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“You alright?” I whisper.
“Yeah man, I'm good. Go back to sleep,” he whispers back before tiptoeing out of the room. Assuming he's just wanting some space or needed something, I let him go and drift back off into a deep sleep.
Luis
I lay awake most of the night, unable to shake the feeling that something is off.
I'm almost glad when I hear evidence of the fuckfest happening down the hall. It helps me worry a tiny bit less about Jackson. Ever since the hospital, I've been noticing more and more that he's acting strangely. Even when he's joking around like normal, the laughter doesn't reach his eyes the same.
Lukas has me worried too, but he seems to have come around a bit since Micah laid it all out for him. We'd all be dead if he hadn't made that choice.
I'm thankful that we've made it this far. I am. But I just can't relax. And yeah, I might be a pessimist sometimes, but I have a bad feeling. I haven't been able to shake it since I saw the way Dr. Franks reacted to Jackson's healed leg.
I overthink well into the early hours of the morning, the sky lightening to a dusky blue.
What was that sound?
Sitting up quickly, I focus on the sound of the ventilator and the soft beeping of the machines. I thought I heard…something. An extra beep, a break in the regular pattern that I've been listening to for the past few hours. And something else, like a gurgling sound.
Except Bennet hasn't moved, and everything seems fine.
Until it doesn't.
All at once, hell breaks loose. Multiple machines beep loudly and rapidly. Bennet makes a horrific sound, like a cross between choking and a moan. Is he awake? Is he choking?
And then he starts to seize. His body jerks and shakes, and a whitish foam bubbles up over the tube in his mouth.
“MICAH!”
Completely at a loss for what to do, I roar out Micah's name and focus my attention on Six. I'm having to hold her back, not wanting either of us to exacerbate the issue or cause him injury. I pull her away from the bed and turn on the overhead lights.
It's worse in the light. Six chokes out a wailing cry that I feel in my stomach. That cry hurts worse than watching my brother seize and choke foam out around an intubation tube. My brother.
“MICAH!”
Micah crashes into the room in a panic, pulling on a pair of basketball shorts.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. FUCK!”
Micah starts pulling drawers and rifling through, tossing stuff here and there as he searches for whatever it is he's looking for.
Finally, he finds the right drawer and holds up a few pre-filled syringes to the light. Finding what he's looking for, he removes the top of one of the syringes and pushes the medication into one of the tubes coming off the IV bag.
Bennet stops seizing, but the machines are still beeping irregularly. At that moment, I know without a doubt that he is dying. My body is frozen to the spot, losing the strength to hold Six back.
Lukas is on the phone with Dr. Franks, who is already on his way over. But I know he'll be too late.
Six is sobbing, on her knees next to Bennet on the bed, begging him not to leave her. Not to leave us.
Micah takes the phone, updating the doctor with all the medical jargon that I'm not in the right mindset to process. I hear the words propofol, respiratory depression, secondary neurological deterioration…
“How much plasma do we have left?” I ask, still not able to force my body to move.
“We've got about three tubes ready, and there should be about a dozen tubes in the freezer. But if it hasn't worked yet, I don't know if maybe he's too far gone…”
Six folds herself in half, hugging her knees to her body, murmuring to herself or to Bennet, I don't know.
“Could it hurt?” I ask.
