Page 95 of Love It or List It
“Jesus, Joe, what the fuck?”
Joe blinked heavy eyelids and tried to breathe past the elephant sitting on his chest.“Whassamatter?”The word trailed off into a rattling cough.“Can you—help me get up?”He swung his legs over the side of the bed, but then he had to pause, because he was light-headed.“I gotta… pee.”
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” Austin said.“Your fingernails are blue.”
Slowly, Joe held his hand in front of his face.Austin was right.That probably meant something bad.
Joe didn’t want to go to the hospital, but he also didn’t want his fingertips to fall off.“Okay,” he agreed after a moment.“But can I pee first?”
Will was getting ready to head out for the day when Austin dragged Joe to the front door, and the poor kid’s eyes just about bugged out when he saw Joe’s frail shuffling walk.
“Joe?”he asked in alarm.
“We’re going to the hospital.”Will nodded frantically, and before he could offer, Austin pointed a stern finger in his face.“You are going to school.We’ll be in for a long wait, I’m sure, and there’s nothing you can do.”
“But—”
“School.I will text as soon as I know anything.”
Will reluctantly left, and Joe focused all of his attention on following Austin to his car.The ride to the emergency room passed quickly, which was probably a bad sign, because Joe was pretty sure it was a twenty-minute drive.
It seemed like another bad sign when the nurse at the front desk took one look at Joe and hustled to get him into a bed.
Joe tried to track what was happening, but it was useless.Thank God for Austin.
“Sweet thing.”Someone brushed Joe’s sweaty hair off his forehead and caressed his face.“Open your eyes for me, sweetheart,” a soft voice murmured, and Joe struggled to obey.
He squinted up at Austin, who slowly unblurred and came into view.
“There you are.The doctor has questions, and I don’t have answers.Think you can help us out?”
“Try,” Joe said, because he would.He brushed at his face with a weak arm only to find his attempts to get rid of the unpleasant tickle hampered by tubes and wires.
“Shh, stop that.No, Joe, stop.You have to leave the oxygen tube where it is.Yes, you have an oxygen canula in your nose because your levels were low—that’s why your fingers went blue.”
Joe twitched his right arm, his hand heavy and unbalanced.
“You have an IV and oxygen monitor on your hand.Stop tugging.”
“Why?”Joe croaked.
“Because,” said a new voice, which held warmth despite the clear crispness of the tone, “your lungs are failing to move oxygen through your system.The IV is helping to hydrate you for now, and soon will pump you full of antibiotics.”
Antibiotics.For a cold?“’Fection?”
“We’ve taken blood, and I’ll send you down for a chest X-ray, but I’m pretty confident both tests will say the same thing—pneumonia.”
The doctor wasn’t wrong.Within the hour, she was tutting over his chest X-ray and ordering a course of antibiotics.
“I want him to stay overnight,” she said to Austin, apparently having decided to cut Joe out.Not that Joe minded.It was a relief not to be responsible for this.“I’m not happy with his O2 levels, and I want him under supervision.”
“But he should be okay to come home in the morning,” Austin clarified.
“I’m optimistic, yes.So long as he responds to the antibiotics, the night on oxygen and fluids should be all he needs to kickstart his recovery.”
Satisfied that everything was taken care of, Joe drifted off to sleep.
He woke again to the sound of Austin’s voice.He cracked an eye open and spied him standing by Joe’s bed and gently stroking Joe’s unencumbered left hand.“… says he should be fine with antibiotics.Keeping him overnight is just a precaution.They want to make sure….”
