Simon Riley crying and praying for the first time in years bc you're hospitalized
(self indulgent as fuck, based off of personal medical history bc it'll be more accurate)
You hadn't ate or drank for 5 days, unable to keep anything down. You thought it was the flu at first. Fevers, puking, extreme fatigue. It didn't seem like anything out of the norm. Except for when your fevers started casing full body convulsions that made you look possessed. Chills and cold sweat turned to groaning and crying, muscles all over cramping and clenching, breathing becoming difficult. You figured it was because you hadn't had the flu in years. How wrong you had been.
Once your puke turned green, which was later found out to be bile from your kidneys, Simon rushed you to the hospital. Unable to stand, he pulled a wheelchair from the entrance and pushed you everywhere. Within 2 hours, the nurses had you admitted and on IV meds. Pain meds, IV Tylenol, and bags of fluid were hooked up to you, rehydrating you being high priority. Your body is in shock, resting heartrate being 140. He sat by your side the entire time, holding your puke bag in one hand, and your hair back in the other. The doctors drew blood, running blood cultures, searching for a more accurate answer.
The night you were admitted, they informed you that your kidneys were so infected that one got injured. The bile that was thrown up was caused but how hard you were puking, pulling it up from your kidneys.
He stayed the night, sleeping in the rocking chair, right next to your bed. He woke up when your fevers came back, holding your hand and telling you how good you're doing, calling in a nurse. The morning that followed, he had to go back to the house to make a bag of your immediate needs, clothes, deodorant, hairbrush, and anything else he could think of. When he came back, a doctor and a couple med students came in with important news.
"We ran blood cultures to see if there was possible an infection in your blood due to your symptoms leaning towards that. They came back positive. We are going to give you antibiotics and run cultures every 12 hours to track if the antibiotics are working" The doctor says as gently as possible.
The room begins to feel like it's spinning. Sepsis has a 68% mortality rate, and knowing how deadly it is, it feels like you're already being buried. Simon looks to you with a confused look, not knowing exactly what that it, but knowing it isn't good.
"I have sepsis?" You ask in a quiet voice, throat constricting.
"Yes" The doctor says softly.
"Oh fuck I'm gonna die" you whisper under your breath, tears forming.
Simon looks to you, eyes widening. 'Not again'
"Wait, the hell is Sepsis?" He demands, but not sounding confident, more scared than anything.
The doctor explains it to him, how it when your blood is infected, how the infection can latch onto your other organs and slowly kill you from the inside out. Once it reaches your brain, it's too late. His grip on your hand tightens. The doctor tries to give hope, but she can only do so much without lying. She leaves to give you privacy.
It's silent, neither of you speaking out of shock. The only noise in the room is the quiet hum of the IV machine and Simon's shaky breathing. Your thumb softly glides back and forth over the back of his hands, trying to ground him.
"Si" you softly call.
It takes hour to get him to loosen up a little. It's only when you manage to keep down a popsicle that he feels like he can breath a little easier. Like maybe you'll be part of the 32% that pull through.
That sliver of hope is crushed that night, being woken up by his arm being slapped repeated by you in a panic. His eyes meet yours, concern instantly written on his face. Your hand is on your chest as short, sharp breaths are the only thing you can manage.
"I,, can't,, breath,," you whisper between breaths, unable to say a sentence in one go.
"Baby it's alright, jus' try to breath wit' me, hm?" he tries to demonstrate slow breathing, mistaking it for a panic attack.
"not a,, panic,, attack,, please,, nurse,," you try to tell him.
He nods in a panic, running out to the nurse station and explaining. They rush in and take your pulse-ox just to see your oxygen percentage is at 86% when it should be above 95%. They try to do the deep breathing again before Simon interrupts them.
"It's not a bloody panic attack, she literally can't breath. Get her oxygen or somethin' before she fuckin' suffocates!"
They put you on oxygen until they can get you an X-ray. The nurses try to chalk it up to a panic attack until in the morning they see you still can't breath. They give you an X-ray and when the results come back, they send the doctor in. She informs you that the nurses gave you too much IV fluid and that caused your organs to swell so much that they pushed up on your lungs, collapsing them by 3/4ths. 1/4th of your lungs are still open and they're going to take you off fluid, start you on exercises to open them back up, and keep you on oxygen.
That's the last straw for Simon. Once you fall asleep for a nap, he heads outside to the bench area and punches a wall. His knuckles split but he barely feels it, ringing in his ears drowning out the surrounding noise. With no one around, he sits on a bend, elbows on knees and face in his hands. His breath picks up as his throat tightens and tears threaten to rip out of him.
"Why would ya let this happen to 'er? Aren't you supposed to be lovin'?" He whispers into the wind, looking up at the sky, "That girl in't like me. She's the fuckin' sunshine in human form and she's on death's bloody doorstep."
Tears cloud his vision, unable to keep it in any longer. He blinks them away, falling onto his clenched fists. Years of praying, to a god he later grew to resent, for him to fix his family. A child kneeling at his bed, begging him to get his family out of his father's grasp. Once he got to his teenage years, his desperation became resentment and anger. His jaw began to clench when his drunken father would spew bible verses at him to condemn him. He realized God wouldn't save him, nor would he when Simon's family was ripped from him.
Yet here he was, back to that same god, desperate that maybe, just maybe, he'd have mercy on him this time. He believed himself a rotten man, even if it was subconscious, unworthy of the angel sent to him. His light, reparations for the mistreatment The Father had destined for him.
"You sent 'er to me, it's gotta be for a reason. You've never listened to my prayers before but just this fuckin' once, please don't ignore me." His voice breaks, openly sobbing with no sound, "You sent 'er to me and now I can't live without 'er. She's fuckin' everythin' to me. Don't take back your gift, please" The end of his sentence slips into a whisper.
He wipes his tears on his sleeve and sniffles hard, trying to erase the evidence of his vulnerability. He stands and walks to the door, looking back at the bench before turning back to the door and walking in. 'Amen'
1K notes
·
View notes