Straight Boys - Chapter 47: Chapter 47

Andrew's POV
". . . -uffered from what is called a Grand Mal seizure, or a Tonic-Clonic seizure. First he experienced the Tonic stage where he lost consciousness, from what these kids say was a couple of minutes, then went straight into the Clonic stage, which consists of violent, sometimes harmful muscle contracti- . . ."
Breathe... one... two... three...
Release... one... two... three...
". . . -asn't had one of these this bad since he was four! How could this happen, Jim? You said kids usually get over this kind of thing! He should be over it, shouldn't he? Shouldn't he?! God... this is all my fault. I put too much pressure on him after the accident... God... what am I supposed to do? I can't- I-I, I can- . . ."
Breathe... one... two...
Release... one... two...
". . . -orry, Mr. Parsley. I didn't know your family was going through something like this, or I would have stopped the fight sooner. I'm... so sorry. I hope you understand, but I have to go back to the shop. I left it unattended and unlocked, and I hope Andrew gots bet- . . ."
Breathe... one...
Release... one...
". . . -hould probably go... I... I have no excuses for what I did to Andrew back then, and I h-have no excuse for what happened today... I'm really sorry. I just- I wanted- . . . I'm sorry for- . . ."
Breathe...
Release...
I felt my hand twitch before I felt my consciousness regain itself. The atmosphere was tense, yet gently silent as if nobody was around me to create even a little ruckus. Beneath me, the feel of stiff sheets rubbed against my bare legs, while the weight of a thick blanket held me steady. In the background, behind the silence, I could hear the faint buzz of machinery, and only then did I register something pinching my left index finger; but my hand was too heavy to lift and my eyelids felt like windows I couldn't pry open to see. I couldn't open my eyes, but my head was splitting from a headache that felt like it would only be caused by something like looking up at blinding lights.
I inhaled once, and that's when the strong scent of antibacterial spray and generic flowers hint the back of my nose, and I instantly knew where I was. Am I at the hospital? Furrowing my eyebrows, I clenched my right fist and was able to bring that up effectively to rub at my throbbing temple. Did I fall asleep here while visiting Mom and Lola?
No. I couldn't have. I was with Zachary at the Ice cream parlor. How did I get to the hospital?
With my eyes still closed and my brows still lowered, I twisted my head around a couple of times to try and relax myself. Then I proceeded to use my right arm to try and pull myself up into a sitting position, but my efforts went nowhere. It was like my body wasn't physically allowing me to do anything. It felt like I had just woken up from a really deep sleep sooner than expected. I felt drowsy, exhausted, just overall sleep deprived. I clenched my jaw in mild annoyance, but decided to just give up. In that exact moment, however, the sound of footsteps rang through the stiffening silence, then:
"Andrew? Andrew!" Zachary?
My eyes opened up on their own at the sound of his voice, and I blinked a couple of times to clear my vision. The first thing I saw clearly was the ceiling. It was definitely the Hospital's ceiling in all its glory. Next, I saw that the lights in the room were off except for the one lamp on my left showering the room in a dim glow. Then I saw Zachary.
He was dressed in the same clothes that I remember him being in from earlier, except his hair was messed up and his jacket sleeves were scrunched up at his elbows. He looked like a wreck.
"You're awake. . .," Zach trailed off from somewhere in the room. I could hear his long legs slowly bringing him closer, until I could finally see him above me. His forehead was creased and as soon as he was close enough to me, one of his hands was clutching onto my left hand.
I tried to sit up again, but he stopped me, his free hand grabbing at my shoulder to gently push me back down onto the bed. I sighed and looked up at him, part of me still acknowledging his hand practically holding mine, as I started to speak, "Yeah," but stopped because my voice felt rough, like I was just waking up the morning after a long night.
Zachary, with his hand still on my shoulder, too, might I add, squeezed my hand, his thumb rubbing misshapened patterns onto my skin as he said, "Do you know where you are? You seem. . ."
"I'm in the hospital, but... what happened?" For the life of me, I actually could not remember.
"You don't remember?" I gave Zachary my best deadpan look that I could muster being so weak to telepathically tell him 'if I remembered, why would I be asking you?' He grinned just the tiniest bit and nodded before picking back up with, "Yeah. Right. Well... you sort of... how should I -"
"Andrew! Son!" The warmth of Zachary's hand vanished into thin air as my dad came bounding into my room, two cups of hospital coffee in one hand and a tray of hospital food in the other; but the weight of his other hand on my should stayed the same even as he swiveled around to eye my father.
"Dad?" My dad clumsily set down the tray of enchiladas and rice, chugged one of the cups of coffee, then took a sip from the other cup before putting it down, too. Walking around the bed to the other side, my dad took a seat in the nearby chair and grabbed my right hand with both of his own hands. I watched him the whole time, taking in his unruly state; the way his blonde hair looked a little too brittle, his eyes a little too sunken and how he smelt a little bit like body odor.
"Yes. I'm here now. I'm here, buddy. How are you feeling?" He tried to smile, but he just looked too sad doing it.
I looked down for a split second - noticed I was in a hospital gown - then looked back up at my father. "I feel... tired? Heavy? And my head hurts, I guess. Can I. . .," I lowered my eyes onto his coffee cup, and my dad immediately got the hint. He grabbed the cup from the bedside table and brought it to my lips. I brought both my hands up - my strength seemed to be coming back the longer I was awake - to support the cup, but my dad held most of it for me.
After taking a sip of the much needed warmth, I cleared my throat, and with my curiosity reaching it's limit, I asked,  "Why am I here, dad?"
My dad glanced at Zach with this look of uncertainty - or was he trying to tell him something? - before he said, "Listen to me carefully, Andrew. You had an episode."
"What?"
"You had a seizure, a Grand Mal seizure. You've been out for almost 2 hours now since you got to the hospital."
"A seizure? I don't remember ever having seizures?"
He sighed, his tired eyes somehow finding Zachary again, still as if he was trying to tell him something - and he did, I guessed, because his hand was suddenly gone and he was slowly backing out of the room until he was outside in the hall - before my dad went on to say, "Yeah... you were really young at the time. I'd be more surprised if you actually remembered them."
I focused my attention back onto my dad, but he hadn't even noticed I was looking towards Zachary. He had his head down, his eyes studying every detail of our overlapping hands, his eyes avoiding mine like he was embarrassed or telling me some big secret.
"Remembered what, dad?" I pressed.
"When you were born, your mother and I were so very happy. You were a miracle, you see, because your mom had some... problems. Lola was a miracle, too, of course, but not like you. We thought that we wouldn't have been able to have kids at all, but we did, and it was a miracle... except. . ."
I listened carefully to the new information my dad was sharing, patiently waiting for what he was trying to explain, but part of me was too eager to know. "Except. . .?"
"Except you were born with epilepsy. Really, really, really bad epilepsy. You used to have a seizure almost every other hour over the smallest of things, and it scared me and your mother so much. That's why the school was so willing to drop you from the team. Yeah because of our... situation, but they knew about your condition when they let you on the team. They knew that you were more susceptible to injury even before all this and they just needed a reason not to let you play anymore."
"Wait, wait wai -"
"It's also why we fought so hard for you to be on the team... because we didnt want you to think that there was something wrong with you. There isn't. At least we thought there wasn't! We really, truly believed that you had grown out of this. Your last episode was when you were five, even then it had been a fairly small one. Kids usually grow out of their epilepsy. That's what the doctor had said. The stress that the crash has put on you, coupled with school, and whatever else you're going through probably triggered something, an-and you... you couldn't take it, so you're body was trying to figure out a way to-to -"
"Dad."
The blonde man froze, his mouth slightly open and stressed puffs of breath pushing his chest up and down. He looked like his mind was racing a mile a minute, like he was trying so hard to come up with the right way to tell me, his only son, a pretty big secret that he had kept from me for pretty much over half of my life. I gave him a reassuring smile, though, and told him, "It's okay. I understand." Whether it was because I was numb to any new information at this point or because I was just so over exhausted to the point of literally being unfazed about anything, I wasn't all that affected by what he was telling me. It was like some part of me just knew, had just remembered that part of my past like it was nothing.
At this point, I wasn't surprised. Life was just one obstacle after another that had started the minute I stepped foot into senior year. It was like fate or God or whatever the hell was out there was telling me that I was just destined for fucked up shit. And at this point, I was okay with that. I was over it.
I just wanted to go to sleep,
For a really, really, really long time.
I really did understand my father, though. I did. I've known all my life that all he's ever wanted was the best for me, but that he was never the best at going about doing that.
Maybe later, when I wasn't so out of it, maybe then would I finally let what he was telling me sink in?
Not even a second later after my father was finally done calming his breathing, did a nurse silently stroll into my room. She was pushing a cart of food with her, and as she stopped, she took one tray off of the cart, came in and set the food on the moveable table next to my bed. It was a bowl of thin soup and crackers with a cup of ice water. I glanced at her, only then realizing that it was Marie, the nurse that Zachary seemed to know quite well.
"Here's supper, Andrew. Nothing too heavy, just enough to give you some energy. That seizure probably took a lot of energy out of you, so eat up."
"Oh... okay, um. . ." I glanced behind her, and sure enough, I saw Zachary loitering a few feet away from the door, his blue hoodie tied around his waist as he leaned against a counter one of the nurses was working behind. He was looking in my room and our eyes met for a brief moment before he was talking with the nurse nonchalantly.
"Oh!" Marie started, "Mr. Parsley, Lola is asking about you." My dad sprang up at the mention of Lola. I perked up as best as I could at the sound of her name, but all I could really manage was a sad straighten to my back.
"Is she? I guess... it's dinnertime and I usually eat with her. . .," he looked out into the hall as if he wanted to go, but then he was looking back at me with lowered shoulders like he didn't know what to do. It really wasnt that hard of a choice, though, so I made it for him.
"Just go. I'm alright." He doubtfully stared down at me, but I just waved my wrist to shoo him off. He only just barely agreed as he hesitantly trailed out of my room; and as he left, Zachary bounded back in, closing the door behind him, and heading straight for my barely suspended wrist that I was trying to use to eat my soup with.
"No, no, no, no, no. No, sir, not on my watch. I'll do it." He carefully snatched my spoon, his fingers just barely brushing against my own fingers.
"I can do it my -" I stopped midsentence as a spoon full of lukewarm chicken broth hit the roof of my mouth. I tried giving Zachary a glare as I swallowed, but his playful eyes and baby smirk were both making me feel other things; but as I took another spoonful - this time with less of a fight - and I was able to more clearly get a look at his face, I started to notice some things; like the red tint just above his lips, the pinkish inflammation under his eyes and around his nose, and how he seemed to flinch every time he took a breath in through his nose.
Maybe I did it without even thinking, and maybe it was because I was still disoriented and out of it and just all around not really feeling like this was reality, but as Zachary Rogers was mid scoop of soup and his eyes were studying my untouched crackers, I lifted my hand and slipped my fingers through his hair so that my thumb could trace over his obviously bruising nose. As soon as my hand was even barely a millimeter against his skin, Zachary tensed up - his shoulders straightened and his fingers started to shake, causing the spoon to clatter onto the bowl - and his eyes were on me in a matter of a few heart beats.
I continued to smooth my thumb over his warm skin, these memories from I guess only a few hours ago making their way through my mind as I asked Zachary again, "What happened to your face?" Besides the healing bruise from Corbett a couple of weeks ago, this bruise was new and obviously it came from what happened during the moments leading up to this. . . mess.
I only remember being at the hospital with my mom, then him coming to visit me and our hug. I also remember walking with him just talking about everything and nothing at all, and how we had gone to Fro-Cone to get ice cream.
And I remember us, eating ice cream, and him telling me things, things I wasn't really prepared for, things that, now as I stare at his rigid form, don't seem too bad right about now.
Zach brought one of his hands up and on top of the hand I had on his face, and it felt nice because his hand was bigger than mine by only just a little bit and it was warm and it made my stomach ache with little people stomping all over the place; but then he was pulling my hand away from him and setting it back on the bed. I frowned up at him, the feeling of my stomach crumbling from an earthquake making me uncomfortable; but then Zachary wasn't letting go and he started to speak again.
"To tell you the truth, Andrew, to tell you... all of the truth, what happened to you today is my fault," and he squeezed my hand tightly as he continued, "We went out to get ice cream -"
"I remember that."
"- but then Connors showed up and started talking to Annie -"
"Annie? They know each other?" I felt the pressurized build of confusion slowly make it's way up the back of my neck, but then hazy images floated around my head; images of Corbett and Annie talking, of them standing so close to each other as if they were part of the same body. I curled my brows together, finding the new scenes pushing my amnesia away unsettling.
Something about Corbett punching Zachary was coming in and out of my field of view.
Then stuff about not really knowing someone, oddly enough, in Annie's voice, muffled and wet like I was being held under water.
And the words of Mandy being someone she isn't pushing down on my parietal lobe, in the voice of one very sad and very loathsome Corbett Connors.
"- and then we got involved and it went downhill from there and Corbett punched me and took you off somewhere and told you some stuff and it really got to you and I'm really sorry for the way you had to find out about some of the things you did. It's really all my fault that you ended up here. If only I had stopped you - no, not that. Then I would still be a lying tool and... God, everything is so complicated."
All of the memories that Zachary was bringing back up were settling one by one in my head like a jigsaw puzzle, but for some reason, they weren't quite clicking right. I was starting to get all the pieces - from the fights, to the secrets, and me even telling Zachary to leave me the hell alone - but it was like I wasn't processing them like I should have been.
I felt numb. I really did feel so numb, even when Zachary was trying to tell me something. It was an information overload that my mind and body could not physically comprehend. I felt so numb, that I couldn't think straight, really. It all felt like some big fever dream.
Is this what finally snapping feels like? Truly and unequivocally snapping?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Maybe I wanted to do more than sleep for an eternity.
"But," I jumped at the sound of Zachary's voice reappearing after a lengthy silence, "I... I know that with everything I'm explaining to you now, there's one thing I need to explain; and it's that I don't want to keep any more secrets from you. I don't want to complicate things for you anymore. I want -" but then he disappeared into the silence again.
"You want. . .?"
Zachary gulped and brought a hand up to hover over my cheek, the fingers on his other hand curling around my own fingers just a little tighter. His hand was close to my cheek, so close to my skin, that I could feel our heat radiating between each surface. He seemed to be hesitating, his eyes focused on mine, but his irises glossy and full of thought; but as soon as I blinked, his hand was gently flushed against my cheek, the callouses from benching weight scratchy against my skin, but his warmth comforting; just everything about it was comforting.
"Whenever you're ready, I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything and anything you want because I want to be there for you. And I mean that. I want to be your pillar, Andy. I want - I want us to be each other's pillars to hold each other up when we're falling. I want to -" and he stopped himself again.
I hadn't noticed it until he had stopped himself mid-rambling, but the hand that he was using to hold one of my hands had moved to my other cheek; and he had somehow inched his way closer to me, his body leaning uncomfortably against the food tray. He was silently breathing erratically, like he was afraid to step too out of line even with breathing, and his eyes that were once focused on my own eyes were now jumping all over my face - from my brows, to the bridge of my nose, down to my chin, over my lips, and back up to my eyes, where their travels started once more on a repeating cycle.
Maybe I was numb to all the information I was being told about, and maybe I was having a hard time processing everything in general, but the way Zachary was holding me and looking at me was making my heart race sporadically and my feelings for him to flare up like at the ice cream shop a couple of hours ago.
I felt alive.
My throat felt dry again when I opened my mouth to speak through this suddenly thick silence, "W-What is it that you want... exactly?"
His eyes stopped their search at my lips when I started talking, and he gulped again. He looked long and hard at my lips - and for a really hot minute I thought that, if I just moved forward, that we would kiss, or if he relaxed a bit and lowered his head, then he would kiss me - but then my heart was dropping to the pit of my stomach and the cool air of the hospital room was scratching at my cheeks as he let out a long sigh and took a step away from my hospital bed with a really long expression.
"What I want right now isn't important. It's what I need, and I need to do some things first before I can get what I want," and the way Zach opened his hooded eyes and looked at me after expressing his thoughts made my heart claw it's way up my stomach and into my throat.
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Ah yes! Another update! Still not edited! You guys dont know how many times I changed what the hell was going on in this chapter and how long I thought about what I should write in this setting! I had a lot of different plans that I had originally wanted to do, but as time went on, all the ideas I had come up with felt all too rushed. So I changed my mind for the last time and just left it sort of vague and up for discussion in the next chapters!
Sorry to those of you expecting a lot of questions answered and confessions to be said. I thought they seemed a bit rushed in every scenario I wrote them.
Besides, Andrew just found out about having epilepsy from his dad and that didnt even affect him! He was just so done.
And honestly me too.
But I hope you guys liked it! I tried to bring back some old Andrew and his sassy deadpan self, and Zachary's playfulness a little to lighten to mood! And I put in an almost kiss (I swear they almost kissed)
So anyway, questions? Thoughts? Theories?
What do you think will happen next chapter?
What do you think Zachary was talking about when he said he had some things to take care of?
Where did Taylor, Mandy, and Gretchen go? Corbett and Owen?
I honestly wonder what's going to happen next. Like this whole book is a wild card. You should hear about what I had planned from the beginning! Definitely not this. This book is sort of just like... a side project of sorts at this point that I'm eager to finish. Its literally random writing that just happens to go together. Hahaha... theres no structure to it... At. All.
Anyway! LIKE and COMMENT! And I hope you guys are doing well in quarantine. Stay safe! And please stick with this book! I know it's hard, but I swear I'll finish it!