Everything happened very quickly.

Egan drove the car in an anxiety-filled frenzy, and I was almost beginning to become terrified because I had never seen him in such a way. I assumed that it was because when he was a kid, back in Japan, his uncle had overdosed on a type of drug I can't pronounce nor spell and the paramedics burst into his house to try to save him before it was too late. Unfortunately, it was too late. Perhaps that was why he was panicking so terribly.

Time passed slowly, even though the car was going very fast.

There're many different types of 'fast' in the world. There's the kind of fast that happens in races to the front of the cafeteria lineup, when you're trying to finish a test with only a minute left. Then there's the kind of fast that happens when you're a kid and you're lying on your bed and staring at the ceiling; and next thing you know your pounding heartbeat corresponded with the time passing – you're older now.

I don't think this situation fit into either category, but rather fell right in the middle. One second there wasn't a thing to worry about and the next your life is drastically different and your friend is being loaded into an ambulance.

Yes, in the middle.

The Emergency Room was hectic, as ERs tend to be. Once Egan parked in the parking lot of the hospital, we jumped out like ninjas; he grabbed my arm, and dragged me through the puddle-covered parking lot. It had started to rain really heavily and my shoes splashed in multiple puddles whilst going on our short journey to the main doors. Once we got into the ER he proceeded to pull me through mobs of people, our sneakers squeaking on the wet floor, and I was a soaked, panting mess by the time we reached the counter.

"Hi, we're here to see Orenda Castellano," I panted. Egan dragged me more forward and I pushed my wet hair away from my face.

"She was probably brought in a few minutes ago, she's looks about fifteen, um, she fainted I think," Egan hit my arm gently, "she fainted, right, Finn?"

"I don't know!" I sputtered.

"Boys, boys. Take a breather," a deep burly-sounding voice said to us. "You two can take a seat over there, in the waiting area. We'll give you updates, but you can't see her unless you're immediate family."

I listened to the deep voiced man and breathed, for the first time in a while. Egan and I made our way to the hard chairs – the same ones I sat in when I was waiting to see Barry after his heart attack. I hoped that Orenda's situation was just as easily curable as Barry's heart attack. I told Egan that. He assured me that fainting wasn't quite as bad as your heart having a spasm. Then I started rambling about how fainting can be caused by several factors, and he told me to shut up. Then he told me that he would be right back, because he had something that would make our long wait more enjoyable.

While waiting for Egan (and also waiting for Orenda) I listened a lot. I tried to listen more than I did the last time my dad and I were waiting for Barry, because I thought there might be a bit of a difference between a waiting room in the middle of the night and one in the middle of the day. Indeed there was; doctors' voices seemed more drowsy and raspy, less people said sorry and more grunted. I listened to the conversations, in hopes that there could be something a little bit comforting in hearing other people being as confused as I was.

I heard surgeons breaking the news to a family about their mother, who had died in a surgery that was supposedly very simple. I heard a doctor inform a family that their daughter was all better – still in critical condition – but better. I heard a kid ask his father if his older brother was in heaven, to which his father replied, "perhaps." I stopped listening.

"Hey." Egan came back and sat beside me, "I brought my old Walkman. It's got loads of sick music on it. Just thought it would be better to listen to some guitar riffs instead of sad news being delivered to families."

I held out my hand and once Egan placed an earbud on my palm I immediately tried to drown out the outside world. I didn't really like the song that played, but it was better than the commotion in the hospital.

That was when someone came and yanked the earbud out of my left ear. I sat up and the person hit the side of my head with the flat of their palm.

"Hey! What the hell?" Egan screamed.

"Finnegan Annson, where did you take my daughter?" Her voice was stern but she didn't shout.

I bit my lip nervously. "Mrs. Castellano, I can explain. She's-"

"She could have died, do you understand? Where did you boys take her? Who is this boy?"

"I'm-I'm Finnegan, um, Mrs. Castellano."

"Not you!"

"Hi, ma'am," Egan said calmly. "I'm Egan Gray; I live next door to Finn. We're good friends, and I assure you that we didn't mean for this to happen, I honestly don't know the entire situation, but I'm sure everything is okay."

"Where did you bring my daughter?" Her voice suddenly turned into a screaming whisper, and I realized that everyone around us had stopped talking. I started to wonder why that was so, until it came to me that they were all listening to our conversation.

"We went to a party," I confessed.

Mrs. Castellano slapped me. My face throbbed.

That was when the deep voiced doctor asked Mrs. Castellano to "please step aside, ma'am" and the conversations around us commenced once again.

"You okay, man?" Egan asked me.

"Whatever. I'm fine." My face throbbed.

We tried to forget about what had happened and moved on. It was actually quite successful. It was getting a little bit cold so I put on my hood and curled up into a fetal position sort of ball, and Egan and I talked about things that didn't really matter a whole lot. I liked having those kinds of conversations with people sometimes, because talking about unimportant things don't take up too much energy. They were just words spewing out of our mouth in order to fill the silence. Nothing was worth remembering. But it was especially nice because the words distracted me from the constant worry for Orenda stabbing me every minute or so.

Eventually Egan and I fell asleep on the uncomfortable hard chairs, heads on each other's shoulders, with one ear listening to music and the other listening to the squeaky sneakers scamper about. But before I fell asleep, that was when I started to cry. And that was a little bit embarrassing and rather overdramatic, considering the fact that a family across from us had just lost their toddler, and weren't even sobbing as hard as I was about to. I thought about how Mrs. Castellano screamed at me, in a voice I didn't even recognize, and how my parents were going to scream at me when they found out about what had happened. And then I realized that I wasn't even aware about what was happening and that just made the tears fall faster.

I prayed that Egan didn't notice, and then after that I fell into a deep sleep.

-----/////-----

It was about 5 in the morning when Egan shook me awake and whispered, "I'm going home. The lady's been waiting for you to wake up so you can see Orenda. Tell her I say get better soon. Call me when you get home, man," he pat my shoulder comfortingly, "Here's a mint." He handed me the mint and grabbed the Walkman from my hand then walked away, the sound of his shoes mixing in with the doctors', as if he became one of them.

I put the mint in my mouth and unfolded my white cane - which actually really hurt my neck, probably because I slept on an awkward angle all night - and someone immediately walked over to me, bringing a draft of wind.

"Are you Finnegan Annson?" The female voice asked gently.

"Um, yes. Yeah, I'm Finnegan."

"And you are Orenda's...?"

"I'm her, uh, boyfriend."

"Okay, Orenda's been asking for you. Come with me," she put her arm around my shoulder and guided me along with her. The nurse's hair smelled like berries.

It took a very long time to get to the room, or maybe that was just because I kind of didn't want to get there. I remembered the sound of the machines beeping around Barry and shivered from the thought of Orenda being hooked up to scraps of metal as well. It was kind of like walking to the principal's office – which I experienced many times during my elementary school time at St. Hemling; the only difference was that I actually cared about Orenda and what she had to say. The nurse stopped guiding me eventually, and I was only left with the support of my white cane.

"I'll give you two some alone time," the nurse whispered, and softly ushered me into the room. The door closed with a click.

"Hey Finn," Orenda said. Her voice sounded rather normal and bubbly, and that made me feel a whole lot better.

"Hi. Um, how're you feeling? Are you okay?" I walked straight, towards her voice.

"Forward more. To the right," she guided me to the foot of the bed.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and folded my white cane. She moved her foot over a little so that I had more butt space, and so I sat my entire body on the bed and crossed my legs. Her foot tapped my knee to the beat of an unknown song that was probably playing in her head. For some reason I had a feeling it was a Michael Jackson song.

"I'm sorry," I finally burst out.

"For what?"

"Well, for everything. I never should've forced you to come to the party. It was a terrible thing to do; I should've just gone with Egan. I'm just sorry for what happened."

"No, it's okay. I brought this upon myself." She sounded a little bit nasally, probably because she had a nasal cannula on.

I shifted my position and pushed my glasses up. "I mean, it's not a big deal, right? You just were a bit overwhelmed? No one's telling me anything about what happened," I chuckled nervously, "but it's not a huge deal, I'm sure. Orenda?"

"Um, no. I'm completely okay." She coughed, and it was really ironic and worried for a second, but nonetheless I was relieved and didn't care.

"That's good," I said after a while.

"My mom brought me some art supplies."

"Oh, cool."

"It's really boring in here."

"That sucks."

"How long did you wait?"

"Not long."

"Can I draw you?"

"What do you want me to do?"

"As you are."

So I just sat there while she scratched away in her sketchbook and tapped my knee with her foot to a fast beat, then a slow beat, then one in between.

"Why is it boring in here?" I asked her.

Orenda just kept drawing and the machines around her kept beeping. She violently coughed a few times, and then answered my question. "It just is. There's only one small window and all that I can see is the grey sky and even then, a big tree is blocking it. Then the room is super small and the machines are all grey and only have little colourful buttons that aren't even the nice kind of colours. And my bed sheets are grossly pigmented, the bed frame is grey, the floor is grey, the walls are grey, everything is like one huge mess that wasn't creative enough. It's especially sad because this is the children's hospital area, and it's still a sickly colour. I say that the hospitals should all be a happy colour. Like, um-"

"Since everything's grey, tell me what that looks like. That's guaranteed to up the excitement level in here, huh?" I smiled and she chuckled.

"Sure, I guess," she sketched a bit more, and then started talking. "It's not a bad colour, Finnegan."

"Okay, good to know."

"It's just... very... here, you know when you're sitting in your room on a gloomy day and you know that you could either die at that moment or go and dance in the rain, but instead you choose to sit on your porch step and just feel the coolness of the raindrops but never touch them?" She took an enormous shaky breath after that intense long run sentence. I told her that I understood.

"Grey feels like that. It could be worse. It could also be infinitely better. On a scale of risk-taking, grey hits a solid five. You would never go bungee jumping but you don't find happiness in the simple things. It's a grey office that you stay in from nine sharp and proceed to leave at five sharp. Nothing matters but nothing should go."

I let out a long breath. "Like, an 'almost'? Does that make sense?"

"Yes, exactly," her voice suddenly wasn't so bubbly. "It's the definition of 'so close but so far away'. It could be black, but it had too much white in it. It could be white, but it had too much black in it. Nothing is ever certain. The world you know can disappear in the blink of an eye, and sometimes you would just have to accept it. Nothing earthly lasts forever. There, I think that's all I can say about it. Grey is an almost colour. Almost good enough. Almost bad enough. Almost feeling alive. Almost getting there. Almost getting better. A lot of dreams don't come true, Finnegan, and that makes me feel like a grey sky."

"Grey doesn't seem so great," I mumbled.

She didn't say anything, but I could tell something had changed because her foot was no longer tapping my knee.

"Are you sure you're okay?" I asked her.

She didn't answer my question. Instead she uttered, "Remember when you said that you didn't mind if I needed some time alone?"

"Yeah, of course."

"Well, I need time alone." She said dryly.

I listened to the rain patter on the window for a while before I got up off the bed, unfolded my white cane, and started walking in the direction of the door.

My white cane had just hit the doorframe when I heard Orenda mutter something. It was hardly there, but I still turned around and waited for her to say it louder.

"Wait." She said breathlessly, like it was the hardest thing to say.

"Okay."

"Don't go."

"Okay."

"Come here."

I walked back, and stood close by the bed, but didn't sit down on it.

"Closer. I'm not contagious."

"I know."

I heard the blankets shuffle around and Orenda grunted a few times, and then the smell of a garden reached me. She kissed me quite suddenly and harshly; her lips tasted slightly salty, like how tears taste at the corner of your mouth. I leaned in with our lips still interlocked, so that she could lie down again, but then she turned her face away. She sniffled.

"Hey," I sat down on the edge of the bed again, "it's going to be fine. It was just one little incident. People faint in big crowds all the time."

"Okay."

"At least, you and I, we're not grey."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

I sighed. "We're not an almost. We're not in the middle. We're not a possibility. We're certain. When you get better we're going to Willow and you're winning that art contest and we're going to dot the sidewalks and that will happen for sure. And I'm not sugar-coating things, because these things will actually be true. And you're going to feel like you're wearing the red dress even if you don't have one on. We're going to feel alive, and not just a regular partying alive, we're going to feel the kind of alive that makes you feel eternal. Right?"

"I guess."

"And it's not scientifically possible to feel half alive, right?"

"I guess."

"You guess a lot," I joked. "Be sure about something for once."

She chuckled. "Sure."

I got off the bed. "I'll see you," I said.

"See you."

And that's when I left, but I'll be honest, I didn't feel completely rid of the grey. All the way down the straight corridor I imagined Orenda winning the art contest and smiling and babbling on about how much her light blue ribbon meant to her and Willow. I imagined her climbing through my window at 1 in the afternoon on a Saturday and us walking to the bakery for tiramisu this year and next year and the next. I imagined us sitting under cherry blossoms and eating ice-cream without a care in the world even when we're old and prune-like. I imagined all my dreams that may become an 'almost'.

Then I realized that perhaps I made up a bit of the grey in that room, and tracked the almostness through the doors of Orenda's grey room and across the hospital floors with my squeaky sneakers. Perhaps we were an 'almost'. Perhaps we weren't certain. But I couldn't think of any more possibilities because the moment I left the hospital door, the grey feeling seemed foreign again.

A/N

You guys, I'm going to have to start putting "previous on Yellow" summaries in my a/n because of my terRIBLE UPDATING SCHEDULE 

Buttttt how have you guys been? I hope you all liked this chapter! I'm pretty excited because I'm feeling pretty confident about the way Yellow is going and I've never felt like that about a story :)

Question:

What are your plans for the holidays? 

Merry Christmas (if you guys celebrate Christmas)! 

Happy holidays!

I LOVE YOU ALL HAVE A GOOD DAY HAVE A GOOD LIFE

- Jen :)