Once, Ryan had to break down the door to the bedroom to discover Brendon lying disoriented, practically disassociated, and carry him to a detox program until he was rehydrated and well enough to come home without being sectioned off to a facility. Another time, Ryan got a call from someone else in their apartment building saying they'd found him in the hall, and he wasn't waking up, and would Ryan please come take care of him because this was out of their hands. The other call was from a bar downtown that said his number was the most recent in Brendon's cell history and they'd called an ambulance for him already, Ryan just needed to pick him up from hospital. They said 'he's all right, he's with us,' and Ryan sort of doubted it. If he'd been all right he wouldn't be in this situation. If he was really with them, he wouldn't have felt the need to go back on swearing off drinking. There were triggers everywhere, though, and apparently no one cared enough to protect him from them.

Even when he was 'okay' after every individual episode of a real relapse, Brendon wasn't. He couldn't stand the light anymore; his pupils were dime-sized all the time because the withdrawals never went away. He never wanted anyone too close, no one could touch him; it was always too hot or too cold but no matter what he was always sweating, his body rejecting the environment. He dropped weight faster than he could regain it, and that paired with his gradually degrading skin tone, the yellowness in his eyes, he just looked sickly. Ryan could hear when he couldn't catch his breath even when he hadn't done anything demanding - he saw the palette of redbluepurpleyellow bruises that appeared from nowhere - he knew when Brendon forgot what he was doing, what day it was, what month it was, and hid his confusion. 

That was all towards the end, though. He'd started noticing things far too late. After so long of things seeming okay, the alcoholism still in existence but at the very least in the background of their lives, he'd let his guard down and stopped looking for any minor faults in Brendon's usual healthy, brazen countenance. In the beginning the changes were too subtle to chalk up to anything serious: Brendon would break his clean streak, but believe it to be so minor that he didn't have to tell anyone, and then when he suffered a week of the aftereffects he played it off as a cold. The 'colds' became more frequent with less breaks between them, and suddenly one day Brendon was perpetually ill, with worse symptoms than ever before that he didn't recover from. 

He was a kid when his dad was dying. He had no idea about any of it, how this worked, so Joey explained it all - and Ryan kind of wished he still didn't know anything. Living in an empty house (he'd sent the dogs off to someone who could actually care for them, who was home more often than they were at the hospital) and going to sleep every night knowing Brendon's heart was actively failing was, ironically, killing him. He wished he could live in some sort of ignorance, because maybe being naïve enough to believe that Brendon would get better would let him live his life semi-normally. As it is, he [i]did[/i] believe, but the only belief he had was that Brendon [i]could[/i] get better. If he made the choice to, that is. The doctors all said he needed six months' sobriety to qualify for any serious programs or life-changing surgeries; Ryan could see in Brendon's face that he didn't think he could do it. That was the same day Ryan started making the effort to come to terms with the fact that maybe they wouldn't be growing old together.

That effort was essentially shelved to the back of his mind - for the time being Ryan much preferred to not think about ever losing him, and instead he focused on fighting to stay by his bedside past visiting hours, arguing with hospital staff until they just let him fall asleep holding Brendon's hand. He'd been officially admitted for three months, and two months before that it was in-and-out visits; while Ryan still refused to consciously address it, they had both been informed that there was very little time left unless things started magically looking up. Magic was, apparently, selective in the role it took in their lives, which Ryan was pretty fucking pissed about, but anyway.

Ryan's attitude throughout it all was... fairly aggressive. He approached it with a certain resignation in the beginning, because it seemed like things would just work out themselves within time, the doctors would know what to do, etc. And then when he started hearing serious things - [i]heart failure[/i] and [i]pneumonia[/i] and [i]liver disease[/i] and [i]six months at best[/i] and so much more - he began a one-sided war with all of the healthcare system. He argued with the doctors that Brendon was still young, there's no way it could be this bad, and he's been through all of this before so he knows that it couldn't have progressed so fast right under his nose, and they must be doing something wrong because Brendon just keeps getting worse, why is he getting worse, why can't he stand anymore, why, why, why. The only answers he really got were along the lines of please calm down, it's out of our control, you don't know what you're talking about. So, yeah, maybe he was a little out of line. Ryan grew comfortable with his new asshole reputation amongst the care staff and after the first month just stayed in the hospital as long as he wanted to, fuck visiting hours. Brendon's hospital room was practically his home now, too.

He did occasionally come back to the apartment to check the mail, pay bills, change his clothes, so on. He did just that after a five day streak of telling nurses to fuck off when they told him he couldn't stay in Brendon's bed, just shifting to the side whenever they needed to readjust the heart monitor. Five days and the smell of hospital and death still clung to him, so he promptly showered at home, changed into new clothes and looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in a while. His hair had grown unruly, his face looked blank, empty. He didn't look at himself for long - besides, he had to get back to Brendon. He brushed over all the old evidence of their life together, the sticky notes on the fridge with messages to each other, Brendon's shoes by the door, his jacket strewn over a chair. Their guitars were still next to each other on the couch since their last session together months ago, and Ryan swore the place still smelled like him even after all this time. It felt like they were different people, now, and he was glimpsing into the life of another, happier pair of people. Ryan just stood in the middle of the apartment, contemplating crying, before a voice in his head told him to get a goddam move on and he rushed out the door, back to the hospital.

Maybe they should just opt for in-home hospice so Brendon could be more comfortable, but Ryan was still hanging onto the hope that someone would miraculously cure him if he stayed longer around the professionals. Maybe. He picked up black coffee for himself at an express shop at the hospital's bottom floor and then a hot chocolate for Brendon, knowing he'd lost interest in anything with taste and probably wouldn't drink it just like every other drink he brought up to his room, then headed up to his home-away-from-home, bowing his head so he didn't have to think about how he knew every person in scrubs by name. He pushed Brendon's door open with his back since his hands were occupied and turned, a soft smile on his tired face, to set both the paper cups down at Brendon's bedside.

He dropped into a seat, running a hand through his still-damp hair and glancing warily at the steady but slightly too flat monitor to Brendon's right before dragging his gaze back to the still body under all the covers. [b]"Hey, baby,"[/b] he greeted gently, pushing the cup across Brendon's bedside table. [b]"Brought you hot chocolate this time. Thought another caramel macchiato might be overdoing it, y'know?"[/b] Jokes. Didn't really matter, considering Ryan drank it himself after six hours untouched and could still see the cup in the garbage. He hadn't seen Brendon in maybe three hours, tops, mostly because of the commute between their home and the hospital, but still felt like he had to catch up with him. [b]"How are you doing?"[/b] Naturally his hand hung on the edge of the mattress, tentatively awaiting Brendon's to take his first just in case he was in another touch-repulsed phase.