Sapphire Eyes ~ 10 Chapter Challenge

Tonic-Clonic ~ Mirna

Logan swears and drops to his knees to gently push Kaden to his side. Blood oozes from Kaden's chin. Logan swears again. He jumps up super quick and sits behind Kaden's back. He softly takes Kaden's shoulder and rolls him to his back, pulling Kaden onto his lap, cushioning his head in the crook of his arm, and supporting his upper body on his legs.

Kaden's eyes go wide and stare blankly ahead. He cries out as his body is seized by the brain storm, forcing the air out of his lungs and throwing his whole body into stiff, jerky convulsions. A tonic-clonic seizure. I sink to my knees next to Logan, unable to keep the memory from flooding in.

Loud squealing of tires, the deafening clash of steal on steal, glass shattering.

Someone's squeezing my hand. I blink. "It's okay," Logan says. "He has epilepsy, so this happens all the time."

All the time. Suddenly I feel like my insides are too big for my body to hold in. I close my eyes and wait until the burning pain fades, then take a big breath and swallow the sadness. "Okay..."

"Really, he'll stop shaking in a few minutes, and he'll wake up. Don't worry, okay?" He sounds frantic, like he's panicking, but maybe he's just talking fast to try and stave off my own panic.

"Okay," I say again, my voice shaky. I've seen seizures tons of time, but Jimmy only had complex partial seizures, so this is really hitting me hard.

A round of violent shaking hits Kaden, and he nearly slides out of Logan's arms. Logan lets me go and adjusts his hold on Kaden to keep him up off the driveway. It goes against seizure first aid guidelines to hold him like that, but Kaden's much safer in his brother's arms than on the hard concrete. Blood practically pours from the deep gash on Kaden's chin, running down his jaw, onto his neck, and smearing Logan's arm with red.

Even though I know it's just a seizure and it'll be over soon, I feel myself seriously panicking. The cut on his chin is serious, he sounds like he can't breathe, and he's staring right at me like he needs my help, grunting like he's hurt. Like he's awake and trying to fight it off.

Is that what I look like when it happens to me?

The shaking goes down, so Logan can loosen his hold on his brother. With Kaden's head in the crook of his right arm, he glances at his watch on his left wrist and clenches his jaw. Something comes over me, and I grab Logan's hand. He's warm, and it feels really good to hold on. Logan glances down at our hands and looks into my face, his lips parted and his eyebrow drawn up, but there's a softness in his gray eyes that says he really needed someone to hold him too.

He laces his fingers in between mine. "It's okay. It will stop soon, and he'll be fine. Don't worry." His voice is low and quaking, but he doesn't really seem worried. Maybe just sad.

"Okay. Is this ... because of basketball?"

He looks down at Kaden like he suddenly wants to pull him up and hug him. "I don't know," he mumbles, his face covered with a guilty frown.

Wow, great timing Miri. You choose right now, when his brother is still shaking in his arms, to make him think about why it's happening. So cold.

If anyone should feel bad, it's me. I'm the reason why Kaden decided to play. This is my fault. "It wasn't your fault." I touch his shoulder with my free hand. "You were just having fun. Don't you dare beat yourself up over this!"

Logan sighs. He glances over at me and then stares down at Kaden. It's written all over his face: whether it was on purpose or not, it still happened.

"It's stopping," Logan says. He's right. Kaden isn't shaking so hard anymore. Still shivering though. His face is washed out and streaked with spit. The blood oozes from his chin, trickling all the way down his jaw to his ear. His eyes are still open and staring blankly, but his eyelids are drooping.