Healing Gabriel: Chapter Thirty-Eight
〒|〒Evan's POV〒|〒
I was dying.
Well, not exactly; it just felt like I was. The ache in my throat had refocussed its force somewhere deep in my chest, making it increasingly difficult to breathe whenever I lied down or when my mom forced me to eat or drink something. I hadn't been able to find my appetite, though, so I rarely had to deal with the burden of eating. I barely noticed the ache in my stomach anymore, too preoccupied with the nearly suffocating breathlessness I was overcome with whenever I moved my torso the wrong way. It was like I had forgotten how to breathe, or maybe my body just didn't want me to. I didn't know.
The only thing I did know was that I didn't have much time left.
Okay, that was a lie. I didn't know anything that was going on with me, actually. I just couldn't help but get a little melodramatic due to the extreme boredom I was engulfed in, as my mother has refused to let me leave my bedroom unless I had to pee. I was surprised she even allowed me to go to the bathroom by myself and didn't force me to use empty soda bottles.
Sleep was impossible; anytime I succeeded in finally drifting off, it was only for a couple minutes or so before I would be jerked back to consciousness by the intensely breathless feeling I could only get rid of by sitting up. By the end of the week, I was exhausted with fatigue, smelly from random spells of excessive sweating, and my coughs had turned into lethal wheezes. It was all kind of terrifying, and enervating, and I missed the outside world so much, I missed Gabriel so much, it hurt nearly just as much as the occasional coughs that rattled throughout my chest and produced nasty, frothy sputum.
Speaking of sputum, that was actually what I was in the middle of hacking up at that very moment. Lots of it, might I add. I heard footsteps from down the hall coming towards my bedroom, and I knew it was my mom. I also knew that if she saw the frothy, mucus-like drips of gooey nastiness coming from my throat, she'd freak out. Especially if she saw the slight red hue of the substance, most likely blood, I noted, as I examined the small blob being cradled in the tissue I held in my hand.
"Evan, baby, are you alright?" Mom asked, barging into my room and nearly tripping over the many piles of old clothes and wadded up, sputum-holding tissues strewn all over my bedroom floor.
"Huh?" was all I could muster out, quickly balling up the tissue before she could catch sight of its contents. I tossed the wad at the garbage can across my room, but it missed, just like all the other times.
"Is your fever coming back?" she asked, taking note of my flushed face. She briefly pressed the back of her hand against my forehead. "You're burning up. I think it's getting worse."
"I'm fine," I told her, but it came out more like, " 'M f'nn." I reached over for the glass of water she'd left on my nightstand a couple hours earlier and took a sip of it. It was even harder to breathe than before, but I needed something to take the burning sensation away from my throat.
"Here," she said, grabbing the thermometer from next to where the glass of water had previously been sitting. "Let me take your temperature."
"No," I whined through tightly sealed lips, tired of the nearly permanent taste of metal in my mouth. She'd taken my temperature at least thirty times in the past two hours.
"Oh, stop being such a baby and open your mouth, Evan!" she scolded when I began turning my head left to right, right to left, and left to right again and again in order avoid the stick that determined my fate as to whether or not I'd be allowed to go downstairs and watch television or had to stay in bed for another five hours.
"If you don't let me take your temperature orally, I'm going to flip you over and stick it up your butt," she threatened, making my eyes widen.
"You wouldn't--" I started, but she already dove for the kill and slipped the thermometer past my parted lips. I scowled in defeat and just lied there, breathing heavily. All that kicking and screaming had really knocked the last bits of remaining breath out of me.
An eternity later, Mom finally pulled the metal piece from my mouth and turned the device towards her. "One-hundred-one point two degrees fahrenheit," she read aloud, her tan lipstick-painted lips frowning. "Your temp rose a whole tenth of a decimal since twenty minutes ago."
I widened my eyes theatrically this time rather than for the fate of my ass. "A whole tenth of a decimal?" I gasped, trying to suppress my coughs, which made my shoulders tremble.
"Don't get smart with me, Evander," she warned, giving me the Look every mother gave her child when s/he was pushing the limit. She glanced down at the thermometer again and pursed her lips. "I was going to run to the grocery store, but maybe I'll just stay and have Dylan do it . . . "
"No, it's fine, just go. I'll be okay. Besides, you know he never buys the right things, anyways."
"I know." She shook her head. "That boy can be such a pain."
"Your fault, you birthed him," I pointed out, earning an eyeroll.
"I love how you still manage to keep your smartass-ness when you're nearing the possibility of an emergency hospital visit."
I couldn't help but grin at that. "It means I'm well enough to leave the house to go visit a friend, right?"
"Wrong," she said, crushing every last building in the City of Hope to See Gabriel I'd been metaphorically constructing this entire week. "You're going to stay in this bed and sleep this fever off, and when I get back from the store we're going to practice some breathing exercises."
I groaned, coughed hard, then yanked the covers over my head. "Fine," I grumbled through my blanket. I felt her course her well-manicured nails through the tufts of my hair sticking out from my barricade. She mentioned something about soup on the stove and to heat it up if I got hungry, but I pretended not to notice and once again began holding my coughs in and making my eyes water like crazy, waiting for her to leave.
It wasn't until I heard her close my bedroom door, heard her footsteps on the staircase downstairs, heard the jingling of car keys and heard the front door close that I threw off my comforter and shot up in my bed, gasping.
"Fuck," I mouthed, too busy panting for breath to voice the curse. My heart was racing like crazy, my lungs an inferno for air. To make matters worse, my stomach was grumbling loudly and painfully, as I had not eaten since Tuesday afternoon (and it was now Friday morning). I needed to eat something, to keep my energy up somehow, no matter how scary not being able to breathe for the 0.2 seconds it took for me to swallow was.
Scooting my legs to the side of my bed and pushing myself up and off, I wobbled a bit at first before regaining my balance. My head was pounding, my vision blurry for a moment. I waited until my senses were somewhat back to normal before I decided that I would be able to make it to the kitchen without cracking my head open on the way down the stairs.
In the kitchen, I kept my grip on the countertop next to the stove as I heated up the broth my mom had left me. While waiting there, staring inattentively at a spot on the floor across from me, I became a bit lost in my thoughts. I was brought back to the day that seemed like so many decades ago, but was really only about four months, the day Gabriel showed up on my doorstep and told me the very basics about him. The day we sat on the floor together, and he let me touch his hair, finally allowed me to touch him without freaking out too much. My fingers twitched at the memory.
I was picturing him then, curled up on my kitchen floor, tears trailing down his cheeks as he'd told me what had happened. I'd been shocked--of course I'd been shocked. Some guy I'd just met, some guy that I'd thought was just really, extremely shy, had been kidnapped, sex-trafficked, beaten and starved. He'd been treated like an animal--no, less than an animal. He'd been treated as if he were nothing, and so he began to believe he was nothing. And for the first time in my teenaged existence, I'd realized that the world didn't revolve around me, that my "problems" weren't even problems compared to what some people's, some teenagers', some kids' were.
And in a mere four months (but what felt more like four years) I began to mature, began to want to help someone other than myself, began to actually want to form a relationship--and with another boy, nonetheless.
All the thinking was making me feel sick, and I was breaking out in another sweat again. I didn't even feel like eating anymore. Fuck, I just wanted to get better, just wanted to see Gabriel again.
I turned off the stove and crossed all the fingers I had and went back upstairs, and I was actually, actively dizzy by the time I got back to my bed. I couldn't feel my hands, and I was clumsy and slow in dragging the covers over myself, and if I maybe cried a tiny bit into my pillow, it was because I was fucking exhausted and frustrated and hated my life, okay, and not because I was a giant girl or whatever.
When I woke up next, I was pretty sure I wasn't awake at all, actually, because when I managed to open my eyes, I saw my mom leading Gabriel into my room. Gabriel. It was so fucking weird and verging on the thin line between reality and surreality that I just sort of lied there, waiting for I didn't even know what--the dinosaurs or the zombies to show up, maybe. Instead, my mom was saying, "Evan, baby? Your . . . friend is here. Gabriel? He was really anxious to see you."
I blinked and realized this was real and pushed myself up a little, earning a sudden relief of pressure in my lungs. "I--oh man, okay," I said, trying to keep it cool, though on the inside I was freaking out about Gabriel's very presence. He looked tired but still pretty as ever, and yeah, I knew boys weren't supposed to be pretty, but he just was. I shoved my hair off my forehead with one hand, and okay, my mom was looking weirded out and maybe a little annoyed, and Gabriel was looking totally uncomfortable but also couldn't take his eyes off of me.
"I'm really sorry, Mrs. Ricci," Gabriel was saying, and he was literally wringing his hands together like a tiny old lady and shifting from foot to foot the way he always did, and it would've been really fucking funny to see if I could only get my brain back online. "I--I just had to see him, I was really worried, and--"
"Evan?" my mom said, cutting Gabriel off, and I gave her a smile, pushed myself up further, and didn't cough even though my chest was tight and killing me.
"I'm good, Mom, it's fine. It's--" And fuck, now was as good a time as any, what was she going to do, kick me while I was down? "This is Gabriel, yeah. He's my--" And fuck, I'd been all set to come out to her about this, but honestly, right as the words were coming out of my mouth, I realized Gabriel might not be prepared for me to come out to my mom about this. But fuck it, I was too fucking sick to think. Besides, if Gabriel braved the horrible awkwardness of trying to get past my mom to see me, he couldn't be uninvested, so I continued with the horribly awkward introduction of, "He's my--boyfriend, okay? Gabe, this is my mom."
The two of them gave me matching, equally startled looks, which was fucking hysterical. Then Gabe actually offered my mom a tentative handshake, and seriously, if giggles wouldn't have set off a coughing fit to end all coughing fits (and possibly my life), I would've been losing my shit right then. It was fucking funny, and I was so goddamned relieved to have it out there, I didn't even know what to do with it.
"Oh," my mom said, her voice cracking slightly from surprise, and she actually did shake Gabriel's hand, which I took as a good sign. "Nice to meet you," she managed, and sounded like she meant it. "I'll leave you boys alone, then. But not for too long." She gave Gabriel a Look, an actual Look! Like he, of all people, was actually going to do something.
"Oh, no," he said quickly, catching on, and I could practically see the red on his cheeks through my blurry vision. "I wouldn't--I'm not--he needs his rest." He eyed her timidly, and she softened-- slightly. She softened as much as a mama bear taking care of her sick cub as well as just finding out that cub was dating the freaking bunny rabbit from the den next door could.
"Exactly. Thank you for understanding. Thirty minutes, Evan--I mean it." Then she gave me a Look, a Look, and I knew we would be talking about this as soon as she thought I was well enough.
"Jeez." Gabriel sat down hesitantly at the foot of my bed as soon as the door closed. "She's a little scary."
"I know, right?" I actually felt sort of proud about what a protective mama bear my mom could be. After a while, I realized Gabriel was several feet away, the farthest he'd ever been from me in a while since the very beginning of our relationship. I was also kind of internally aching, a different type of ache than the one in my head, chest and stomach, to touch him. "Why are you all the way over there?" I asked, rubbing my eyes with my fists.
"Because I feel like she'll know if I come closer," he said with a half-smile, but he moved immediately further up the bed until he was close enough to lean down and kiss me.
It was selfish of me to continue the kiss even though I knew I was grossly sick, but at that moment, I didn't care. Besides, deep down, I think we both knew that whatever I was coming down with was more than something juvenille like the flu--and, most likely, non-contagious. Plus, despite my poor hygiene, Gabriel had undoubtedly seen and experienced worse and didn't seem to mind it. So I just pushed up into the kiss, and oh, God, I missed this, even though it had only been four days.
"Gosh," Gabe said, pulling back. "You're really hot."
"I know, right?" I retorted, grinning a little.
He shook his head, didn't even smile. "You're burning up."
It hit me that Gabe hadn't seen me like this before, and was actually really worried about me. It was kind of adorable. It was also kind of nice to have someone other than my mom concerned for me--someone who it wasn't kind of their job to be concerned.
Gabriel spent the thirty minutes sitting against the headboard, curled up close to me, not concerned about germs or anything, just worried and constantly touching me like he was reassuring himself I was there, and okay, and not under a bus, or worse, in a coffin.
I felt like a total loser because I'd done nothing but sleep for days, but I was so tired I could barely focus my eyes. My cough was really getting worse; I'd lost it a couple of times while Gabe was there, coughing so hard I felt like I was going to come apart and wheezing to the point where breathing was nearly a foreign experience for me. And each time Gabriel would just push up against me and hold onto me until I got it under control.
I felt stupid and ridiculous and pretty much completely un-hot, but I also couldn't make myself let go of him. I slumped forward, my forehead pressed against the worn denim of his leg, and it was fucking comforting, okay? I kept my eyes closed as I said, my voice coming out all shot and unrecognizable, "Fuck. Sorry. I just--"
"Shh." Gabriel's fingers were in my hair, kind of stroking it, kind of just running through it, even though it was disgusting and sweaty and hadn't been washed in days. Gabriel didn't seem to mind--he was gently combing through it with his fingers, and it felt weird and good and I inched closer on the bed and curled one hand around his thigh. I didn't want Gabriel to go, pretty much ever.
"I don't want you to go," I told him, probably sounding like the most pathetic, clingy boyfriend in existence when I heard my mom's footsteps making their way back towards my room.
"Me neither," he whispered back, momentarily letting his hand rest against the side of my cheek before continuing to course it through my hair. "I wish I could stay with you. I'd meant to visit you earlier this week, but I'd been busy with schoolwork."
"Understandable," I murmured. That was when I heard my bedroom door open and felt Gabriel's gentle caresses freeze.
"Alright, sorry boys, but it's time for Evan to get his rest," my mom said, her voice faltering towards the end, most likely due to our position. I surprised myself by letting out a whimper--fuck, an actual whimper! How much more pathetic could I possibly get?
"Five more minutes, Mom, please?" I beseeched, gripping Gabriel's thigh tightly in case she said no. She couldn't have pried him out of my grip even if he were covered in needles. I knew I was acting like a toddler, but, Christ, I just wanted to be near him, at least for a little while. Couldn't she give me that?
She hesitated for several seconds before sighing. "Okay," she relented. "Five minutes, that's it," and the door closed behind her in pursuit.
"I feel like a stupid twelve-year-old," I muttered, hiding my face against the top of Gabe's lower thigh again. I could tell he was a bit stiff, most likely remembering something from his past due to my head being a foot or so away from his crotch. I scooted downwards so my head rested against the side of his knee instead, and his muscles unclenched, and his hand relaxed and traveled a bit more easily through my knots of an artificial rat nest.
"Why?" he asked, his voice softer, sadder.
"It's, like, five o'clock in the evening and my mom's making my boyfriend go home. And she's acting like we're gonna do something."
"Well, uh, you kind of did just come out to her as gay."
"Na-uh," I said, ignoring the breathlessness that was beginning to creep up on me due to my lying down for too long. "I said that I have a boyfriend, not that I'm gay."
He purrowed. "Isn't that the same thing? Or are you bi?"
I shrugged weakly. "To be honest, I don't even bother thinking about my sexuality anymore. It doesn't matter. I have you, and that's all I need."
He smiled a little, gunmetal eyes looking a bit cloudy, almost misty. I thought it was tears, but I wasn't too sure, as my vision was beginning to shift again.
We didn't say a word to each other after that, just let the silence of my stuffy, messy bedroom envelop us. I wanted to say something else, tell him how much I'd missed him, ask him about school, how the others were doing. I would have to save that conversation for another day, though, because once again my mom entered my room and announced that it was time for Gabriel to go.
"I'll see you later," I told him as he carefully detached himself from me and got off my bed. He shook his head.
"You will not," he objected. "Unless 'later' means when you're perfectly healthy again, then sure, I'll see you later, too."
I couldn't not break out into a grin at that, and I was pretty sure I caught my mom smirking, too. Gabriel had just probably unknowingly earned himself some brownie points with my mother, which I desperately hoped he'd be able to use to his advantage in order to come visit me again. Hopefully sooner, though, because I didn't know how much longer I had left to spend time with him.
And this time, I didn't think I was overreacting.
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Note
Well, that was a fun chapter to write. Sorry if it was a bit shorter than my others. I hate writing sick characters 'cause when you're sick, you're not yourself, and it can be difficult making a character not themselves yet you still have to have them be themselves, you know?
Speaking of not being themselves, I'm sorry if my writing seems a bit more reserved, or if my replies seem a bit cold. My 4 1/2 month old puppy, Pencey, recently passed away, and the loss has been taking some tolls on my mentality. (rest in peace, my little Pencey prep.)
Anyways, thank you all for the surplus amounts of reads and votes! I really enjoy reading your comments and replying to them. Keep everything coming; feedback is a writer's backup generator. Thank you for reading, and see you guys at the next chapter.
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