Chapter 3 #2
Me? I was stable for now? What did that mean?
I managed to poke my tongue out and lick my lips, and one of my eyes opened a little more.
Suddenly, my entire field of vision was flooded with a man.
A very good-looking man, in fact. He wore aviator-style glasses perched high on his nose, and he had full lips, freckles on his cheeks, and the softest golden-brown eyes.
“Hey, Atlas.”
I made a small noise, and he smiled widely.
“Yeah, I knew you’d be a fighter. Squeeze my hand again?”
There it was, back against my palm. “Second…date…first,” I managed to murmur.
He blinked, then threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah? You write all those sexy songs about blowjobs, and you want a second date before we hold hands?”
I tried to shrug, but all I managed was a twitch. Those three words had taken everything out of me. I breathed in and out, slow and steady. The ambulance was moving a little, but I had a feeling it wasn’t enough.
I took another breath. “Am I…”
He waited patiently, his hand still holding mine. I squeezed his fingers, and his face brightened.
“Dying?”
“Not on my watch. You have more sad songs you have to write.”
“You…were…” I searched for the strength to make my mouth move. “There?”
“So my partner—she’s in the front seat driving—we were eating at the little kebab place near the bar you were playing at. They ran out of Diet Coke, and she wouldn’t be able to navigate through all this bullshit traffic without it, so I had to run to the bar to get her some. I saw you onstage.”
“Saw?”
He laughed and squeezed my fingers. “And heard you. You were gorgeous, you know. I can’t believe I have a real-life celebrity holding my hand right now.”
“Not.” Suddenly, the ambulance began to race, spinning around in a circle. Was it the ice? Was—oh. Was it me? There was a warm palm on my cheek and two fingers pressed against my neck.
“…with me, okay? Stay with me. Breathe, Atlas. Slow and steady.”
I did my best to obey. The edges of my vision were dark, and the pain was getting worse. “Hurts.”
“Where?”
I couldn’t name a place, so I just shrugged.
“That accident beat you up pretty badly. Do you remember much?”
“Mn-mm.”
His hand moved from my neck to my cheek, his gloved thumb stroking just to the right of my mouth. I expected the latex to feel awful, but it didn’t. When had he put gloves on?
Everything began to spin again, and I was starting to feel weaker, and for a moment, everything felt like a dream. How did I get here? There was the club. I sang. Then the snow and… “What happened?”
His eyes turned sad. “Car accident. Another ambulance picked up the driver. He was your friend, I’m assuming.”
I managed to lick my lips. “Strange…er.” I closed my eyes for so long, he began to squeeze my fingers again, and I opened them. “Not…Uber.” He looked at me, confused. I didn’t have the strength to tell him everything. “Help me.”
Everything felt so…foggy. So surreal.
“What can I do?”
“Don’t…don’t know.” I needed his name, so I asked for it.
His smile, what I could see of it, turned a little shy. “Ryan. Definitely not as cool as Atlas. Is that a stage name?”
I think I managed a smile. It felt like it anyway. “Mn-mm.” I tried to move my foot, but I couldn’t even tell if my foot was there. “Gone?”
Ryan—the name fit him so well—frowned at me. “Gone?”
“Legs? Can’t…” My breath felt weak coming out. “Can’t feel them.”
Ryan visibly paled and let out a trembling breath. “They’re there. Don’t you worry about that, okay? We have you strapped down and on the way to the hospital so the doctors can fix you up. Gracie, honey, how we doin’?”
“Best I can. Still stable?”
“BP has been dropping.” He began to read out numbers and say other words I couldn’t really process. I could only assume they were about my condition. The driver swore, so I knew it was bad.
I didn’t want to die. Not now, not here. Not like this. I wasn’t ready. I was done letting people make me feel like the world was better off without me. I didn’t want to find my heart again, and my purpose, only to lose it because a drunk fan made shit choices.
“Talk to me,” I whispered.
Ryan’s gaze snapped back to mine. He peeled off his gloves and took both of my hands, holding them up, my knuckles grazing the chest of his uniform. “About what?”
“Anything. Everything.” My eyelids were getting heavy again. “Don’t let me go.”
“I’ve got you,” Ryan murmured. He shifted so close I could feel heat radiating off him. “What do you want to know?”
“About you,” I rasped. I wanted to know everything about this fucking angel who was currently keeping me alive.
He gave me another shy smile. “There’s not much to me. I’m an EMT—obviously. I didn’t decide to cosplay for the night.” I grinned. “I’m good at my job, even though it’s not what I want to do.”
“What…you want?”
“It’s not important.”
“Is.”
He met my gaze for a long beat, then squeezed my fingers harder.
“Keep squeezing back.” I did, and it must have satisfied him because some tension left his shoulders.
“When I was a kid, I was wildly obsessed with Ancient Egypt. That eventually bled into Ancient Mesopotamia when I was old enough to understand more complicated textbooks. I developed a fixation on Babylon and then the Akkadian Empire. By my freshman year of college, I went through the typical Antiquities phase.”
“Don’t…know…means.” I had no idea about half the things he was saying.
His rough thumb stroked over my knuckles. “Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome. I did a bunch of term papers on gender and sexual identities in Greco-Roman societies. It kind of helped me come to terms with being gay.”
“Mm. Me. Yes.”
He chuckled softly. “Glad I’m in good company.
” His thumbs stroked my wrists, and I started to fade again, so I focused on where he was touching me, letting the pressure of his hands ground me.
“My parents were furious when I graduated with a bachelor’s in history, then got into a master’s program.
They made me feel like I was giving up on having a comfortable life and wasting money on something that would never matter.
Maybe they were right. I’m going to have to see them soon and listen to what a useless waste of space I am and how badly I fucked up this holiday season. ”
“You…fucked up? How?”
Ryan passed a hand down his face before taking mine again.
“There’s this thing my family does. An island we always visit during New Year’s because no one wants to deal with the cold.
I was supposed to be there this year, and that’s one more disappointment for the jar on the mantle they’re keeping of how I failed them. ”
I squeezed his fingers. “Tell…me. About…island.” I wanted to hear about it. To picture anything except the inside of this ambulance moving at a snail’s pace.
Ryan let out a tiny laugh. “It’s called Pierce Island.
We always stay overnight in Savannah and then take a tram to the docks at the ass crack of dawn and get on this thirteen-hour ferry.
Everyone hates everyone for the first leg of the trip.
Then suddenly, we go from freezing cold to tropical and warm, and people tend to forget why they’re mad at each other.
Well, unless you’re my parents, and then they’re still pissed at me because all I’ve done is go against the meticulous life plan my mother made for me…
” He said it in a way that told me he’d heard it over and over, and I felt an odd sense of rage for this stranger, who I knew didn’t deserve that from the people who were meant to love him unconditionally.
“More,” I whispered.
He took a breath and managed a smile down at me.
“It’s funny because I hated going there when I was a kid, even when I loved it.
I wanted to be somewhere that felt like Christmas.
Like the Poconos with snow and cider and skiing.
I’ve never been skiing,” he added, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “But I’ve always wanted to learn.”
“Not…that fun,” I managed.
He laughed and shook his head. “I have no doubt I’d make a fool of myself, but I don’t know that I’ll ever get the chance. Whenever I suggest a winter holiday, my mother calls me an idiot. She makes me feel small, so I shut my mouth and go along with what they want.”
“Hurts?”
He shrugged. “It does, yeah. Pierce Island’s beautiful, even if my family’s being ugly. I think I’ll go with them next year, even if it means feeling shitty about myself. And hell, maybe it’ll be better after everything, you know?”
“Everything?”
“I’m taking the MCAT to see if I can get into med school. I mean, it’s not what I want. It’s the last thing I want, but if it means making them happy…”
“No.”
He laughed and blinked down at me. God, he was so, so pretty.
“Mean…it,” I managed. “Be happy.”
“Good advice, but hard to follow.” He closed his eyes and bowed his head. “If I could have just one thing, it would be someone who gets me. Someone who doesn’t want me to twist myself into all the wrong shapes to make them happy.”
I understood that a little too well. So well that for a brief, fleeting moment, I forgot the pain I was in, and we were just two men lamenting about our lives.
And then my nerves fired up again, and I gasped, squeezing him tighter.
“Hang in there,” he said, leaning over to check something on the monitor beside me. He didn’t look happy. “Keep breathing, Atlas. We’re moving slow, but we’re going to get you help, okay?”
“Mm.”
I squeezed his fingers again, the only way I could really respond.
I wanted him to keep talking, to selfishly live out loud these painful parts of his life.
It was keeping me grounded. It was keeping his hands on me, and where the numbness was starting to spread, I was terrified that eventually I wouldn’t be able to feel him at all.
And then my heart rate got funny again. I could feel it slowing in my chest, like all the blood in my body had turned thick as honey, and he quit talking for a while as he adjusted a couple of tubes.
Eventually, I could breathe easier once more, and things felt steady.
I could see the worry in his eyes as he looked down at me.
He brushed fingers through my hair, and the sensation made me want to cry with the relief it brought.
“When I applied for a master’s program in history, my parents threatened to disown me.
I can’t decide if I want to pursue that part of my life or do what they want me to do.
Is giving up on my passion worth the peace?
I don’t know if you know how that feels. ”
I didn’t. Not in the same way. But the thought of him living a life that didn’t make him happy gutted me.
“No.” The inside of the ambulance went dim. Or…was my vision fading? I tested the movement in my legs again, but there was still nothing.
I understood what that meant now.
I knew what had caused it. I knew that every second that ticked by, hope was draining like an open vein.
But I felt safe, holding Ryan like this.
“No what?” he pressed. He squeezed me as the monitor beside me started to dig frantically. “Come on, Atlas. Don’t let go now, okay?”
I let out a breath and found the strength to speak more than three words. “Don’t give up. Please don’t give up.”
“On you? Of course I won’t—”
“On you.”
He went silent. I couldn’t see him now, and my arms felt like cold spaghetti, but he was still holding me. “Atlas—”
“Promise me.”
He let out a trembling sigh. “Only if you promise me you won’t either.
We’re going to get you to the ER. They’re probably going to take you right into surgery.
I don’t know what’ll come after. I think you know it’s serious, but if I do this—if I listen to you and don’t give up on what makes me happy—you have to listen to me too. You have to go on living.”
Yes, I wanted to tell him. I’ll try. I’m shit scared and think I might be dying, but I’m not going to give up.
Except I couldn’t make the words come. I’d used up all my strength to speak, and the best I could do was squeeze his fingers one last time.
The world around me went dark. I was floating in a void of my subconscious, full of numbness and pain, and it felt like every time I reached out, reality was slipping through my fingers. But I could still feel him. He was still there.
Holding me.
My ballast.
Ryan was a complete stranger, but it didn’t matter. For that moment, for these few, weak heartbeats, he was mine.