Page 23 of A Cure for Recovery

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.

~*~

Tommy rides in the ambulance, so he’s in the waiting room of the neuro wing at the hospital when Lisa and Lawson rush in, both wide-eyed, breathless, and looking painfully alike, with their blue eyes and blond hair.

The only other person in the waiting room is a stooped, gray-headed man paging listlessly through a newspaper, but Tommy plants his cane between both feet and stands as they enter.

“Hey,” he greets as they cross the small room. Lawson’s still got his apron from Coffee Town tied around his waist, and Lisa’s glasses are crooked. “He was stable by the time we arrived, but I haven’t talked to the –oof.”

They converge on him from both sides, Lisa on his right, Lawson on his left, and they both hug him, Lisa’s arms deceptively strong around his waist, Lawson’s familiarly heavy around his shoulders and chest. Lisa presses her cheek to his, and Lawson shoves his nose down into his hair.

Tommy closes his eyes a moment. He can’t hug them back, arms trapped at his sides, but he doesn’t know if he’s ever felt so surrounded, and been so glad of the fact.

He swallows the lump in his throat and says, “I haven’t talked to his doctor yet, but he was alert and speaking when they wheeled him back.”

Lisa draws in a wavering breath, and her voice squeaks with emotion when she says, “Oh, sweetie. Thank God you were there.” She sniffs. “You did so well.”

Lawson doesn’t speak, but he burrows his nose down through Tommy’s hair until his breath rushes hot and uneven across Tommy’s scalp.

Lisa lets go first, stepping back to dab at her eyes with the fingertips, and to squeeze Tommy’s shoulder with the other.

Touching them, feeling the evidence of their worry, and their love, brings some of his own anxiety bubbling back to the surface. His next breath is less steady than the previous. Guilt twists in the pit of his stomach.

“I was in the kitchen when it happened,” he says like a confession. “I didn’t–”

“No, no.” Lisa shakes her head. “You were there. You did everything right.”

Lawson nods, tip of his nose sliding up and down on top of Tommy’s head. With an arm free, now, Tommy reaches up to grip Lawson’s forearm where it’s pressed to his chest. Squeezes.

“Are you Bill Granger’s family?” a new voice asks.

They all turn toward the doctor who’s come through the swinging doors, but Lawson doesn’t release him. He keeps an arm across his shoulders, holding him warm and close, and Tommy slips his own arm around Lawson’s waist as comforting counterpoint.

“Yes,” Lisa says. “How is he?”

The short answer is that he’s okay. Dr. Mendelson thinks the seizure was a result of one of his new medications, but wants to run further tests and keep him at least overnight for observation. Lisa goes back to see him, and when she looks back at them expectantly, Lawson says, “We’ll come in a sec, Mom.”

When they’re alone – save the old man with the newspaper, who may or may not have fallen asleep while reading – Lawson takes Tommy by both shoulders, turns him so they’re facing, and then hugs him so tight Tommy can barely breathe.

He can hug back, though. Rub his hands up and down the bowed line of Lawson’s spine, and feel the faint trembling under his shirt and skin.

“You okay, sweetheart?” he asks, quietly.

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