Chemo

Fallen

        We were walking home, my home. We never go to Garett’s house. His mom’s what we like to call a “Jesus Freak”, also known as a religious nag. The kind of person who will almost rip your head off and throw it across the room if you don’t think Jesus was the savior. She also on top of all her big headedness will constantly perfect Garett with everything he does.

 His dad beats him too often not to notice the bruises on his arms. His house is filled from floor to ceiling with beer cans. He is sex obsessed, I’m surprised Garett is an only child to be perfectly honest.

His father being the drunk, sex crazed man he is, I don’t understand how he married to a Christian perfectionist that points out every mistake ever made.

Yeah, always my house.

Always.

Anyways, we were walking on the side walk. A busy road to our right, a dark alley to our left. We tried to walk directly in the middle to stay away from both. WE were holding hands as Garett started stumbling on his own feet. He quickly caught himself before face planting into the pavement.

“Garett, you okay?” He’s been acting weird lately. He can’t see right. His headaches have become increasingly more aching and frequent. He’s just off balanced and awkward on his feet.  He’s just seems so…distracted.

He stumbled again before replying, “ I’m okay, just an off day… I guess.”

“Is there something I should know about?” I asked honestly. I finally realized something: He was in pain.  I squeezed his eyes in hurting. He was so caught up in the pain he was experiencing it took him half  a minute to answer my question.

“Max, I tell you everything, internal, external, unconditional, always.” He and I say that two worded phrase a lot. It means the world to us, because it is a promise he made me, and I made him when we were thirteen or something.

            “Then tell me why you’re different. Your eyesight, your headaches, your balance, why is it happening?” He looked at me, if his eyes could shake they would be.  

            “I don’t know.”

            The next series of events still chills me whenever I remember it. It was truly the start of everything.

            We continued walking, but Garett started rubbing his eyes again, this time more forcefully. I tried to ignore it as we walked up the incline street. Garett stopped walking and kept rubbing his eyes, with every movement he made the weaker he appeared to get. Then as soon as I blinked a single time, I saw him start to tremble then shake. I pulled out my phone to call 911 because I knew something really awful was gonna happen.

Garett’s lips starting turning hard and cold, and his face was paler than the cement. I was panting, I didn’t know whether to hold him or call the 911, but thinking what the best for him would be, my shaking hands attempted to type the simple three digit number, but the worst already started happening. Suddenly, in the corner of my eye I saw Garett started collapsing. I threw my phone to the side and caught him before he hit the side walk head first.

With my shaking boyfriend in my arms, I needed to grab my phone that was on the other side of the side walk. I stretched my arm , but I still couldn’t quite reach it. I became so frustrated  a single tear fell down my face and landed on Garett’s still shaking body.

“Garett, please work with me a little bit, babe,” I desperately whispered in his ear out of breath from  my attempts. I knew he couldn’t help me, but I tried anyway.

I heard fast footsteps running towards where I and Garett was. I looked over frantically to where it was coming from. It was a girl who went to my school, Taylor Wisser.

“What can I do?!” she said when she got to us.

“The phone.”

“What?”

I pointed at the phone that was just barely out of reach, “The phone, please!”

Taylor instantly grabbed the phone and handed it to me. I silently thanked God, when I saw my battery percentage was five percent rather than zero. I quickly typed in the number, and when they asked me my emergency I said this: “My name is Max Kowitt and my boyfriend, Garett Mattenson, is having a seizure.”