A Cure for Recovery : A College Town Novella by Lauren Gilley

Author:Lauren Gilley [Gilley , Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HP Press
Published: 2024-06-11T18:30:00+00:00

~*~

Bill’s watching cooking shoes – the Saturday Food Network lineup – and though Tommy settles in the window seat with his book, the sounds of chopping and sizzling keep capturing his attention, and before long his stomach is grumbling.

“I don’t know about you, but this is making me hungry,” he says as he climbs to his feet. Getting worked up and overly tense always leaves him fumbling more than usual, and after last night, he leans heavily on his cane and steps slowly and carefully. “Ready for lunch?”

“Ready for…” Bill lifts an unsteady arm to point at the TV. “Th-that.”

Onscreen, a woman makes some sort of steak sandwich with peppers, onions, and melty cheese sauce.

Tommy snorts. “We’re fresh out of that. But I’ll see what we’ve got.”

He’s microwaving the morning’s leftover biscuits with the intention of making sausage sandwiches with them when he hears the thud. One big one, and then a series of smaller ones. A pattern: thud-thud-thud. And a plastic and metallic clatter.

Panic grabs him by the throat.

“Bill!”

So many times over the past seven months, his legs have failed him – but they don’t now. I can’t fall, he thinks, as his heart leaps and his pulse accelerates so rapidly he feels faint. I can’t fall, not now.

He grips his cane tight, and though he hurries, he keeps upright, keeps his steps short, sliding rather than stretching his legs out the way he wants to.

He reaches the living room to find the wheelchair overturned on its side, Bill on the floor, on his side, juddering and jerking and twitching. He was a cop, not a paramedic, but he had basic emergency training, and Tommy knows what he’s looking at: a seizure.

Dread and fear threaten to choke him, that first awful moment, when he’s just a guy looking at his father-in-law in crisis.

But then his almost twenty years on the force kick in and he shoves all feeling aside so he can do what needs to be done. His teeth click together when he hits his knees, but the pain is peripheral. He gets Bill on his side, and pins his arms, and holds his head with his other hand, so he can’t bang it on the floor and hurt himself any worse than he might have. There’s foam on his lips, and his breath is coming in sharp, inconsistent hisses.

Tommy holds, and waits, and, slowly, some of the rigidity seeps out of Bill’s wasted frame. He moans, and whimpers, and his body goes limp, eyelids fluttering.

“Hold on,” Tommy says. “You’re okay, I’ve got you.” Deeming it safe to release his head, Tommy rests it back against his knee and whips out his phone, thankfully in his sweats pocket, to dial 911.

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