Ted POV

The room smelled of disinfectant and death as we sat anxiously awaiting the results. The E.R. was causing me to feel extremely claustrophobic, mainly because I have had the feeling like walls were closing in on me ever since I got the phone call. The words rang loud in my mind, giving me a migraine.

3hrs earlier

I was walking home from my architecture class when my phone started ringing loud with the song 'Hey Beautiful'. I had no idea what the number was but I answered anyway.

"Hello?" I asked into the receiver.

A nasal, monotone voice replied, "Are you Theodore Moseby?" I gave her a yes in reply and she continued, "This is the Manhattan Medical Hospital Emergency Room. You have been listed as the primary contact for a Mr. Barnaby Stinson. He's been hospitalized for a seizure- induced stroke and has fallen into a coma."

"Oh my gosh, thank you! I'll be down there right away!" Quickly, I notified Robin, Marshall and Lily, who rushed down in the same panicked frenzy as I had.

And that brings us to now. We were waiting for the test results that would tell us many things. Things like if any section of his body was damaged, how long had he been out before the medics hauled him away, and overall, the most important and frightening question, would Barney live?

Epilepsy? How were we supposed to know that Barney had epilepsy? There had never been any signs beside the fact that he spaced out a lot. We all had pretty much linked that to his A.D.D. Everyone had the question on their mind, the one that you try desperately try not to think, but always end up thinking anyway. Is this my fault? If only I'd been there, if I'd only seen the signs, maybe he'd be okay. The last time any of us had seen him was about 12 hours ago. He could have been laying there for 12 hours on his living room floor with no way to get help. Cut off from the world and practically dying.

All of us had been here well over half an hour and we're all trying to cope with the panic in different ways. I had become fascinated with the loose threads on my jeans. Twisting the strings up and down my inner thumbs, wrapping them together and unraveling them again. Like my jeans were the whole world and instead of a 30-something friend of a comatose hospital patient, I was a kindergartener alone on the playground at recess. That's how vulnerable I felt, like my age and wisdom had been sucked into a vortex.

Lily wasn't doing much better. She was walking around the E.R. lobby trying to make small talk with everyone, trying to put on a brave face that was really easy to see through. Every 7 minutes, she would lap around to the bathroom, and if you put your ear to the door, you could hear muffled sobbing. Her best friend, the one she wasn't married to, the one that came to her for everything, was facing a life and death situation. But she had to try and act like if the 15 year old burnout waiting for news about his dad thought the weather had been nice lately too, Barney would be ok.

Marshall was the most entertaining from the outside but inside, little devils were sprinkling petunias over his brain and laughing at his pain. Thump! Went his foot as it once again banged on the lobby's vending machine. Nothing was stuck, broke, or being broken. Just anger. Rage was boiling inside as he continued beating up the vending machine, releasing it all like it was this electronic machine's fault. Stealing money and causing seizures. Thump! That snack producing machine from hell deserved it.

Robin was subtly the worst. She was pacing back and forth muttering under her breath, "No, no, this isn't happening," over and over again with fists wedged in balls in her jegging back pockets. You could feel the tense vibes emanating from her body. It was understandable that she would be upset, they are really close, but none of us really knew just how badly she was hurting and how panicked and nervous she really was. None of could possibly know how she was feeling unless we knew what was on her finger on one of the hands in her pocket. The thing that was right threatening to rip through and poke a little outline in her upper thigh. None of us could know how she was feeling unless we knew that sneakily hidden from us the past three days was a polished shining ring.

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