A Shot of Reality [Harry Styles]

VIII. Disease

A/N- No real authors note this time. Have a happy Valentines day and enjoy. x

December 24th, 2011

Lying in the stiff hospital bed, Sydney desperately looked out the window at the snowflakes falling delicately on rooftops and chimneys. She wanted an escape out of this white prison, where the only sounds she could hear were the constant rhythmic beeps of the heart monitor and the only smell she could decipher was a nose wrenching scent of antiseptic.

It had been twenty-four grueling hours, emotionally and physically speaking. The doctors had told her that they capsules she took were laced with a miniscule dosage of cyanide, one a hundredth smaller than a simple grain of rice. But that enough had made her into a temporary corpse. In the most basic of medical terms, she had multiple seizures while she was blacked out and it had taken doctors fifteen minutes of attempts to resuscitate her into possessing a heartbeat upon entry.

It was Christmas Eve and no one had come in to wish her a merry one. It wasn't surprising to her though, she after all was in a stable but critical condition at the hospital with multiple tubes and wires going through her body. Nothing about this situation was merry in the slightest.

After all, she had no family in sight. She had been estranged from her grandparents and cousins when she moved to Holmes Chapel years before. Her mother, or more appropriately Claudia, left years earlier with no care for Sydney in mind and her father was a struggling alcoholic who supposedly went to rehab but never returned.

Yes, Merry Christmas indeed.

The heart monitor started to beat wildly as she realized how hard and ragged her breathing had become. The doctors reminded her if she ever became emotional; the heart monitor would pick up on the patterns and syndicate with it. Tears welled up in her crystalline eyes and hesitantly rolled down her face onto her hospital gown body.

She felt disgusted beyond belief with herself, the one time she vowed to have fun and she ends up close to death. Her breath labored more as she realized how lonely she really was. All the other patients had flowers, balloons and teddy bears flying into their rooms like a replica of Heathrow, she had injections and doctors occasionally passing into her room if she was lucky to get some sort of attention.

She then felt a hand toppling hers, ones that texture and sensation had deemed so familiar and so serene it almost made her heart leap out of her chest and onto the spotless floor. Opening her eyes, she then consumed the sight of a tousled head of curls, stern gray/green eyes and deep dimples that did wonders to her mind.

"Harry," she moaned weakly before she felt another sharp upheaval of air race up her throat due to the tube residing there. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in France?"

His eyes widened slightly at the sound quality of her voice, for it was scratchy and so unnatural for Sydney's usual perky tone. He scrawled the pad of his thumb around the top her IV clad hand gently, but he couldn't contain his rage and disappointment for much longer.

"What the hell were you thinking?" He whispered darkly, temporarily closing his eyes and ceasing the small movements on her hand.

This time, her eyes grew at the evident underscores of anger and dissentient bleeding into his guttural voice. She knew that he had every right in the world to be angry with her. After all, she was a project beyond repair.

And for the first time in a while, she answered as truthfully as she could muster under the circumstances.

"I wasn't."