Shades of Gray

"So much for trying to get you to sleep," Jack sighs. "you should try some sedatives."

"I have," I reply, crossing my arms and leaning back. "It's been nearly four months. I think I'd think of something like that."

Jack switches the shift lever to Drive. "Four months? Damn. Obviously you haven't been awake the entire time, so what do you do when you reach your limit?"

I stare out the window and don't answer. The high of the drugs is starting to wear off, in relation to my tiredness. Now, not only do I feel empty and lightheaded, but everything is spinning. My legs feel heavy and the buildings outside look funny.

"Your hair looks funny," Jack tells me, and I eye him.

"You can't see my hair...?" I reach up to adjust my beanie, but suddenly I'm not actually wearing a beanie. I tousle my hair, trying to fix it, and shrug away the thought of a missing beanie. Maybe it fell off.

"You know, Alex," Jack says, and he stops the car. I am vaguely aware that even though the vehicle is not in motion, the outside world is, and we're passing by students and college dorms and quads.

Jack unbuckles his seatbelt and leans close to me. I can feel his breath hot on my ear.

"Know what?" I squeak, shriveling back in the seat. The close proximity doesn’t give me enough space to breathe. My stomach churns.

"Suck my dick," he says bluntly, face twisting up into a smile. “I’m only kidding. I meant to profess my love to you, you sexless little fuck, or perhaps that’s the wrong word, since well, you’re not a fuck.”

I blink, really confused, and for a second, time slows down. There's a sharp pain in my side. Jack keeps talking.

Can't move.

Everything goes dark.

Can't move. Can't breathe. I feel it again. There's something here, with me, in this darkness. No, no, no. Not here. Not right now.

I'm sleeping. I've fallen asleep. One of those two. They're different, but either way, I'm in some kind of sleep because this is me waking up.

A burning feeling crawls up my body, sort of like a really hot-cold shiver. I tell myself to calm down, because last thing I need is for some kind of anxiety attack to happen.

All I can do is think. I can't move, I can't breathe, but I can think and feel, and whatever I feel, I've been scared to death of since tenth grade.

The only thought I have is, how long have I been asleep?

I reflect on the day. Everything seems normal. Maybe I fell asleep between the time walking to the car and getting in the car? If it were anything beforehand that'd mean I'd been asleep for a hell of a long time, because a minute here is like fifteen minutes awake.

Fuck, what time is it?

There's another pain in my side, and suddenly it feels like I'm being choked by air. The darkness struggles to hold on to me as I slip away from the trapped in a box feeling.

My head comes into hard contact with the passenger seat dashboard, and there's a sharp feeling above my eyebrow.

"Fuck," Jack swears. "Let's get you to a hospital."

"Wha-?" I croak, bringing my fingers up to my forehead. I come in contact with a red wetness.

"I'm bleeding," I state and he nods.

"You hit your head," he tells me, and I huff. I know that, obviously.

My entire body hurts, and it kind of feels like I've been hit by a bus. My eyes feel heavy.

Jack buckles me again, then goes back to hands on the wheel, eyes on the road. We're stopped in the middle of traffic.

He's silent for a few minutes, and so am I, staring blankly outside the window. I gaze at all the other cars, but they're a blur of colors in my mind.

"I'm not going to suck your dick," I say, and then laugh. Really hard. By the time I can finally breathe again, it feels like I'm about to cough up my lungs.

Jack looks appalled. "I don't think that's something we should be discussing before the second date."

"My ass hurts," I blurt. "My whole body does, but I feel like someone pulled my soul out of my ass."

"We're on the way to the hospital right now," he assures me, swerving between a truck and an SUV.

"Mm, don't wanna go," I say, shifting in my seat. "They're gonna put me in sedatives."

"You need medical attention," he says, looking at me as we bypass like six cars.

"Jack," I try, but the tired slur in my voice has chosen to reappear. He glances at me for a second with a half nod before focusing on the road again.

"I'm asexual," I inform him, dropping my hands in my lap.

"I know you are," he laughs, fingers touching the hem of my shirt. He lifts up the fabric, exposing a dark red area. It looks like a bruise about to form.

"How'd you sleep?" he asks, and my thoughts snap from the contusion in my side.

"I didn't," I say bluntly. Deny it. Maybe I was hallucinating. Sleep deprivation causes fevers, and fevers cause hallucinations. Or I might have just been gazing out the window and the oxygen just left my head, right?

You felt it, Alex. That's not a feeling you can dismiss.

"That's concerning," muses Jack. "I'd assume you were having a seizure and in that case" - he presses on the horn when a driver cuts off his chance to get into the carpool lane - "we have to get you to a hospital like now."

"Hospitals are gay," I say, kind of out of breath. It's really hard to breathe, I note.

"You're a little homophobic," he comments, swerving around six cars, this time someone who looks very suspiciously like my ninth grade Geometry teacher flipping him off.

"I don't like sex in general," I defend. "Homosexuals can do as they please."

"I bet you're not aromantic," he grins. "I could write you a sappy love note and you'd get all blushy."

I know what he’s doing. He’s trying to distract me from everything, just like everyone else I talked to did in the past seventy seven hours. Out of sight, out of mind. Even the four hours alone with myself in the darkness, eyes half focused on a computer screen was distracting.

But it doesn’t work.

"I have to throw up."

"Am I really that unappealing?"

"No," I muster out, stuck between swallowing the vomit and jumping out of the car. "I have to throw up."

And then Jack's eyes widen and he looks at his leather seat and then back at me before making one final attempt to clear through traffic and pulling over to the shoulder but I'm already spewing the contents of my stomach on to my lap.