Page 69 of Xavier

By the time my rideshare finally pulled into Mercy General, I was about ready to tear my hair out from all of the stress. Travelhad never been my favorite, and doing so when a loved one was laid up in the hospital on a ventilator made all of that ten times fucking worse.

I’d loosely been texting Dexter since he’d called me, thankful for the small updates he’d been giving me so that I wasn’t losing my ever loving mind with worry that I was going to arrive to a cadaver already toe-ticketed inside of the morgue downstairs.

Xavier was up on the third floor. There was no actual timeline for him waking up or being taken off of the ventilator but his brain activity was very healthy despite his dangerous dip in oxygen levels.

With my heart in my throat, I took the elevator up while sending Dexter a quick text that I was here. I hated the not knowing everything about all of this. While the good news was good, the bad news is what scared me the most.

Xavier being in any kind of coma freaked me right the hell out. Even if the doctors were hopeful that he would wake up soon.

What if he didn’t?

What if I was walking into a situation where I was actually saying goodbye to him?

I was never going to be able to handle something like that. I’d shatter into a million pieces if I didn’t go home with Xavier still alive.

To my surprise, when the elevator doors opened up, Dexter was standing there waiting for me. He perked up as soon as he spotted me, lifting himself away from the wall to meet me in the middle of the hallway.

“Hey...” I said, my hands itching to reach out and hug him. Despite us only knowing each other a short while, I still felt a connection to Dexter. My brothers liked him, my boyfriend adored him. Therefore in my mind, he was already family.

“Your flight go okay?” he asked.

I blew out a breath in response.

See, the thing about getting a last minute flight wasn’t that the prices were astronomical or that the seat you got assigned to you was of course at the very back of the plane next to the bathrooms. No, the worst part was that taking a red-eye meant you had half the passengers sleeping peacefully and the other half being absolute and downright weirdos.

My luck, I’d been seated between two.

“I made it,” was what I finally settled on.

He nodded in response and then pivoted on his heel to lead me back down the hallway. Nurses and doctors moved all about the floor, coming and going in and out of rooms that we passed by. There wasn’t so much of a frantic energy to the place as there was a purposeful one.

Which actually made me feel a little bit better. With no codes being called, that meant that everyone here was stable. For now.

Dexter stopped in front of a room that was kitty corner to the nurses’ station, the door already propped open.

He led me inside with a wave, stepping back so I could enter before him.

My heart leaped into my chest when I caught sight of Xavier on the bed. His eyes were closed with a tube shoved down histhroat. On either side of him were a bunch of monitors that beeped softly, tracking all sorts of things that I couldn’t exactly wrap my head around at this point.

No one else was in the room, thankfully.

“They said he’s going good,” Dexter said from behind me, his voice soft. “I know it looks bad from here.”

Yeah, that was an understatement. But I appreciated the sentiment regardless. Dexter was a pretty aware guy, even for just seventeen. I think he got that from his dad, honestly. That man could read you like a damn first grade level book.

My feet carried me over to his bedside. As long as I ignored the giant tube coming out of his mouth, he looked like he was peacefully sleeping.

“I should’ve brought flowers or something,” I joked, my voice sounding hollow. “This place is so drab.”

“I think there are some bouquets down in the gift shop,” Dexter supplied.

He really was such a sweet kid.

Nodding, I scooped up Xavier’s hand into mine, squeezing it lightly so that I wouldn’t disturb the IV-line taped to the top of it. His hand was warmer than I was expecting, relieving the tension that had been building inside of my chest just a little bit more.

Leaving in a flurry earlier had both scared the twins and made them want to come with me. I’d barely gotten them to agree to staying behind and looking after the house while I jetted off to California for the foreseeable future.

I felt guilty leaving them behind, or at all, with them having such limited time to spend with me before they both had to leave for their respective careers again. No matter how many times they’d reassured me while they drove me to the airport, I still felt bad.

---