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Colby watched the seconds go by, sitting in an armchair and surrounded with silence. It had been 28 days. Almost a month. That was a terrible thought.
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The seconds dragged on to minutes, and still he couldn’t take his eyes off of that heart monitor on the wall. It had been 7 days since the big scare, a whole week, and even now he still couldn’t trust himself not to watch it. His friends were worried. The nurses had tried to shoo him out, but they wouldn’t change his position. They couldn’t, because Colby couldn’t either.
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It had been 4 days since they’d raised enough money. The roommates had scraped all they could spare together, and finally the merch goal had been reached. Colby really had to give it to the fans, they were so supportive and kind. They were going to save a life. Hopefully. Colby reminded himself not to get his hopes up - so far, the expensive medicine hadn’t paid off. It had only been 3 days, though. Just three. The doctors said it would work after about a week at most, and it’d only been three days. There was still plenty of time for it to kick in, the doctors were just being paranoid, and his hope wouldn’t be for nothing. The support wouldn’t be for nothing. It would work. They’d all see, it would work.
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Colby sighed, trying not to work himself up again. It’d only been an hour and a half since he last shed a tear, and even though there were plenty of tissues restocked for the next day, he was getting pretty tired of crying. It had never been fun, not once in his life had he ever been okay with crying. It meant that something terrible had happened, because he wasn’t a happy crier, and he didn’t want terrible things to happen. Before this, Colby could count on one hand how many times he’d cried in his life (apart from baby necessity). Now, the number only grew. This was a terrible, terrible situation. How’d they get here, him and Sam? How’d they end up like this?
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“Whoooooa, dude! Look at this place!”
They’d gone to shoot a video at Willard Asylum up in New York, out of the way so they’d escape suspicion and cops. The previous two places they’d visited had been crawling with guards, and for the moment the boys were tired of running from the local police. Willard Asylum was perfect: it was haunted, in the middle of nowhere, and relatively easy to get in to. They were halfway through exploring the massive structure when they came across a particularly large room, with a high ceiling and swooping walls. At the very top, small ledges popped out to support heavy arches. The walls themselves were bare, some spots so decayed that pipes and wires poked through. It would be quite easy to scale them, especially for someone with experience…
Sam had recently begun rock climbing, preferring to work out his whole body at once instead of clammer on to equipment at the gym. Colby had tried to go with him once, but he couldn’t get the hand-eye coordination right, which made the activity hard and unappealing. Sam, however, loved it - he looked like a squirrel, bounding up the wall effortlessly. As soon as he’d seen the wall at the asylum, he’d given Colby a look of excitement. There was no way he was going to pass up this opportunity.
“Hey, Sam,” Colby started, a mischievous smirk making its way onto his face. “I dare you to climb that.”
Sam had smiled, already shedding his backpack and handing it over his partner in crime.
“Set up the camera, then, I want a cool shot of this…,” he said, not waiting to see where Colby would record. As he put his foot on the first bronze pipe, Colby glanced up at the ledge. For a brief second, it had looked like there was a figure behind one of the arch’s bases. Looking back, he should’ve told Sam what he’d seen. Perhaps they could’ve avoided the whole situation entirely. But he hadn’t, and Sam had successfully crawled up the wall, and now they were here.
Once properly on the ledge, Sam gave a whoop, fist-pumping the air. Colby had laughed, joined in on the celebration. He pretended to scream obnoxiously, already forgetting about the weird shadow-person he’d just seen at the window. Sam took a bow, giggling.
“I can see my house from here!” he joked, peering out with a hand over his eyes. “Yo, Colby! Look, there’s little rooms up here!”
“Really? What’s in them?” Colby asked, genuinely curious. Maybe they’d found an unexplored part of the building! Maybe they should’ve left the hall alone!
“Nothing, much, just a bunch of dust and boxes? I think? Not worth exploring,” Sam replied, fishing through his pockets for something. “Besides, we have a tradition to uphold, and it’s kinda scary up here.”
He held out an XPLR sticker to the camera, shaking it slightly as he did. Peeling it from its backing, he reached up to slap it onto the molded wood and stepped back to marvel his work.
“Yeeaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Sam and Colby strike again!” Colby had turned the camera around to make a face, had just spun around when Sam shrieked. When he went back to review the tape, Colby thought it looked like something invisible had pushed his friend off the ledge. He never got a proper look, though, because as soon as Sam started falling Colby had turned the camera off. Rightfully so, too, as the sight of his best friend lying face down on hard concrete, his knee twisted and head supplying a slowly growing pool of blood, was too much to see again in person. He didn’t need physical evidence of that sight, something that he would never forget. He didn’t need reminders.
Colby had sprinted over, skidding slightly as he dropped to his knees. Sam had groaned, once, and then Colby had hailed an ambulance.
Sam hadn’t woken up since.
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35 days. The paramedics had said he was extremely lucky to be alive, with only a broken knee, twisted wrist, and slight head wound that had barely grazed the surface. All of those were healed, now, but Sam hadn’t budged. The doctors said that he had likely gone into such a shock that his body shut itself down. They said that once his other injuries had healed, he’d wake up. They were wrong.
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After three weeks, everything was completely fixed, and the doctors were confused. They didn’t understand why he wouldn’t wake up. On a Tuesday they noticed internal bleeding for the first time, but only after Sam had an aneurysm. Things had taken a drastic turn for the worse in only a few short hours: Sam had to be hooked up to life support, and that’s where he’d been since. Colby had been out that day, taking those same couple hours to go home and shower, get some more flowers, because the ones the roommates had given him were dying. To pick up everyone at the house so they could come visit again. He hadn’t left Sam’s side after that, even though the nurses had protested that he was in fine care. Colby didn’t believe them. Colby didn’t believe anyone.
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40 days. The medicine wasn’t working. The doctors said there wasn’t much hope. The hospital needed space. The Golbachs decided Sam had suffered enough. As much as Colby didn’t want to, he agreed. There was only so much people could do, only so much one person could suffer. The funeral had been set up, an autopsy had been refused, and everyone went home to put on their best. Even Colby. He showered, and shaved, and borrowed a tux from a friend, and surprisingly kept it together.
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41 days. Sam would never wake up again.