Page 98 of Sexted By Santa
My breath caught. “Oh no.”
“What is it?” Jaxson asked, tone sharp.
“Her numbers are too high. Two-sixty-five.”
“Damn it. Why the fuck isn’t her glucose alarm going off? It’s not, is it?”
“No, there’s no alarm. No sounds. I don’t understand—”
“Wake her up,” Jaxson said in a tense voice. “I need to know that she can wake up.”
I hurriedly complied, shaken by the fear creeping into his tone. “Tori? Wake up, hon.”
She snuffled but didn’t wake.
“Tori?” I raised my voice and shook her with just a bit more force. She blinked up at me, but it was like she didn’tseeme.She’s still half asleep, that’s all.But I couldn’t shake my unease. “Are you with me, Tori?”
My fear escalated as Sir Elton John jumped on the bed and began licking her face and whining. Did he sense something was seriously wrong?
“What’s going on?” Jaxson asked. “Is she disoriented?”
Tori mumbled something indecipherable, then lurched to the side, vomiting over the side of the bed. Her words were slurred when she tried to speak.
“Oh shit!” I exclaimed. “She got sick, vomited. She’s not speaking clearly. Oh god. I’m so sorry, Jaxson.” Panic clawed at me. “What do I do to fix it? I don’t know what to do!”
“Don’t freak out,” he ordered. “That won’t help us now. I need you to keep it together.”
“Okay, sorry. Okay. I’m here. Just tell me what to do.”
He sounded eerily calm as he said, “I think she’s in DKA.”
“DKA?”
“Diabetic ketoacidosis.”
“Oh. Right.” The term sounded familiar, probably included in the stack of health materials I’d read about Type 1 Diabetes, but the details were fuzzy, my brain too rattled to think properly.
“She needs the hospital,” he continued. “I can’t believe it happened so fast, but her blood sugar was a bit high last night and this morning. If she’s been off all day…”
“But how could that be? We’ve been checking—”
“I don’t fucking know!” He sounded angry. “I haven’t been there to see for myself, so I can’t tell you that.”
“I swear, Jax. She seemed fine.” I hesitated. “Could it be the Tylenol affecting her adversely? It was on the approved list. I tried to call her doctor’s office after texting you, but they were closed, and now I don’t—I just don’t…” I was babbling in a panic, guilt and fear tangling my thought process.
“It’s not the Tylenol,” he said.
“I don’t know what happened then! What did I do wrong?”
“We don’t have time to debate it,” he said in a clipped voice. “She needs the hospital.”
Right. Yes. I was letting my fear eclipse good sense. “I’ll take her right now.”
“Is she any more lucid?” Jaxson asked. “How’s her breathing?”
She was only half-conscious, still. And now that Jaxson called my attention to it, her breathing sounded labored. A kind of fear I’d never experienced before cut through me. “Jax, her breathing doesn’t sound good.”
“Fuck. I don’t want to risk it; I’m calling an ambulance. Stay with her. Administer some insulin to bring down her glucose level. I’m going to text you exactly how much, okay? I need to do some quick math. You can do that, can’t you?”
