Old Fashioned

Chapter 5

The next time Alex awoke, sunlight was streaming through the blinds across the room from him, and the sounds of the city were in full swing, though, they'd never really stopped to begin with.

Tai was still on the opposite side of the couch, and seemed fine at first, up until Alex's eyes fully adjusted. There was a cold sweat on his forehead, his jaw set tightly, and his whole body was bouncing back and forth between going completely rigid and shivering horribly.

Alex's blood turned to ice as he scrambled over to Tai, the world spinning as he did so, thanks to the lingering effects of the alcohol still coursing through his veins. Pressing the back of his hand to Tai's forehead, Alex was met with boiling hot skin - definitely a fever.

Lifting Tai's shirt up, he checked the wound to see if it had gotten worse. Underneath, he found dark, throbbing flesh with pus seeping through the crude stitching.

Slipping into panic mode, Alex began running through what little medical knowledge he had. Obviously it was infected, but why was it progressing so rapidly?

"Tai?" he said, shaking his shoulders. "Tai wake up, can you hear me?"

Tai grunted in pain upon being touched, his eyes flickering beneath their lids, but managed to force them open just a sliver, a feverish haze glazed over top. His jaw was still clenched to high hell, and that was when Alex realized it wasn't tensed from the pain; Tai actually couldn't move it - it was stuck.

Alex whipped out his phone, typing the visible symptoms - locked jaw and fever - into the search bar. Within seconds, Google spat out his result;

"A common first sign of tetanus is muscular stiffness in the jaw (lockjaw). Other symptoms include stiffness of the neck, trouble swallowing, painful muscle stiffness all over the body, spasms, sweating, and fever."

A sense of dread washed over Alex, and he didn't even need to look up what to do next, he simply acted.

"That's it, we're going to the hospital," he said, pocketing his phone, wallet, and keys. "And for once, you can't argue - your jaw won't let you."

He scooped Tai up with ease, wasting no time rushing out the door.

Once out on the street, he hailed the first taxi cab he saw, not even bothering to check if he had cash in his wallet to pay for it. It was 2024, surely there was a way to pay by card now.

An empty yellow cab slammed on its breaks as it was about to pass, screeching to a halt in front of them. When the driver saw that Alex had his hands full, he hopped out and opened the back door for them.

"Ay man, is he okay?" asked the driver, who was a burly middle aged man with thinning hair and a patchy beard.

"Not sure," Alex answered, sliding Tai into the backseat and hopping in after him. "That's why we need to get to the hospital, asap."

He gave the same address Erin was at with her mother, and the tires squealed as the driver took off, cutting off a few cars in the process.

Tai wanted to fight - to yell, to kick, to make Alex let him go - but all he could do was push out a few strangled and muffled words.

"P-Please-" he grunted through grit teeth, barely audible, to the point only Alex could hear. "D-don't- d-d-do this-"

Alex chose to ignore him. He hated going against Tai's wishes, but this guy was going to die if he didn't get the proper help. Selfishly, he didn't want to live with that guilt, and he also didn't want Tai to give up his life for whatever stupid vendetta he had against doctors.