twisted » á. morata & p. dybala

once // emergency

alvaro

I was walking out of the grocery store when I found someone laying on the concrete ground with blood oozing out of the person's head and spilling everywhere. I kneeled beside the person and was shocked to death to see the person's face.

"Álvaro..." She croaked out.

"Isabella? Isabella! Bella, wake up," I kept shaking her body, but she was obviously unconscious. I had to refrain myself from slapping her in the face as an attempt to wake her up.

I rushed her to the hospital in panic. I drove with her laying in the backseat of my car, and I wasn't even stricken by her blood sticking on the seats of my car. My only priority was to get her to the hospital. 

I busted through the door of the emergency room with her body in my arms. "Somebody help!" I yelled, and a few doctors and nurses rushed to help. I put her body down on a gurney and they took her away and through a set of doors.

"Sir, you can't come in here," two of the nurses held me back.

"Is she going to be okay?" I asked with heavy breaths.

"We'll let you know as soon as we do," one of the nurses convinced me and I finally sat down on one of the chairs nearby and buried my head in my blood-stained hands. 

When I called Paulo and Valerie to tell them what had happened, they were really frightened. I waited for them to come bursting through the doors while I was still sitting in the chair. I looked at the dried blood in my hands and sleeves and decided to go to the bathroom to wash them. I looked at myself in the mirror and realised that my grey sweater was also full of her blood. I washed my hands vigorously, but I didn't even bother to try to wash my sweater.

As soon as I got out of the bathroom, a middle-aged female doctor approached me. "Sir, the woman you brought in needs blood transfusion. She's lost too much blood and we can't help her unless she gets enough blood transfusion," the doctor seemed to be in a hurry.

"Then give her some blood from the blood bank," I said in an annoyed tone that indicated I thought the doctor was stupid.

"We can't, we don't have enough of her blood type," the doctor cowered, but still looked me in the eyes contently. 

"What's her blood type?" 

"A plus," the doctor answered, looking less regal than she was before.

"I'm a B, I can't give blood to her," I muttered to myself and started to panic.

"Sir, if she doesn't get blood immediately-"

"Where is she?" Valerie appeared right before us after bursting in through the doors of the ER, yelling for everyone to hear.

"I can explain later, but right now she needs A plus blood," I said without wasting any time.

"I'm an AB," Valerie's eyes widened in horror.

"I'm an A plus," Paulo, who had been quietly panicking next to Valerie the whole time, finally decided to speak up.

"We need to test you first, but quickly, Sir. This way," the doctor took Paulo through the same set of doors I wasn't allowed to go through earlier. I was left alone with Valerie outside the doors, and she started breaking down and crying uncontrollably.

"Hey, hey," I put my arm around her shoulders and she slid down to the floor, making me slide down with her. We sat with our spines rested against the wall.

"What... Wha- What happened?" She asked in between sobs.

"I don't know," I said in frustration. "Someone attacked her. I saw someone running away from her, but I was focused on Isabella, so I didn't get a good look of the perpetrator."

We sat there for at least forty-five minutes, Valerie's sobs dying down eventually.

"Hey," Paulo reappeared from the forbidden doors after a while. 

"Did you see her?" Valerie jumped up from the floor, and I slowly stood up too.

Paulo hesitated for a while before answering. "No," he finally said.

Valerie slumped back down, this time on a chair, with a look of defeat on her face. I was moving to sit next to her, but Paulo caught my arm in the process. "I saw her, Álvi. She's... bloody," he whispered to me, careful to not let Valerie hear anything.

"I know, I saw her too," I put a hand on his back, trying to loosen his horror-struck face a bit.

We didn't sleep all night, and I was sure we were all going to look like total sloths in the morning if we hadn't already that night. We kept pacing around the room, the typical disgusting smell of hospitals filling our noses. Doctors and nurses kept updating us on Isabella's condition, a nurse also told us that she was being operated on in the surgery room.

We were tired, but there was no way we could sleep. We bought water from the vending machine only to cool our throats. I didn't know why I couldn't sleep. Valerie's her sister, and Paulo was her boyfriend, so they shouldn't have been able to sleep. But me? I hated her after all. Besides, there was still a sort of thing going on between me and her sister.

Dawn finally raised upon us after what felt like a lifetime of darkness outside. The same doctor who told us about the blood transfusion came out once again, still wearing a surgery robe and a surgery mask dangling around her neck. 

"She's being brought up to her room as we speak. We had to do a long surgery and she's in critical condition now, but she's stable. She'll wake up in a few hours," she said with a tired but genuinely relieved smile.

We were all listening eagerly, Valerie trembling and Paulo drawing ragged breaths while I stayed silent, and was still confused with my own feelings.

"Can we see her now?" Paulo asked. Only when he did that did I notice his hair had fallen all over his face, his eyes bloodshot, and dark circles were starting to form underneath his eyes, showing how tired he was. I was sure we all looked like that at that point.

"Sure, but she's still unconscious," the doctor took us all to the elevator and up to the sixth floor, where the patients ward was located. 

We all arrived in front of her room, and we could see the nurses setting the machines next to her bed and also the bag of medicinal liquid hanging on the hangar. She looked like a mess with her head covered in white bandages.

Paulo and Valerie walked in slowly but immediately, and the nurses inside shut the windows and got out of the room to give them all some privacy. I, however, decided to stay outside her room for a while. To think.