Crash and Burn

chapter 8

L U K E

We were walking and I kept seeing this really bright light. It was the same one I woke up to at the hospital. Wait- is that a door? The light is mesmerizing. It's like I'm sinking. No wait... drowning.

A M B E R

Luke looked like a zombie. Tyler locked the wheels on Luke's wheelchair, so we could crowd around him without his chair rolling away. At this point, Luke's head was dropped, and his pointer finger was beating on his leg, almost frantically. I took the blindfold off his head to see that his eyes were open, and he was staring at nothing. I was so confused; what was going on? Mom said that he was having an absence seizure, but this looked more serious than just a loss of absence.

"Hey Lukey" I called out softly "you okay buddy?"

 Nothing. 

Tyler gave him a little shake, but he was just sitting there, blankly blinking. My mom and dad stopped trying to hide their panic. 

"Luke?" Tyler tried, "you in there?"

 My dad gently shook his knee and my mom took out her phone flashlight to check his pupils. All of a sudden, Luke's head slowly rose up. He looked around confused and started mumbling some incomprehensible nonsense. He looked at me with glassy eyes for a second, his eyes fluttering with haste. My heart broke into a million pieces, my baby brother looking so panicked and confused when we just wanted to make him happy.

"Luke you with us?" My dad asked. 

He seemed to have a realization moment and snapped back to reality. He looked at me again, this time with confused eyes.

 "Where am I?" He asked. 

"Well we are at school, but no way, we are taking you home right now and putting you on bed rest for the rest of the weekend" My mom said with a fake glare, but I could see she was trying and failing to keep her emotions at bay. 

 Luke's eyes got as wide as saucers and he rapidly shook his head.

"No, I'm fine!" He yelled causing all of us to gape up at him with wide eyes.

 This was the first time Luke has yelled since the accident. He looked at all of us and didn't bother to hide his laughter, despite it being a nervous laughter. I was happy to see this Luke again, but worry couldn't even begin to describe the emotions that overwhelmed me.

 "What are we doing here? Where is everyone? What's going on? Why-" He rambled, looking around and wriggling in his wheelchair.

"Luke!" My mom snapped in his face, trying to get his attention.

 He looked at us, silently begging to ask more questions.

"Look at me babe, we gotta go home. You just had an absence seizure. It isn't safe, and you know good and well you need to get some rest. Did you want to have more seizures later on?" My mom tried to reason.

Luke didn't even bother restraining his eye roll, "Mom it wasn't a grand-mal, I don't have to go home. I'm not even tired. Dr. Andrews said that absence seizures are just a more extreme case of spacing out. Would you take me home if I simply spaced out?" Luke countered.

"But here's the thing, you didn't simply space out, you had a seizure." My dad said softly.

Luke released a heavy sigh and leaned back in his chair, glaring at the ceiling. 

"Can you just listen to what I'm saying, I feel fine, I swear. If I was tired, you'd know. Remember after all my seizures at the hospital, I'd be sleeping for hours and hours on end, and I'd be really sore. I'm not sore at all, and my mind isn't even the smallest bit tired." 

We all glanced at each other, was this surprise really worth it?

"Mom, he kind of has a point." Tyler cleared his throat.

My mom threw an accusatory look in his direction, "How do you figure?"

"Well, absence seizures aren't as severe as a grand-mal. Like if we were at a restaurant and Luke had an absence you wouldn't drive all the way home just because he spaced out hard. I know it's scary, but Luke is never going to live if you're going to keep him locked up inside all day. Besides, if Luke does have another seizure of some sort, we're right here, we can easily help him. It's not as if we're sending him out to the woods to fend for himself." 

My mom still didn't look too convinced. I could tell she just wanted to go home and use the mom card, but she's never really forgiven herself for the accident. She thinks it was all her fault, and that she almost killed her own son. She's been giving into a lot of what Luke wants, but it's all in vain because Luke doesn't blame her at all. It's be a freezing day in hell before Luke would ever even faintly imagine blaming mom. The accident was an accident and that's why it's called an accident. My mom isn't ready for that conversation, though.

"Mom, why don't you just call Dr. Andrews, and see what she has to say and if she doesn't answer, we'll use google." I suggested.

"Google is unreliable." She sighed.

"Well you're being kind of unreasonable, so google is going to have to do." I said, getting fed up with her antics.

I get she's worried and all, but with epilepsy things like this happen. It'd be a completely different story if Luke was on the floor twitching, but he's not. He's sitting down, brooding. Yeah no, he's going to be fine.

My mom reluctantly got up and walked away to call Luke's doctor as Tyler and I huddled around Luke to check the internet. After making sure we were going to be okay, my dad left after my mom as well. I did feel bad that everyone was ganging up on her, but if she was ever going to let Luke breathe fresh air, it'd have to start now. It's tough love and her own logic.

"Okay, here it says that absence seizures usually affect only a person's awareness of what is going on at that time, with immediate recovery." Luke pointed out. 

I skimmed further down to where he was talking about "Oh yeah it does."

"Hey Luke, I think you had an atypical absence seizure" Tyler voiced, "right here it says, it starts off with staring into space, and then a change in muscle tone, like blinking or hand and lip movements and you were tapping you finger on your leg, so it really all adds up"

"I guess it does." Luke said distantly, reading on.

"Okay so, I talked to the doctor, and she said that it was a personal choice, and if I believe that going home would be best for your health, that home is where we need to go." My mom said, walking back towards up.

"No." Luke said, rolling his eyes.

"No?"

"No."

***

Okay so this is a really stupid ending, but i just needed to end it somewhere so it could correlate to the next chapter.

Anyways, the reason I'm making Eleanor have such a big reaction is because she feels really guilty and she just wants Luke to be okay, but she doesn't want to get on his bad side in fear that he might hate her. So yeah.

What'd you guys think of the whole situation?

Also I'm literally so bad at updating on a schedule. I went from every day to every other day, like yesterday it completely slipped my mind. At this point I'm just going to try and update everyday after class .

Please make sure to vote and comment !

-hizzy xx