Scream (verb): give a long, loud, piercing cry or cries expressing excitement, great emotion, or pain.

Now

Montana

If I could describe this feeling, it would be a cold bucket of ice water being poured over my overheated body. It is exactly that, intense and piercing and it disconcerts me when I walk into a room where Calum lays still, conscious but asleep.

"He is fully awake, his injuries will heal in a few weeks, but--"

"But what?"

"His responses to stimuli are good, as they are supposed to be but he–he refuses to speak."

"What do you mean he refuses to speak? Was there any damage internally?" I try to push my way into the room but the doctor steps in front of it gently but forcefully with an air only a trained professional at dealing with delirious girlfriends can muster.

"He does not reply to us verbally. And no, the scans showed that there aren't any major damages internally. It could be part of the shock and we are certain that it will wear off in a couple of days. Just don't ask him many questions, all right?"

"Just let me see him."

The doctor closed the door behind him, leaving me alone in the room with Calum like I had asked. I had to fight Luke in the hallway for this and if Sierra wasn't there I'm sure he would have told me to get shot like I knew he was thinking. I didn't entirely hate him for it because I understood his need to protect his family.

Calum always slept on his stomach, or on his side with his arm around me. But now he sleeps on his back, his face turned to the side and his cracked lips parted a little. It's only been a couple of hours past a day since the incident and it takes a lot of strength to not cry when I see that the color has not fully returned to his skin again. It reminds me that I almost lost him, almost.

I take a hesitant step forward, and then another until I'm at his side. The bed rails are lifted on either side of him and I hesitantly reach in between the bars to touch his arm but only the tips of my fingers graze his skin before I pull away.

What if he's still cold? I stare down at his chest, watching it rise and fall under the thin sheet of the hospital gown they've put on him.

"Calum—" There is a needle that goes into his forearm and I want to wrench it out of his skin. He hates needles but he was never squeamish while getting tattoos. Another story he never told me. So many stories I could have heard.

I scan his face, taking in the familiar outline of his jaw and his nose. The circles under his eyes are sunken hollows and I pray for them to go away. I reach out to touch his hair, it's dry but it's still my Calum's hair, curling around my fingers like they always have when I push them back from his forehead. "I'm so sorry, my love."

I find his hand under the sheets and tangle my fingers through his. My breath of relief is the only disturbance in the room because his skin isn't freezing cold like I was expecting it to be.

There's always light snores from Calum while he sleeps but now he's silent. The heart monitor is the only constant sound in the room, giving out rhythmic pulses so that the rest of us know that he's alive inside.

The band comes in after awhile along with Sierra and stands at my side, watching me watch Calum with sorrow in her eyes. I look around at them, at the tension in their shoulders and the rigidity in their spines. We haven't lost him, guys. He's still here stop looking at him like he's a corpse!

I don't say it loud enough, but it's a scream inside my head. Michael looks up at me like he hears it, but then it's only because I winced. None of us are remotely capable of breaking the screaming silence, because none of us are certain about what to say. We're all silent whispers in our own despair.

Ashton gives me a plastic chair to sit on and a squeeze on the shoulder before he leaves, he's the last to leave. I've been so distant from them all but they still care enough to never give up my place in their hearts—to not ask me to leave when they know I made their Calum into this.

Somewhere during the long hours that I spend staring at his chest rising and falling, there is a squeeze around my fingers and it slowly brings me back to life again. I perk my head up, fighting with my cramped limbs to muster some sort of movement. A second squeeze and I draw in a full breath for the first time, letting my lungs expand and fill with the stale air of the hospital room.

One for hello

Two for reassurance

Three for I love you.

Calum's eyes are open, and they are the same calm pools of the shade of brown that I love. He is looking right at me and the relief in my chest forms a cataract of tears I can't control. "Hi there." My voice feels unused, my vocal cords like sandpaper.

Another squeeze at my fingers. I love you.

"I love you too. I love you so much." I squeeze back but he stares at me with his face absent of any emotion.

"Why would you do that to me?" I can't help but ask because it's the only question I have for him. He remains quiet, staring back at me unwaveringly. I reach for the glass of water on the bedside table and place my arm under his head, lifting it gently and placing the straw in between his lips.

Calum winces when the water goes down his throat, his eyes closing at the sudden spike and it's a lighting bolt down my own spine. He's hurting and I can't stop it.

"Do you want anything?" I vaguely remember the doctor telling me to call them when he wakes up and not to give him anything except water but I don't want anyone in here with us just yet.

He doesn't respond, not even with a simple shake of his head. Has his throat suffered some sort of damage from the drowning that the doctors couldn't see? Was it superficial? Was it sore? Was there still dark water filling his lungs that they couldn't get out?

My panic rises momentarily and Calum turns his head away, looking out the window and when there's nothing he can see in the darkness outside he shuts his eyes, gulping again with a wince.

His fingers loosen around mine and he lets go, lifting his hand and placing it on his stomach. "Calum?"

My heart rate picks up as his calms down on the screen of the monitor and his eyes drift closed in the span of a couple of minutes. He didn't speak and he didn't seem overwhelmed either.

I stand by his bed, motionless and demanding my lungs to keep breathing. My feet start to hurt under the bandages around them and I turn away from his motionless form, opening the door and walking out to call the doctor. There was something wrong. Or maybe it was just me being paranoid.

Calum drowned for heavens sake, and here I am expecting him to be relieved to see me. He's not going to be rejoiced to see the face of the person who told him she didn't love him right before he almost died, almost. It's not the movies, Montana.

My father used to say that to me a lot, that life wasn't a movie. But I knew that, and no one knew that I knew that. It was always me and my daydreams and people who thought that my feet never touched the ground. But they did.

There were glass and blood and pain and sorrow and reality that kept my feet stuck to the ground most days. Even if I yearned to be among the clouds, to find a home where there were no explanations for the way things were.

Calum was a cloud, a home, a daydream and a movie. But he was also reality. He was, and still is the hardest reality and I loved him for it. I love him. His touch had kept my feet on the ground and his words had my head in the clouds and so it stretched me too thin. I was happy with it, but someone once said that happiness was for the movies, too.

Life isn't a movie, Montana.

"He woke up," I tell the nurse who is sitting behind the large desk at these ungodly hours and I wonder if I have it in me to stay up for the sake of another human being like these people do. Even if its what they are paid to do, they still do it and the humanity of it puts a smile behind my words.

She smiles back at me kindly and looks at the door of Calum's room, picking up the phone. Her conversation is lost to me however when I turn away and start walking in the other direction.

Ever since I walked into that room, there is a constant scream inside my head that I can't seem to contain. They are my own thoughts amplified a million times over, bold and pulsating and lighting up in bright shades that are almost blinding. I hold my head between my two hands that don't seem to warm up no matter how much air I blow into them. I lay my forehead on the cold glass of a window and hope that when the sun comes up again and it's a new day, he might find his voice and I might find my home.