CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
FINCH SOUNDED ASPHYXIATED. HE KNEW he sounded asphyxiated and weak.
He despised whenever he made a show of himself. He wasn’t anyone’s source of pity or entertainment.
Finch reached for his own chalice of wine, feeling his blood course faster, propulsively.
He assumed he needed wine to flush out whatever bad seed he’d swallowed in the pomegranate or strawberry, even if he had to risk his medication mixed with alcohol.
With a gasping breath, he tried to pass it off with a chuckle. “The strawberry…it’s…too sweet.”
“Is it?” Elliott said, and he tried one. “Do you want me to grab you some red grapes instead? The grapes are less sugary.”
Finch shook his head. The pomegranate extract had been the opposite of sweet–bitter, viscous, acrid on his tongue.
Don’t overreact in front of everyone. Everything was fine. Finch quickly swallowed the wine to force down the remnants still stuck in his teeth. No more wine for you. Try the extract one more time. Except, he choked on the wine meant for Elliott once more.
The wine was rancid.
The wine clotted in his chest somehow, he couldn’t explain it. It was as if someone spilled crude oil, congealed and thick, over his chest, and restricted his airway as his body imploded into raw panic.
He could only faintly hear Elliott over him, shouting and ordering someone to get help.
Finch collapsed to the ground but he shoved himself on his hands and knees because he’d hate himself if he made a scene in a fancy place and he had to be helped up to his feet. Stand up on your own.
Except, he couldn’t. His knees wouldn’t work.
His kneecaps weren’t responding.
His ankles wouldn’t support his weight.
Finch couldn’t stand it whenever the nurses had to assist him out of bed, or bathe him, but he reached out to Elliott for help. He didn’t have his respiratory machine.
These weren’t his normal coughing fits. Not even his most dire episodes of difficult respiration left him tearing at his eyes.
No, he wasn’t tearing up.
There wasn’t saline water cascading down his pale cheeks. It was blood.
Finch was bleeding out of his eyes.
There was a stream of blood coming out of his ears, nose, mouth, every crevice in his body.
He couldn’t see straight. He could barely hear Elliott sobbing for help over the colliding adrenaline crashing through his ears.
Finch’s explosive heart rate had never felt this fast. Tachycardia was rare for him, unless he was panicking.
His blood pressure must’ve shot up, he couldn’t be sure without a machine.
Then he remembered what he was taught, how to check his pulse rate on his wrist, but he slowly felt paralyzation.
His fingers wouldn’t move.
Elliott was crying on top of him, pumping his chest. Hard.
CPR. Elliott was administering CPR onto Finch as though Finch had lost consciousness. Elliott blurred above him. The world listed to the right.
Finch’s eyes rolled backward, like someone had shot a pool ball at billiards with his pupils.
Elliott’s mouth was on his and Finch tried to promise him he was fine. His mouth worked against his movement. But his brain felt like a sea, if that made sense? Did he make any sense any longer?
He felt his neurons slow down, yet fire faster than ever.
Half of his face drooped downward. The other half was haywire in rapid alarm.
Finch couldn’t form a sentence. His lips and tongue wouldn’t obey him.
Every morning he laughed whenever Linda asked him who the president was or what day of the week they were in, checking his cognitive faculties and his presence of mind. Finch tried to take himself through the routine, but who was elected president? What day of the week were they in? Where was he?
“Help him, please help him!”
“What happened?”
“…Chalice…” Finch gurgled his own blood. Miraculously, a stage hand heard him. “Is…wav…chalice…”
“He said it was the chalice. Is he allergic to wine?”
“He ate strawberries and he drank pomegranate–” Elliott tried to inform them, and Finch gargled out that he’d had both. As much as Finch tried to vomit out the blood, more kept coming upward. Blood burned through his chest.
Someone asked, “What was in the wine?”
“I-I don’t know. A couple of seniors bought it. Professor Ilaria!” Someone shouted. “What was in the wine!”
His vision smeared and his eye skated left without his permission. Finch witnessed Professor Ilaria shove someone off of him.
“Oh goodness. What happened here? Call the ambulance!” She screamed. “Don’t just stand there. Call the paramedics! Does anyone have an EpiPen?” She leaned downwards towards Finch to check his airway. “Are you allergic to–”
Before she could finish, Finch shook his head.
He had no allergies. He’d never had an allergic reaction in his life.
He dabbled in different medications and homeopathic herbal remedies, because he was willing to do anything to cure his lung disease.
He hadn’t had any allergic reactions to any of it.
Finch felt his trousers become wet with blood. His tie was drenched. He was making a mess of himself in front of everyone. However, there was no part of him that thought he would die.
He didn’t think he was gasping his last breaths.
The blood gorged his ears and he couldn’t hear anything anymore.
Finch was down to one of his five senses left.
He tasted the iron of his blood in his mouth.
Finch had ulcers in his mouth, and he bled in his mouth intermittently in small open wounds, but never like this.
Finch hadn’t wanted anyone to know about the ulcers, but he couldn’t care less now, the hospital would need his medical file. Would they still be able to help him?
He knew his vision would leave him next, yet he still fought on, his eyes stinging from the coagulation of blood obscuring his vision.
The woman above him was endeavoring to save his life harder than anyone. She quickly turned Finch on his side to prevent him from drowning in his blood, choking on gasps. It helped clear out some of the build-up in his right ear. She frantically opened the emergency first aid kits with an AED.
However, there was no time left for it. As they were told the paramedics would be there in an hour and fifty minutes due to the sequestered distance of the campus, where the ridged Marlborough Mountains stretched for four hundred arduous miles, she lifted Finch along with Elliott into her caravan, driving at full speed to the nearest emergency room because she would be faster.
His vision failed him somewhere between the caravan door shutting and the engine roaring to life. Distantly…he heard the whistle of a train afterward. The sibilance of a steam engine. The bleary maroon letters of THE UNDERGROUND REAGAN RAILWAY were the last sight he ever had.
He was tortured for hours in extreme hellacious pain, but it couldn’t have been more than a handful of minutes, he told himself in his final thought.
All at once, his world darkened.