Chapter 13 River
Chapter Thirteen
RIVER
Iwas at his side in less than a second.
Alex’s body collapsed into my arms, and his limbs felt like a dead weight, despite my natural athletic strength. I wrapped a secure arm around his back, and my free hand coddled his head as I lowered us to the ground.
I felt the shaking as his legs clenched and released while his hands trembled beside him, and his green eyes had a thousand-yard stare that made my stomach sink. He was aware of what was happening, but all he could do was endure it helplessly.
But I remembered what to do.
Glancing around us, I pushed away a chair dangerously close to his head. I pulled off my hoodie, bunched it up, and carefully slid it under his head. My fingers trembled against my phone as I set a timer to count how long it lasted.
A high-pitched screech rang through my ears, practically making my heart leap out of my chest. Millie stood over us like a statue, tears brimming in her squinted eyes as she stared at Alex.
“What’s happening?” Millie all but yelled. “Is he okay?”
“He’s going to be just fine, I promise,” I said shakily.
The child fell to her knees as the tears escaped her eyes. “I’m scared.”
Watching the normally bubbly girl use all her strength to hold back her fear shattered my heart. It was safe to assume she had never seen her uncle in such distress, and I had no way to shield her from it.
“Millie, listen.” Facing her to give her my attention, I cupped her cheek with my hand. “I want you to take your iPad, go into Alex’s room, and stay there. I swear he is going to be alright, but I also need you to be okay. Will you do that for me?”
Her tear-filled eyes peered into mine as if I held the cure for cancer. I held all of her trust, and it was a delicate thing that I took with care. If only the kid knew I was the last person to deserve it.
Millie chewed on her fingernails as eyes darted between her uncle and me, trying to decide what to do. She eventually nodded, still trembling as she walked slowly to Alex’s room with her iPad in hand.
As soon as she was gone, Alex became my sole focus again. An uncomfortable heat circled the pit of my stomach as my mind raced with unwanted flashbacks. I had handled this situation many times, and my brain had memorized the steps even years later.
Alex’s seizures were something I thought had stopped in the time we were apart. Either I was wrong, or the reason I had tried so hard to stay away had materialized right before my eyes.
Growing up, he would have them weekly, and multiple times a week on a bad one.
Since they happened so frequently, I was often a witness to them.
I became so well-versed in how to take care of him that I outshone the teachers when he’d have one at school.
They often fell into panic, which only made the situation worse.
Whereas I, despite how watching him like that made my lunch threaten to come back up, knew how to soothe him until the seizure passed.
At least, that was what I liked to think.
I was the only one who could get him through it, and that knowledge filled me with a sense of pride. Especially when I wondered if I was the reason it was happening. If it’s my fault that it’s happening, at least I can fix it.
Four long minutes dragged on for what felt like two hours, and I couldn’t do anything but what. Whenever I’d think it subsided, his limbs would prove me wrong and convulse again. If it hit the five-minute mark, I’d have to call the ambulance, but I knew that was the last thing Alex would want.
A loud groan sounded, accompanied by a hitch of breath as he turned over groggily.
I moved closer to him once he came to, eyes staring at me, glassy and confused.
Giving him a second to gain a sense of awareness, I ran my hand in a gentle motion along his arm.
Once, he told me my touch grounded him, so I hoped that was still the case.
“Hey,” I said gently, brushing his brown curls out of his face.
“Hi,” he rasped, his chest rising and falling faster by the second. Alex’s hand gripped the end of his hair, and he tugged at it. It was instinctive—a telltale sign that his brain was struggling to process everything around him.
I had to be persistent to remove his hand from his hair, and his fingers, moving like spider legs, seemed to be searching for something to hold. As I laced my fingers through his, his hand squeezed mine like his life depended on it.
Alex’s lip quivered as if he’d lost control of his jaw, and the dazed look in his eyes made me wonder if he was fully here. Afraid he’d send himself into a panic attack, I gave his hand a tight squeeze while my free hand scratched the top of his head.
I leaned forward and spoke in his ear. “Do you know where you are?”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
“Do you know what happened?”
He made a gut-wrenching noise, barely a whimper. Then, he nodded.
Alex leaned into my embrace as I helped him to his bedroom. His body shivered, but his skin wasn’t cold to the touch. Still, I tucked him tightly under the covers of his bed and had Millie push the thermostat up a few degrees.
He was more aware than I expected him to be.
Despite Millie’s rapid, worried questions, he responded to every single one with the tenderness she needed.
The slow responses and heavy eyelids gave away how exhausted he was, but his niece was none the wiser.
All she saw was her uncle telling her he was okay.
Millie left the room after insisting she get him a glass of water, claiming it always helped her when she was sick. Then, it was just us.
His foggy eyes met mine. “How long?”
“A little over four minutes.” I sat at the edge of the bed, next to him.
Alex’s teeth ground together. “Felt shorter. Maybe because I haven’t had one in years.”
Our shoulders brushed, but neither of us pulled away.
My arms wrapped around him, and I gently pulled his head to my shoulder.
I expected him to pull away and tell me to fuck off for how I treated him last time we spoke, but he didn’t.
Instead, he curled into me, and I rested my chin in his hair like it was something we’d already done many times before.
Well, that’s because it is.
“You should go to sleep,” I murmured against his head.
A heavy sigh. “Millie’s here.”
“She’s eight, not three. She’ll be okay while you sleep,” I affirmed. “And I’m here.”
“You are here,” he repeated, closing the distance as he buried his face in my chest.
Alex climbed on top of me like a koala, entangling his legs in mine and burying his head into my chest. I wrapped a firm arm around him as I slid so I was lying on my back with him on my chest. The warmth of his body felt like I was sitting before a fireplace—almost too warm. At least I had stopped the shivering.
My childhood friend was in a vulnerable state, one that needed lots of coddling and affection.
If he tried moving any closer, he’d be inside me.
I should have moved him, but I couldn’t bring myself to when, after half a minute of lying on me, his eyelids drooped, his lips parted, and his breathing slowed.
It brought me back to when we were merely eleven.
I spent most days of the week with Alex, whether it be at my house or his, so I was often with him when it happened.
In those instances, we’d end up in bed together, intertwined like our lives depended on it, with me doing whatever I could to comfort him in his agitated state.
It was purely innocent; simply a boy holding his best friend when there was no one else to comfort him.
Until his parents walked in one time. They hadn’t even known he had another seizure—Alex didn’t tell them because I was there.
Neither of us could understand why they were so opposed to the cuddling, and when we’d ask, we’d get vague answers such as, “Friends don’t do that. ” We stopped bringing it up.
Millie came with the glass of water, but since Alex was already asleep, she drank it herself. I expected her to question why I was holding him like I was, but I don’t think it ever crossed her mind. She climbed onto the bed and snuggled next to us without a word.
I think Alex’s body was a sleeping drug because I drifted to sleep shortly after he did, and I savored every moment of us together. The fear that when he awoke, he would push me away again was large. While he had good reason to—better than he knew—it was the last thing I wanted.
Alex’s weakness was his big heart. His kindness was often used to his disadvantage, not knowing when to be firm and when to say no, and people abused it.
When he stormed out of my house and ignored my texts, he set a boundary.
He wasn’t passive. No, he was firm, and even though it was against me, I was proud of him.
I couldn’t take advantage of his weakness.
My weakness, though? It was the recurring nightmares that came to haunt me in my sleep. Even sleeping in a unique environment couldn’t keep the horrors from meeting me in my dreams.
It was the same thing over and over. Fire surrounded me, blocking all hope of escape, and the heat was so suffocating that I was gasping for air.
I heard screams on the opposite side of the wall of fire, and I recognized each one. Carson, Mom, Dad. It rotated between the three, each guttural yell just as agonizing as the last. There was nothing I could do to stop it.
Guilt ate at me every day, and then it came to taunt me in my dreams.
I wanted out. I wanted it all to stop because what happened could not change, despite the constant replays in my head. Accident or not, my carelessness caused the fire that changed everything in my life. As much as I tried to run from the problem, it always caught up with me.
The nightmares were ridiculing me. Walls of fire to show I couldn’t run from the problems I caused, like I tried to in real life, mocking laughs to make fun of me for how cowardly it was that I was trying to run at all.