The Love In Our Lungs

Chapter 15

Tyler Caffee had gone out of his way to stop whatever it was that he was doing once he heard the sirens going near his neighborhood. We lived near each other, but somehow we had only met at school and never bumped into each other outside of that. He heard the sirens passing by and beyond the window of his parents' living room and saw red lights move around the darkness of night. The concern on his face as he told me this could be enough to picture his face at that moment.

In the dark of the room, as he had been watching something on the television, he jolted up at the alarming sound. "I thought it had something to do with you." He told me. Of course, it did, wouldn't you think so too? The boy then proceeded to very dramatically tell me of how he jumped out of the brown couch and into the garage, looking for his parents' car. When he found nothing, he went out the door and wandered for the bicycle he would roll around in the neighborhood.

That didn't go well either, since he had given me a thirty-minute rant on how he was ad at his dad for selling it, and I agreed with him even though his dad had all the reasons to sell the toy, and leave his son to play video games all day. So Tyler had no time to think about his bike, he had gone to the conclusion of running towards the red blaring lights and alarming sound.

The wind blew back the curls on top of his face as he ran, he described to me in that same dramatic tone. I of course could describe my being dragged towards an ambulance as more dramatic than his stunt, but it still surprised me when I saw his eyes red when he was in the ambulance with me. I was just too lightheaded to notice and had my mind revolving around my non-existent brother.

"Why did you say you were my brother?" I looked at him, a smile had settled itself on my face as I waited for his response.

"I couldn't say I was your husband, could I?" True. My cheeks had been scrubbed with the color pink, when he wasn't looking at me, thankfully. I chuckled and looked back at him.

The boy had wondered what was so exhausting for me in running that he clearly couldn't see. It did exhaust him when he finally made it to the house. Most of the lights inside had been turned off, but that wasn't what he wanted to see right now. Yes, he wanted to see the girl whom he had been infatuated with. Cared deeply for her he'd say since he ran out of his house for her. If it would've been the other way around, I didn't know if leaving the couch to grab a can of frosting was even worth it.

Once we had put the jokes aside, Tyler proceeded with the novel he had created of one single event. He saw Alya Sabey standing there, phone pressing to her ear and suffocating it as she talked over the siren. Tyler heard the name Gahn being dropped by her mouth over all the noise. People from other houses had gathered around the tragedy and waited for the girl to come out of the dimly lit house. That girl is me, back hurting, as I saw his figure.

He explained to me that the paramedics weren't giving him any view, or any way of knowing if I was alright in that case. The shadowy figure I saw him as when the paramedics surrounded me, had alarmed me at first, but knowing that it was him now, made the traumatic event a bit less scary to think of.

It was the tension that he held that made me realize that I was not the only one scared here, after all, he really didn't know much about my asthma. I wanted to change that obviously, but right now, I wanted to relax.

Minutes after Tyler had finished with his story of how he ended up here, my mother came into the room, and with her hand, she motioned for Tyler, who then left the chair my mother had been in before him. My mom said to me that they'd be back in a bit, and as I waited there, the silence giving me the company I craved, I saw a third figure beyond the curtain that separated me from the hall. Two of the figures I could assume were my mother and Tyler, but the third one could be anyone.