Wrath (Sinful Secrets 4)

“I can help you.”

I do, and we make it. He left a clean towel draped over the shower’s rod, so I’ve got that to help him dry with. Only I don’t know if I can dry him. He’s like…really shaking.

Jesus.

I wrap the thing around his shoulders as well as I can without letting go of his arm. “Let’s walk to my bed, okay? Or your bed?”

Why the fuck am I asking him questions?

“My bed,” I decide.

Dammit, I wish I could pick him up, but he’s a big guy. I could do it, but it would be a rough ride for him because it’d be a strain on me, so I just walk him into my room…lead him to the bed. I try to ease him down, but it’s a fail. He falls face-first, landing with a bounce. He draws his shoulders in and scoots so that he’s vertical on the bed, and I climb up beside him.

Jesus, DG.

I lay the towel over him and pull my sheet up…then the duvet, until he’s covered to his shoulders. I drag my pillow to him, thumb his temple gently. “Lift your head up, Mills. I’ve got a pillow for ya.”

He does, and I wiggle the pillow under his cheek. I brush the wet hair off his forehead again.

“I’m gonna call my dad. Do you feel okay right now?” He nods, even though he’s got his eyes shut. “Hang in there, DG.”

I’m too afraid to leave the room, so I call from the armchair by the door.

My dad sounds alarmed when I tell him, and he hands the phone to Suzanne.

“What happened?” she asks, and I tell her that I heard him choking from my room. That he was in the shower.

“Oh no,” she says softly. She sounds pretty devastated, which makes my throat feel tight all over again.

“I don’t know how long it went for,” I say. “I got in there and it stopped, and he got sick, like choking up some water, I think. And then I got him out and walked him to my bed.”

She asks if he’s coherent.

“Yeah. He knew who I was and he tried to make a joke.”

“Oh, poor Joshua. We thought we were over this, but evidently not…”

I hear my dad murmur something sympathetic.

They end up telling me Miller has motherfucking epilepsy. It’s the childhood kind that people outgrow. It started when he was a little kid and happened last when he was in sixth grade. His mom is shocked that it happened tonight.

“Do you know if he…did anything?” she asks. “Anything strange? Did he drink alcohol?”

I can barely breathe past my tight throat as I tell her that I don’t think he did.

There’s a brief discussion about Suzanne coming home, but Carl seems to nudge her toward staying with him. They’re in Charlotte, North Carolina, and they’ve planned to be away until this coming Thursday. In the end, it’s decided that Suzanne is going to contact the on-call person with DG’s neurologist’s office and see what they think.

“Do two things,” Suzanne tells me.

She tells me to get a pulse-ox monitor, which monitors the amount of oxygen in a person’s blood, from the drawer of the kitchen desk and put it on his finger.

“Text me what the numbers are, and keep on checking.”

She tells me what they should be—because she doesn’t know I know about these sorts of things—and I reassure her that I’ll watch out for him.

“Also,” she says, “you can’t let him drive. Not anywhere. I don’t think he would, but wrestle his keys from him if you have to. Will you do that?”

“Sure thing.”

She still sounds worried when they hang up. DG is still sleeping, and he’s breathing; I check that before I jog downstairs to get the pulse ox.

Geez, he has this at his house. He has his own personal one—a small, finger-sized kind. I don’t like it. Fuck, I fucking hate it when I put it on his finger and his eyelids lift open.

“You okay?” I rasp. “You want some water?”

He falls right back to sleep. I’m relieved to see the numbers look okay. I text his mom, and she agrees.

‘Just check it every hour for a few, please’

‘I will. I’ll text after each time.’

Normal moms, I assume, care about their kids a lot, and want to know if they’re okay. I don’t want to leave her hanging.

‘I’ll watch him all night. It’s not a problem. I’m not even tired.’

‘That’s so sweet of you, Ezra.’

The hell it is.

I set the phone down and go back to my bed. It’s pretty low to the ground, so I have to crouch down on my knees beside if I want to look at him up-close. He seems okay. Just sleeping. I notice he’s barely moved and figure he’s worn out from the effort of the seizure. That shit can make you pretty tired, from what I know of it. He’ll probably sleep all night, and he might still be tired tomorrow.