Page 10 of Running Feral

He was breathing normally through all of this, although a little fast, like you would expect from someone in pain. But as soon as we’re both settled in our final positions, his chest begins to heave. Big, body-shaking breaths that come quickly and with too much force.

“Hey, hey,” I say softly. “It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe now.”

I don’t know what else to say, and his eyes are wild enough that I’m not sure if he’s really hearing me, even though he’s not trying to get up and still clinging to my sweater. Instead, I put one hand flat on his chest. Gently, with no real pressure, but enough so he can feel it.

“It’s okay, Tobias. You’re okay. Take some slower breaths for me. In and out, one at a time.”

I can feel his chest rising and falling under my hand. The rest of his body is ramrod tight, so stiff his back is bowed, but his breathing is still so labored. I hold his gaze for a minute and take a deep, slow breath, trying to get him to copy me.

He does his best, and we repeat it. In and out, one after the other, until his body finally catches on and slows down.

Unfortunately, it seems like that energy still has to go somewhere. Instead of breathing like someone on the verge of a panic attack, his body seems to settle on taking all that trembling and dialing the notch up to eleven. The tremor becomes a shake, and then the shaking becomes so violent, racking his entire body, that for a second I’m scared he’s having a seizure.

But he’s still looking at me. Still holding onto me. It’s just the rest of himself he can’t seem to control.

I’m at a loss for what to do, but the urge to try to fix it is too powerful to ignore. I make yet another risky decision without waiting for permission, which I can feel guilty about later. Once he’s not shaking so hard, I’m scared he’s going to fall off the couch, while looking at me like I’m the only person in the world who can help him.

I lean closer to him, put my hands behind his shoulders, and lift him up a little. His body is pretty slight; not just his frame, but also like someone who maybe skips too many meals. It’s easy to lever him up and then slip myself underneath him.

It takes a little maneuvering, but I’m able to settle him in between my legs, both of us looking up at the ceiling and my knees bent on either side of his hips, so he can’t roll off the couch. I have to twist his hands out of the fabric they’re clutching, but I quickly thread his fingers through mine before wrapping both our sets of arms around his chest to hold him against mine. His head rolls back to rest on my right shoulder, his face turned into my neck as he maybe tries to hide the way his teeth are chattering with stress or fear orsomething, but then I have him completely contained.

Our bodies move in sync, chests rising and falling together as he mirrors my rhythm. Little by little, the shaking calms down until he’s barely moving.

The whole process seems to take forever. In reality, it probably only takes minutes. But I’m so relieved when it’s done, I take the first calm breath of my own since he fell through my open front door.

I don’t push him to talk at first, because I want to cement this new state of comfort that we’ve achieved. Eventually, he seems to drift a little. Not truly sleeping, but dazed, and finally out of thepanic-flee-fightmode that he was in before. Once we’ve been there for a while, though, I let out the question that I’ve been holding in all this time.

“How badly are you hurt?”

Tobias doesn’t answer. He stays still, as if he hadn’t heard me, continuing to mirror my slow, careful breaths.

“I didn’t know you wore glasses,” is what he says when he eventually opens his mouth. His voice is raspy, like he’s been crying a lot or shouting. But there’s a teasing lilt to it that makes me feel optimistic that the Tobias I know is still in there, buried under all this hurt.

I let myself do a little half-smile/exhale combo, because that’s all the mirth I can muster.

“I wear contacts when I’m working. This is after-hours Gunnar. Lots of old-man cardigans, glasses and complaining about how tired I am.”

Now it’s Tobias’s turn to snort.

“You’re not old. I like the glasses. They’re very distinguished.”

“See, I feel like ‘distinguished’ is just a fancy, polite synonym for ‘old’.”

He doesn’t reply, but he tugs on my arms until I’m holding him a little tighter. How we’ve ended up like this—when we’ve never even touched before and less than a day ago, I said I was going to leave him alone—is surreal. I’m trying not to make myself crack that nut open until I have to.

“You didn’t answer my question.” I jostle him a little, so I know he’s paying attention.

“It’s not that bad.”

The words are a whisper, and I know without a doubt they’re not true.

“I don’t know you very well, Tobias. But I think I know you well enough to know that’s probably code for ‘I’m basically dying’. Will you let me take you to the hospital to get checked out? We don’t have to tell them anything.”

Tobias tries to sit up, but immediately cringes and gasps in pain, so I hold him against my chest and don’t let him move too much.

“No! As soon as he realizes I’m gone, that’s the first place he’ll look. He could already be there, for all I know.”

It’s telling that neither of us pretends I need an explanation of who ‘he’ is or what happened. Tobias is fighting against me a little as he speaks, but at the same time pressing his face against my neck, like he’s seeking comfort there. It’s the weirdest dichotomy, but I refuse to do anything that might limit his ability to take what he needs from me.

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