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“What did you get for number seven?” Ash asked, shifting her backpack on her shoulder. Sal didn’t say anything; she wondered if the hallway was too loud for him to hear. “Sal? What’d you get for number seven?”
Sal started. “Huh? Oh…I don’t remember,” he said.
“Are you all right? You’ve been kind of spacey today.”
He shrugged. “‘m okay. Just…tests.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” she said.
They fell silent as they headed towards their next class. She wished she could see his expression, figure out what was going on in his head, but his prosthetic left his face unreadable as ever. Still, she had the uneasy crawling feeling under her skin that something was wrong . Maybe it was just stress from midterms, but she knew there was a lot that Sal didn’t discuss, secrets about how deep the damage from his accident ran under his skin.
But he seemed normal in class, and mostly normal at lunch, even though he barely ate anything and didn’t really talk much. Todd didn’t seem to pick up on anything unusual, shoveling his cafeteria chili into his mouth with mechanic precision, but she caught Larry shooting uneasy glances at Sal more than a few times. On one hand, that was validating, he clearly thought something was up too. But on the other hand…what was wrong?
The bell rang at the end of the period; Todd zipped away to his advanced calculus class while the three of them headed towards history. She watched Sal out of the corner of her eye and she didn’t miss when he reached for his backpack and the strap slipped through his fingers on his first try.
Ash tried to make conversation, but Larry was distracted, frowning at Sal, and Sal seemed like he was on another planet, staring at his shoes as he walked. She wasn’t sure what to do. Should she just ask? Should she push if he tried to lie?
Sal stumbled, catching himself against a locker, and Larry grabbed his arm. “Dude, what’s going on with you?” he said. Sal shrugged. “You’ve been off all day.”
“He told me earlier it was just stress from tests,” Ash said.
Larry frowned and leaned closer to Sal, studying him carefully. “What’re you looking at me like that for?” Sal said, trying to squirm away.
“You’ve been fighting one off all day, haven’t you?” Larry accused.
“Larry-”
“Don’t fuckin’ lie to me.”
Sal’s shoulders slumped. “Yeah,” he confessed. “I…I feel like it’s gonna hit soon. But I’ve been trying to-”
“ Shit ,” Larry said. He pulled Sal’s backpack off his shoulders, making him yelp, and tossed it to Ash. “Shit. Okay. How much time do we have? Like, get you to the nurse’s office time, or-”
“Like…it’s, it’s gonna happen soon.”
Larry swore again, keeping a tight grip on Sal’s arm. “Okay. Fuck. Okay, let’s figure out where we can take you…”
“What the hell is happening?” Ash cut in. “What’s wrong?”
“Gimme a second, just stick with us, okay?” Larry said. “We might need you.”
“Need me for what?”
But Larry was already striding down the hall, dragging Sal behind him, and Ash hurried to catch up. The rest of the students were shuffling into their next classes, but clearly whatever was wrong with Sal was a bigger issue than being late. Besides, most of their teachers liked her, she could probably sweet talk a late pass if they needed one.
Sal made a weird noise, somewhere between a cough and a yelp, and Larry groaned in frustration. He scanned the hallway, then tried a door and peeked inside. “Okay, not ideal, but we’re definitely not making it to the nurse’s office,” he said. “God, this is the worst possible time. Come on, Sally.”
Ash followed them into the storage closet. It was decently large, filled with the shadowy outlines of old gym equipment and illuminated by a single dusty bulb that flickered on when Larry yanked the rusty chain. “Okay, those mats will come in handy,” he said. “Ash, close the door.”
She kicked it shut with her heel. “Can someone please explain what’s going on?” she said.
Larry pushed Sal towards her; she grabbed him by the shoulders before he lost his balance. “Hold on, let me just…”
He grabbed one of the old gymnastics mats from its position leaned against the wall and dragged it into the center of the closet, nudging an old lacrosse stick and a broken soccer goal out of the way. “Seriously, Larry, what the fuck is happening?” she demanded.
“He’s gonna have a seizure,” Larry said. “Here, Sal, lie down.”
Ash let go of him in shock. Sal staggered forward, sinking down onto the old mat. “I don’t feel good,” he mumbled.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, lie down on your side,” Larry said.
Sal hunched into himself, absently twining his fingers through one of his pigtails. “I don’t wanna do this.”
“I know.”
“I don’t, Larry, I don’t.”
“I fuckin’ know , dude, just lie down. Come on.”
Sal obeyed, moving stiffly like his joints didn’t know how to work anymore. “You’ll call my dad?” he said, and his voice sounded horribly young.
“Yeah, ‘course I will, the second it’s over. And if he doesn’t answer I’ll call my mom, and you know she will,” Larry said. Sal finally laid himself down, curling his knees into his chest. “I’m gonna take the mask off, okay?”
Ash could barely hear Sal’s whispered okay . Larry fumbled with the double rows of clasps on the straps until he was able to pry the prosthetic away and carefully set it aside at a safe distance. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen Sal’s face, but she still saw it so rarely that she needed to take a second to prepare herself for the sight of the damage.
“Can someone please explain what’s going on?” she said. “Sal, you’re…you’re having a seizure?”
“About to,” Larry corrected.
“Oh, so he’s about to have a seizure.”
Larry scooted closer to Sal, resting his hand on the younger boy’s upper arm. “It happens sometimes,” he said. “It’s an aftereffect of the accident, it’s a, a…TBI thing. His brain got damaged so it freaks out sometimes. Usually when he’s stressed.”
“Like during midterms.”
“Yeah, like midterms,” Larry said, his thumb rubbing unconsciously against Sal’s arm. “I’ve been around him when he’s had ‘em, his dad’s taught me what to do, it’s just…oh, fuck, okay. It’s okay, Sal.”
She had neve seen someone seize before and it made her heart clench in her chest. All of a sudden Sal’s legs went rigid, his arms curling tight into his chest as his fingers contorted. His body started twitching.
“Larry…?” she ventured.
“Time it if you can, if he goes on for too long he’s gotta go to the hospital,” Larry said. He kept a hand on Sal’s side. “It shouldn’t last more than a few minutes.”
Ash tried to look at her watch but she couldn’t focus, not when Sal was seizing just a few inches away from her. She wanted to cry, she wanted to help, she wanted to stop it, but there was nothing she could except sit there.
Sal shook and bucked against the gymnastics mat, a half strangled cry occasionally breaking from his throat. His eyes were wide open and without the mask she could clearly see the difference between the real one, crystalline blue but glazed over, and the glass one, carefully crafted but painfully fake in the dim light of the closet.
Sal’s back arched and Larry curved himself around his body protectively, keeping him from throwing himself off the mat and onto the dirty concrete floor. “You can’t hold him still but you can keep him from moving too much so he doesn’t hurt himself,” he said.
“Aren’t you supposed to stick something in his mouth, or-”
“God, no, that’s just shit they do in movies. How long has it been?”
She stared at her watch, trying to make sense of the numbers. “Two minutes, maybe?”
“Okay. Shit. Come on, Sal, snap out of it.”
Ash bit her lip, glancing back and forth from her watch to her friends. They were almost at the three minute mark when Sal grunted and finally went limp in Larry’s arms, the horrible twitching in his limbs stilling. “Fucking finally,” Larry sighed, running a hand over Sal’s tangled hair. “How long was that?”
“Two minutes, fifty-seven seconds,” Ash said. “Is that okay?”
“Not great, but we don’t have to call an ambulance,” Larry said. He unfolded his long legs and stood up carefully. “I’m gonna go call his dad to come pick him up. Sit with him, okay? I’ll be right back, before he starts really coming around.”
“Okay, but Larry-” she started to say, but he was already gone, closing the door behind him.
Ash looked down at Sal. He was deathly pale, his eyes drifted closed, spit gathering on his white lips and beginning to puddle underneath him. If it wasn’t for the quick rise and fall of his post-seizure breaths, she would have believed it if someone told her he was dead.
She shifted around until she was close enough to hoist him up and rest his head on her lap. Maybe it wasn’t a great idea to move him, but she had to do something. Sal made a little whimpering noise in the back of his throat and rubbed his cheek against her thigh.
“It’s okay,” she murmured, running her hand over his hair. “You’re okay, Sal. Larry and I won’t let anything happen to you. We’ll get you home soon and everything will be fine.”
He didn’t respond, but she hoped it helped. She wished desperately there was something she could actually do, if she could be like Larry and know exactly what would help. All she could do was stroke his hair and make sure he was breathing.
Larry banged the door open, his hands full of rough brown paper towels, some dry and some dripping. “His dad’s on his way,” he said. “How’s he doing?”
“Still out.”
“Okay, okay,” Larry said, kneeling down beside them. “He’s going into something called postictal, it basically means he’s waking up but he’s still scrambled.” He looked directly at her. “This part is kinda rough, so if you want to go back to class-”
“Fuck off, Johnson, I’m staying,” she said, running her fingers through Sal’s hair again.
But Larry wasn’t kidding, rough was putting it mildly. Sal started to shift around, whining and whimpering. Drool was still running over his lips and the gouged skin of his damaged cheek and Larry wiped it away clumsily with a dry paper towel, unfazed. “Come on, kid, you’re okay,” he said. Sal started to cough, choking on his own spit. “Get it out. You’ll feel better.”
Ash winced as Sal twisted on his side, coughing up spit into the paper towels that Larry held over his mouth. “Does this part usually happen?” she asked.
“Yeah, all the time,” Larry said. “He starts choking and shit. Sometimes he’ll throw up, that sucks. At least he didn’t piss himself this time.” He paused. “You didn’t hear me say that.”
“I heard nothing,” Ash said.
A shiver ran down Sal’s spine and he fumbled around blindly. Larry caught his hand. “I got you, kid, ‘s okay,” he said. He looked up at Ash. “He gets, like…weirdly clingy. And overheated. Here, put that on the back of his neck.”
Ash took one of the damp paper towels, dribbling cool water on her sleeves, and draped it over the back of Sal’s neck. “So you’ve seen this happen a lot?” she said.
“Yeah, kinda,” Larry shrugged. “First time it freaked me out, but his dad was home and he handled it. But…I wanted to know what to do if it happened again and he wasn’t there. He’s my best friend, I gotta look out for him.”
“Yeah,” Ash said softly. “I can do that too, you know.”
Larry nodded. “Yeah, it’s probably about time you knew about it,” he said. “He just…well, you know how Sal is. He doesn’t talk about the accident, he hates talking about how it still has him fucked up. Mostly he pretends like it didn’t happen, other than the whole prosthetic thing. But…he’s still fucked up. That's not gonna change.”
“That doesn’t matter, though,” Ash said. “We’re a team, right? We can look out for him if he needs us.”
She saw Larry’s eyes soften as he looked down at Sal, their hands still clasped. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”