Chapter Text
The doctors all wanting to know what had happened. The sympathy in their eyes that had been practiced hundreds of times before.
Gerard's parents wanting to know what happened. Those horrible words, DOA. Their mother screaming and crying, asking no-one in particular and everyone at once to bring her son back. All the faces and noises blurring in Gerard's head. They wanted to say something, anything in hopes of breaking the tension, but all the words tumbled around and mixed up and got stuck.
Now some lady was talking to them. She was using that walking-on-eggshells voice, like she was talking to a child, as if changing her expression would cause everybody in the room to shatter like glass, but it was too late, because Gerard's heart had already shattered into a million pieces, all over the floor, all over the sterile hospital floor, and they weren't sure they could ever find all the pieces again.
The lady carried on talking, but Gerard wasn't processing anything she said. Occasionally, some of her words made it past their ears and got tangled up in the everything and nothing going on all at once inside their head.
Despite themselves, their lips curled upwards at the corners just a little bit, threatening to smile, because there was no way this was real, it was some sick prank or a horrible stress-induced nightmare, and any second now Mikey would be shaking them awake and asking what happened and saying that they looked really worried and Gerard would be telling Mikey about the horrible dream they had and they would be laughing about it together over the breakfast Mikey made-
But Mikey wouldn't make breakfast anymore.
Mikey wouldn't wake them up from any more nightmares.
But no nightmares mattered anymore because anything their brain fabricated couldn't be worse than the reality that had not yet fully sunk in.
And as Gerard had let themselves slip into the daydream, everything had been good for a second but now it suddenly wasn't. Gerard felt as if they were losing Mikey all over again, even though the first time had just happened not even hours ago.
They tried to organise their thoughts to stop themselves fully panicking but then they remembered everything, the silence in the apartment, the eerie silence, the deathly silence, the locked door, the body, the body, the bodythebodythebodybodythebodythebodybodythebodythebody...