A Star for Baby (boyxboy)

Horologium

Who is your favorite character?

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The whole world was a whirlwind -- until suddenly it wasn't.

The ambulance came in minutes. Oliver barely heard the silence over his own tears as he cradled Baby's unmoving head. His knees were full of stage dust and Oliver became hyper aware of every single detail. Baby's violin laying scuffed a few feet away from them, the professor frantically speaking into her cell phone, the entire audience up and crowded around the stage as Oliver cried.

Then the ambulance was there, and everything was fast fast fast. They took Baby, strapped him into the stretcher. Someone was performing CPR. Oliver climbed into the ambulance without a second thought, without any thought at all, actually. He could only stare in shock and horror as Baby, so small on the stretcher, wasn't breathing.

And then Oliver blinked and they were at the hospital. People were yelling, lights were flashing. Everything sped round and round and round and round and Baby still hadn't woken up.

"... ICU," someone was saying to Oliver. "We have to take him in. Wait here."

Wait here, wait here, wait here.

Oliver didn't want to wait here. He wanted to hold Baby's hand, he wanted to see what they were doing to him. But they wouldn't let him go back farther into the hospital.

So as soon as he sat down in a plastic waiting room chair, the whirlwind stopped.

Time, which just moments before seemed to race like a cheetah, had suddenly slowed to a crawl. Oliver reached up in a daze to touch the tear tracks dried on his cheeks.

Oh my god. Oh my god. What had just happened?

His heart beat hummingbird fast in his chest. The fear and adrenaline he'd just experienced pumped excessively in his veins, and Oliver didn't know what to do with it anymore. What had Baby done?

Suddenly, every time Baby had coughed in the last week flashed in front of Oliver's mind. How Baby would double over, clutch his chest, sometimes even run to the bathroom. He'd insisted that he was fine, that it was just a cold. Oh god, it hadn't been just a cold had it? Oliver almost started sobbing again.

He'd been a complete and utter moron. He should have insisted Baby go see a doctor, should have done something anything at all. He'd sat and watched Baby get sick like he didn't even care.

And now they were here, separated by white walls and antiseptic spray.

Oliver leaned forward to put his face in his hands. A kid was crying a couple seats over, and their parent looked too tired to try and subdue them. Everyone around him had long faces, pulled down by the weight of something invisible. Oliver didn't belong here, he didn't want to be here. He wanted to go back to the apartment with Baby and just cuddle him up and never let go. Ever.

His phone buzzed in his pocket.

You have (2) unread messages

em&em: [picture message]

em&em: kid in my frat sent me this. ambulance outside the concert hall. do you know if it's anyone baby knows?

Oliver had to choke back another sob. He started typing out a message, then stopped. Deleted everything, started over, and stopped again. He didn't know what to say. Everything felt too big, and Oliver was too terrified.

What if he lost Baby forever?

He immediately shook himself out of that thought, unwilling to even encroach on that territory. He swallowed and resolved himself to respond to Emmett.