Hospital Beds and Memories

“Please, Cam,” I whined from the backseat of the car.

“No,” he answered sternly from the driver's seat.

“Please! I promised I would come!”

“I said no. You are not going out like this.”

“But, Cam! At least let me out of the car.”

“No!”

“Please!”

Cameron sighed, “fine, but don’t you dare walk away. I want you no more than three feet away from the car.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I opened the door and rushed out, ignoring the terrible nausea that washed over me.

You see, Cam and I were at the airport to pick up Jack, only I had the feeling that I would have a seizure anytime soon, and me being me, I forgot to bring my emergency medication. I had promised Jack I would wait for him at the part of the airport that allowed access to everyone, that way I would see him as soon as he entered and I would also get to meet his friends. But Cam wouldn’t let me go. He didn’t want to lose me in the crowd and have me be all alone in case I did have a seizure. I had finally been able to recognize the symptoms of my seizures and would be able to stop them with my medication. But that obviously couldn’t happen this time. I would either have to take it and break my ‘one-week seizure free’ accomplishment, or hope that I would be fine.

“I’m going to call Jack and tell him we are waiting outside, he should have landed by now,” I told Cameron before taking out my phone.

Jack’s number was the only contact in my recent list, so I quickly dialed it. After a couple of dial tones, Jack answered in a chirpy tone, “Hey, Baby.”

“Hey,” I grinned widely, “I just wanted to let you know Cam and I are waiting outside at the car instead of inside.”

“Aww, why?”

I raised my voice so Cameron could hear everything I said, “Because Cam’s being a little bitch and won’t let me leave.”

“Well, I’ll see you in a bit then. Just let me say goodbye to everyone.”

“Ok, see you soon.”

“Yes, very soon.”

I hung up and rested against the car. There was nothing I wanted more than to run into the airport and away from Cam, but I knew this was for the best. I didn’t know how bad my seizure would be, and with nobody around me knowing how to deal with it, a lot of bad things could happen. Having seizures really fucking sucked, especially since I had been getting memory loss after them. I wouldn’t be able to remember what I was doing an hour before, and it was only getting worse. My condition was worsening, and I just wanted to be better already.

A couple of minutes later, I saw Jack walking out with a couple of large suitcases. I let out a silent squeak and ran to him.

“Field! You can’t--” Cam shouted after me, but I blocked him out. All I could think about was Jack, not Cameron’s negativity.

Jack noticed me when I was about halfway and smiled, making the skin at the corner of his eyes wrinkle. He let go of his suitcases as I jumped on him. My happiness and excitement were taking over every other feeling in my body, especially the bad ones. Jack wrapped his arms around me while I did the same with my legs dangling in the air. We hugged tightly for a while before pulling apart slightly to make space to let our lips crash together. It was full of emotion and contentment, yet not long at all.

We broke apart and Jack put me down on the floor without letting me go. “I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too.” I reached up and made our lips connect again. He moved his hands down to my waist and pulled me tighter against him.

His hands were about to move down to my butt when Cameron interrupted us, “be careful there. She’s in seizure mode right now and forgot her medication at home.”

Cameron had been calling how I acted before I had a seizure, ‘seizure mode’. At first, I was quite offended by it. It made me feel like there was an on/off switch on me, but that wasn’t the case. I couldn’t control whether or not I had a seizure. Well, I did have my emergency medication, but even that did not always work. After a while, though, I understood how difficult it was for Cam as well. His sister was having serious and dangerous health problems. I understood that he didn’t want everything to be too serious, I wouldn’t have wanted it that way either.

Jack pulled away from me and studied my face, “I can tell.” He looked too concerned and mature. He knew how to take care of me and had already been around me enough to know when I was going to have a seizure. Cam and Jack probably knew when I was going to have a seizure before I did.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I tried saying, but I could already feel a tingling in my head and myself slurring a bit.

“Ok, let’s get you in the car.”

I followed Cam and Jack back to the car and started to feel woozy. Cameron put Jack’s suitcases in the back and urged him to help me into the car. Jack first helped me get in before getting in himself. As soon as he sat down I slowly moved so I could rest my head on his lap. I felt like I was floating, but a weight was dragging me down at the same time. Moving was heavy but my head was light.

“Jack,” I mumbled as I could feel the sickness taking over.

“It’s ok, baby,” he ran his fingers through my hair with one hand while the other one was holding tightly onto mine, “I’m here, it’s ok.”

Cam stepped into the car as well and turned around so he could see me. “How are you doing?”

I knew what I wanted to say, but I could form the words and make sounds anymore. I promise, I really tried, but all I could do was open and close my mouth. Nothing else.

Cameron looked up at Jack. “She’s been having fewer seizures, but the symptoms are getting worse. She’s even getting some memory loss because of them. I’m thinking of making a doctor’s appointment for her, I don’t think this is what was supposed to happen.”

Jack frowned and looked down at me. He was still playing with my hair and I tried to focus on his eyes to keep me from fading away. I could see that his mind was racing. He would always look so concentrated yet far away when he was thinking a lot. And it scared me. What was he thinking? Sometimes he was so easy to read, but other times you couldn’t even get a hint. It was absolutely terrifying.

Before I knew I had lost control again.

When I woke up I could feel the car was driving. On top of that, I felt dizzy and nauseated. I didn’t know how long my seizure had been going on for, but there were a couple of instances that I could feel Jack was trying to help me get out of it.

“Hey, baby, welcome back.” He smiled down at me. I tried to grin back, but I was too tired. It probably looked really weird.

Let me quickly explain my seizures to you. Most people only think of the worst kind of seizure, which is the grand-mal seizure. This is the one I mostly got, but at different degrees of severity. However, it always included losing consciousness. I had also been getting absence seizures, which would mean I would black out, but still look awake. All I would do was stare off into the distance, luckily for me, these only took a couple of seconds. That one time Abagail stole my phone, I apparently had had an atonic seizure, which made me lose my muscle tone, causing me to fall. There are many more, however these seemed to be the ones I always had.

“How are you feeling?” He continued. Once again, I tried to reply, but I couldn’t. My mouth wasn’t making the shapes and my vocal chords weren’t making the sounds. This time I tried signing that I couldn’t talk. But Jack didn’t know sign language, so he just gave me a confused look. I tried showing it instead by pointing at my mouth and lightly shaking my head. Jack seemed to understand this.

“You’re going to have to learn sign language if you want to keep dating her,” Cameron chuckled and looked at Jack through the rearview mirror.

“I was thinking the same,” Jack gave me a half smile, “how did you guys learn it?”

“Well, Ireland learned it when she was six years old. There was a new girl in our class that had hearing problems, and Ireland wanted to include her. I know some basics because she forced me to learn those, everything else I learned when Ireland came to live with me for reasons like this.”

“Hasn’t she always been the nice girl?”

“She always has been. I would fuck shit up and she would fix it. Together we were a team. We still are and always will be.”

“Well, hopefully, I don’t disrupt that.”

I snuggled into Jack as an answer while I was beginning to fall asleep. All I seemed to do sleep the entire time, but I couldn’t help it. Jack made a content noise and moved the stray hair out of my face.

“I love you,” I mumbled before I drifted off completely.