raggedly in and out of his body. They shook his small frame violently, threatening to break him. It hurt, to cry like that. It had to hurt Brian with as tight a grip as AJ knew he had. But Brian didn’t move. The arm that was around AJ was tight, that hand gripping AJ’s shoulder to keep him in place.
Someone said something; what it was, AJ had no idea. But he heard Brian’s response. “No, that won’t help.” There was a pause in which AJ couldn’t hear the other person speaking, couldn’t hear anything over his own crying. Then Brian’s voice again, so sweet and protective. “You don’t understand, you’d only hurt him more in the long run. He needs this. He needs to break…..I don’t care! Go get the doctor if you feel you have to. You’re not coming near Alex right now and that’s final!” With that, Brian turned his head again, rubbing his cheek against the top of AJ’s head. “That’s it, honey, let it out.” He whispered soothingly.
So AJ cried. He cried and cried until there was nothing left in him. Until the physical pain caught up with him and fatigue took its toll. Then, only then, as his body started to sag underneath it all, Brian laid him back against the bed again.
AJ looked at his partner through swollen eyes, silently asking the question he was no longer able to voice. But Brian read him so well. A smile curved those lips. “I’m staying, Alex.” He said. His voice sounded slightly distant as AJ slipped back into the dark. “I’m not going anywhere.” They were the last words AJ heard before the exhaustion fully claimed him and he went under yet again.