Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 88656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 443(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
He nodded, then gasped. “Yes. You’re on speaker.”
“Jamie,” she said firmly, surprising me. “Get Michael to the bed. Make him lie down, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, hating the panic in my voice. I needed to pull it together, be strong for Kage.
“He’s going to be fine,” she told me. Even thinned out over a cell phone line, her voice was convincing. Commanding. “He’s having a panic attack, that’s all. It feels very scary to him, but he’s not in any real physical danger. Just get him to the bed and comfort him the best you can. I’m already in the car, and I’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes.”
“Alright,” I said, my voice warbling with my own wave of panic.
“Jamie,” she called, and I had to pull the phone back to my ear. “Don’t let him out of your sight.”
After I hung up the phone, I took Kage by the arm and led him slowly to the bed. He seemed weak, like the energy to move had been stripped from him. I got the feeling that if I let go of him, he’d sink down and not try to get back up— which is exactly what he did when we reached the bed.
I left him there lying sideways on the bed long enough to run to the front door and unlock it. Then I was at his side again.
I picked his legs up and got them onto the bed while he continued to hypoventilate and stare at the ceiling. His breathing was chillingly similar to my grandfather’s on his final emergency room visit. A longtime emphysema sufferer, he’d lived with us for the final years of his life. During that time, we made frequent trips to the ER. On that last night, I’d held his frail, grasping hand as he fought for breath. The tube blowing oxygen into his nose did little to comfort him.
His words had been desperate, punctuated by labored breaths.
“Don’t want.” breath. “To do it.” breath. “Anymore.” breath.
He was tired. So tired. His chest heaved with exertion.
The nurse had explained what he was going through. How the work of breathing had become too much for him, how he was physically and emotionally exhausted, how he would give up if only his body would let him. But the instinct to survive is strong— much stronger than the will.
My grandfather had given up, but his body would not. Could not.
We’d stood watch over him for hours, me on one side, my mom on the other, and the rest of the family at the foot of the bed. I cried and swiped at my tears with the back of my left hand, because my right hand was wound in his gnarled and discolored fingers. I held on because it was all I could do. In my mind I felt shame, because I prayed for him to get relief. I prayed for him to die.
That night they put my grandfather on a ventilator, and he never came off of it. Not until they put the sheet over his head.
I blinked away the memory and looked at Kage lying there on his bed— fit and fine and in the prime of his life— gasping for air and looking so damn tired.
How could this be happening to him?
“I’m sorry, Jamie,” he whispered. As if he had any reason to apologize to me when he was the one suffering.
I climbed into bed beside him and took his hand in mine, cuddling close, careful not to put any pressure on his chest or impede his breathing in any way. I laid a kiss on his shoulder and waited, mildly concerned that some strange woman was going to find us like that— cuddled in his bed in nothing but our boxers. Would it be obvious that we were lovers? When Kage had told her I was with him, it seemed as though she already knew who I was. They had talked about me before. Maybe she already knew about us.
Kage obviously trusted her. It seemed I had to trust her, too.
When the door clicked open and I heard her approaching the bedroom, I closed my eyes and braced myself for the worst. But she came in and introduced herself in a businesslike manner.
“Hi, Jamie. I’m Dr. Julie Tanner.” Her dark hair was smoothed back into a conservative bun at the nape of her slender neck, revealing a beautiful face that was fresh and free of makeup. There was concern in her brown eyes.
A doctor. Now things were starting to make sense. She reached a hand out to shake mine.
“Uh… nice to meet you,” I said quietly, glancing down at my thin boxer briefs and then at Kage’s boxers, always in danger of gaping open. I suddenly felt very under-dressed, more so than I thought I would now that she was actually here, her keen eyes roving over Kage’s body. A blush crept onto my cheeks. “I need to throw some clothes on. I just didn’t want to leave him until you got here.”