When He stole My Heart

By One

The start of this was chaos.

Media was everywhere. Whenever Emmy left or arrived at the hospital, someone stuck a microphone in her face, asking all sorts of silly questions.

Half of them she couldn't even answer, even if she were a doctor or could talk about his progress. But they didn't care. For them, it was the story, the headlines, the front page.

For them, it was all about the numbers.

The numbers in clicks, the numbers of papers they sold, the money they made with every picture, every headline, every update.

In the middle of December, the news broke that DW Danny had been in a car accident. No one knew details - whether it was about the exact circumstances of the accident or his condition.

It was all guesswork, and the guesses became more sensational with each passing day. The less news they had, the bigger they made what had been heard, said, communicated. Not that there was much to begin with.

Within a week, four different witnesses had told four very different stories of what had supposedly happened.

And since one of the involved wasn’t conscious to speak for themselves, it made things all the easier.

And things surely wouldn’t change soon. At the beginning of January, Danny was transferred from ICU to the VIP wing of the hospital.

A room here costs more a day than what she made per month. He was no longer in danger, but that didn’t mean he was anywhere close to recovery either.

He was hooked up to tubes and machines and it didn’t look like that was about to change anytime soon.

Emmy wasn't supposed to know but had overheard the doctors early on during his transfer that chances of him ever waking up were slim to none.

There had been complications during the transport, the damage to his head is more sincere then what was initially assumed.

His family decided to wait and see what happens, if maybe there were changes. And so waiting it was. The first few days, weeks even, were busy with friends and family coming in regularly to check in on him. Several times reporters were caught trying to sneak in, disguised as hospital staff, hunting for the story everyone seemed to be after.

While in the beginning every one of Emmy’s female colleagues was dying to get him as her duty of the day, the longer he remained unconscious the less popular he became.

With more days ticking by without any improvement or change, chances of him ever waking up became slimmer and slimmer and so chances for them to find a potential husband in him minimized as well.

So in the end it was just she, who looked after him, checked the monitoring process, and was present when doctors made their daily visits, without revealing anything groundbreaking anymore.

DW was a well-oiled machine, which worked as a six-member group just as well as they did with seven.

For an American TV show, they performed a few songs and everyone had to admit, they did just as well as ever before.

Of course, the fans and their outcry was loud and widespread, calling on the members and reminding them of their seventh member. But it wasn’t as if they needed reminding.

No, they remembered their leader just as well and didn’t need a refresher.

And despite the fact that this wasn’t the most ideal situation, everyone had to admit it was either this or disbanding.

She had been witness to a very few hushed comments between members when the question arose of what to do. So you knew it wasn’t easy whatever decision they’d made in the end.

As loud and constant as the outcry and protest-like chants from fans were in the beginning, they would eventually be who’d forget or seemed less bothered.

It became normal that DW was no longer consisting of seven but six guys.

The fans that retweeted every DW tweet with words of remembrance became fewer and fewer, as did those who came to concerts to hold up signs, dedicated to Danny, as if he was standing on that stage.

Eventually, no one remembered anymore. No one other than DW. And Emmy, who saw him every day.

The managers and important people that showed in the beginning, arguing with Emmy and every doctor they could find, trying to get them to do something that would improve Danny’s condition instantly, that talked and yelled loudly on phones and spoke about adjustments and promotions, endorsements, and public commitments all seemed to have vanished at the end of the month.

The product that was Danny was for them right now nothing to work with, nothing they could make money with.

They had to realize that no money in the world could change things right now, that regardless of what they’d pay and who they’d call, Danny would still be unconscious with no real timeline if and when that would change. And maybe for once in their lives people like them had to realize money wasn’t running the world after all – at least not when it came to Danny’s condition and its improvement.

Several times during that first month you found yourself wondering whether that was what Danny’s life consisted of, what it came down to be like.

To function.

To work and generate money.

To simply be a product.