"Hey." Mikaeel walked into the waiting room, softening his footsteps at the sight of Naazli fast asleep against Shuayb's shoulder. He had made it to the hospital in under 20 minutes and he was sure he had seen at least 2 cameras flash him but all that shit just seemed completely and utterly inconsequential at that point.

"Hey." Shuayb looked stony as he watched Mikaeel lean against the wall.

"Any news?"

"They're both still in theatre."

"Do their parents know?"

"No." Shuayb looked at him, his eyebrows furrowing in annoyance. "Where were you man?"

"At home."

"I've been trying to get through to you since 4 this morning man." He knocked the back of his head against his chair. "Fuck."

"My phone was switched off." Mikaeel replied, sitting down on the hard plastic chair across from Shuayb.

The constant ring of his phone was distracting her. She kept trying to pull back but he only tightened his hold on her waist before he reached into his back pocket to pull out his phone. He switched it off and threw it sideways onto the bed before wrapping his arm around her once again...

"You need to phone his mother."

"No." Mikaeel shook his head. What the hell would he tell Ihsaan's mother?

"You have to. I don't know his family."

Shit. The bastard never listened when he said he would have to make this call.

He stood up, walking slowly out of the waiting room. He thought he could speak in the corridors but the nurses were too busy with their breakfast duty and morning rituals. It just seemed too impersonal for what he was about to do.

He carried on walking until he found himself under the shade of one of the red pillars that decorated the walkway in front of the hospital. He took out his phone, ignoring the slight tremor in his hand as he scrolled through his contacts for her number.

He had to dial twice. He couldn't do it the first time so he cut the call before the phone even rang.He closed his eyes as he waited for her to pick up. She always picked up the phone. Ihsaan's dad never liked talking on the phone and refused to answer.

"Hello." Her voice was still husky from sleep but he couldn't help comparing the way she said hello to the way Ihsaan said it.

"Hello, Aunty Najwa?" He hadn't spoken to her for so long that he was sure she had even forgotten his voice.

"Who is this?" He could hear the tension in her voice. No one phoned at 7 in the morning for a chat.

"It's Mikaeel."

The line went silent.

She knew something was wrong. It was as if she knew she would get this call one day and she had waited for it to come for so long. But now that it was here, she didn't know what to do.

"What happened?" Her voice broke near the end. She had cradled a silent, useless hope that it would never come but as soon as she heard his voice, all her hopes were dashed. She had waited for 7 years for this call and there it was. It finally came at 7:24 on a Saturday morning.

He could make out the faint voice of Ihsaan's father from somewhere in the background. "Ihsaan was in an accident last night."

He could hear her heavy intake of breath at the words. She so badly wanted to unhear what was just said.

"Is..." She cleared her throat, "Is..." She tried steadying her voice but every time she tried to talk, she felt as if she would choke on her words. "Yaasir please, just take the call."

"Hello." Uncle Yaasir's gravelly voice sounded through the phone.

"Hello Uncle Yaasir."

"Who is this?"

"It's Mikaeel."

"What happened?" He couldn't dwell on pleasantries.

"Ihsaan was in an accident."

Uncle Yaasir cleared his throat, trying hard to ignore the way his heart pounded painfully against his chest. "How is he?"

"I don't know. I only got here now." Mikaeel admitted, hating the guilt that washed over him.

"Oh." The silence stretched on as if neither knew what to say. "Which hospital is he in?"

"Olivedale."

"Okay. We'll be there soon."

"Wait." Mikaeel stopped him before he could end the call. "Could you please phone Dahlia's parents?"

Mikaeel only heard his phone beep as it signalled the end of the call.

Ihsaan, you fucking bastard.

He was reluctant to walk back in.

He didn't want to walk up the stairs. He didn't want to sit on that hard, blue plastic chair and he didn't want to wait for the doctor to tell them that his friend was dead.

He didn't want him to die. He told the stupid asshole that he would get a call from the hospital and the little fucker still carried on. He forced Mikaeel to make that phonecall and he forced his parents' hand once again.

"Hey man." He was just about to step foot into the hospital when an arm shot out to grab him by the shoulder. He turned around quickly, not expecting to see his cousin standing right in front of him.

"Hey."

"Howsit?" Riyaadh reached for the lighter in his back pocket before he grabbed a smoke from his box. "You mind?" He gestured to the cigarette between his lips.

Mikaeel shook his head before he leaned back against the wall next to Riyaadh.

"What are you doing here?" Riyaadh asked, rolling his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger.

"My friend is here." He barely noticed the way his knee was bouncing against the palm of his hand. "You?"

"Filling out paperwork." Riyaadh smothered his yawn with the crook of his elbow. "What happened?"

"He was in an accident last night."

"Where was the accident?"

Mikaeel turned at his particular curiosity. "Off the highway I think. That's what I heard. Why?"

"What's he look like?"

"Short with red hair."Mikaeel figured that was the best way to describe him.

"Shit..." Riyaadh said as he puffed out a cloud of smoke.

"You were there?" He didn't even know how it was that he had missed Riyaadh's navy EMT overalls.

"Ya I was there. We brought him in."

"How is he?"

"I..." Riyaadh rubbed the back of his neck uncomfortably. "I don't know if I should tell you."

"It's just me and you." Mikaeel said, teetering on the brink of wanting to know and wanting his cousin to never say a word.

He crushed the short stub beneath the sole of his shoe before he reached for another cigarette. "His heart stopped for a minute in the truck."

The little shit died. That's what it was. 

For that one minute, he was dead.

"What happened to him?"

"Internal bleeding is the worst of it." Riyaadh said, hiding the true details fromMikaeel.

"And his wife?"

Riyaadh thought back. He tried picturing the girl next to the red-headed guy but it was difficult. She bore the brunt of the accident considering the other car had smashed into her door. "Coloured? With... blonde streaks?"

Mikaeel smiled lightly at the description. She had the same hairstyle since she was 15 and had just never seemed to want to grow out of it. "Ya."

Riyaadh nodded, not saying a word. Instead, he just took another puff- trying to keep in the smoke for as long as possible. "I have to go..." Riyaadh said, his gaze flickering to his partner before he threw his stub into the metal bowl on top of the bin.

"See you around, man." Mikaeel pushed himself off the wall, turning to walk inside. "Oh hey?" He stopped his cousin before he could walk away.

"Ya?"

"I heard about your divorce." Mikaeel rolled the sleeves of his jersey to his elbows, "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too." Riyaadh said softly. "Listen."

"Ya?"

"Pray for your friend's wife."

...

Mikaeel sat on one of the couches in the alcove across from the waiting room. The stuffy atmosphere of the waiting room was getting to him. He could hear Aunty Najwa fervently praying from where he sat but that was all he had heard of them since the time Ihsaan's parents stepped into the hospital. As for Dahlia's parents, they only shot him a single dirty look before hurrying towards the nearest nurse they could find.

The further away he stayed from them, the better.

He didn't even know why he bothered to scroll through the messages on his phone. It only served to make him feel even more shitty than he already had,  but he continued anyways. He even attempted to count the amount of messages Ihsaan had sent him the night before but after number 10, he stopped. They were all sent in varying degrees of inebriation and each seemed more and more pathetic but it still got to him.

The fucker needed him but he wasn't there.

He leaned back, shoving his phone haphazardly in his pocket before he leaned his head back against the wall. He'd rather think about her than think about the fact that he was sitting on a couch in a hospital waiting for news about whether or not his friends were dead.

Or maybe it was that he couldn't help but think of Hoori even though he was there waiting for some sort of news.

He was still confounded by what had happened. It was as if something had changed between them the night before. They were no longer simply living together. They were... He didn't know what they were just yet and he was sure she would have no answer either. But she had never been as into it as she was the night before. It was evident in everything she did. It was in the way she pulled him closer, the way she kept running her fingers through his hair and the way she smiled when he started drawing abstract shapes along the bottom of her back. He wondered if she knew that she was even smiling against his lips...

When did she change?

When they had just got married, she was so nervous around him. She could barely even look at him before she muttered out 2 random words and walked away.

But last night. She was... There was just something different about her. There was something about the way she kissed him. She was sure of it. She knew she wanted to kiss him and she knew that he wanted to kiss her too.

 He was just giving himself a fucking headache with all the shit running through his head.

He rubbed his eyes, trying to focus on the fact that-

"Mr and Mrs Evans?"

The doctor was old. But even after 40 years of experience, he had never grasped the feeling of giving news. Good news or bad, he never really knew just how to do it. And as he stood before the younger couple, glancing warily at the way the woman's eyes kept straying to the blood on his shoes, he realised that after 40 years, his patients were just his job. They were men and women that he had seen every day in all sorts of states but they were just his job. Healing them was just something he did. But to these parent's, that patient lying in that theatre was their everything.

It was their reason for living for breathing for doing. It was their whole life.

He thought about the past few hours. The machines, the monitors, the blood- it felt so impersonal. He didn't know this child. He didn't know what she did or who she was married to. He didn't know if she had ever found the great love of her life or if she enjoyed the sunshine upon her face. He didn't know what her favourite colour was or what made her sad or what she looked like when she laughed. He didn't know this young person who had her whole life ahead of her and he would never know how her life might turn out.

"I'm sorry but..."

He would never know because she had just taken her last breath on a gurney in a theatre room surrounded by strangers that she had never seen before.

"Your daughter didn't make it."