“I know, I know,” Julien said gently. Luis’s eyes fluttered open as Julien lowered him down into the backseat. These seats were cool too, but smelled like the two of them. Nice, nice, nice.
“He’s been drugged,” Karim said like a curse. “I only had a sip of his drink, whatever was in it was tasteless.Fucking bastard.”
“You think it was Spiked?” Julien asked. “You said you started feeling hot.”
“Yeah,” Karim said. “Hospital?”
“Yes,” Julien said. “I’ll drive—I’m okay to drive.”
Hospital.
Through the glaze, that word stood out. It doused Luis in terror, dragging what was left of his lucid mind forward.
“No!” Luis yelled, too loud and slurring from the backseat. He tried to push himself up, but his limbs still weren’t working.“No, pleassse,” he moaned, desperate. He felt bad, so bad, but he couldn’t go there. Couldn’t do that. Not like this. Not now. “P-please, no hospital.”
He focused enough to see two sets of eyes looking back at him.
“Luis, you’ve been drugged, we have to get you treatment.”
His stomach churned, and then gave up the fight. “G’nna… sick–” He reached weakly for the door. A flash later Karim was there, hauling him up so quickly he saw spots. Then he was staring down at the pavement, throwing up. A tight pair of arms around him held him up as he did.
What was left of the drink came up, and he threw up until he was just dry heaving. He moaned in Karim’s grip, a disgusting mess.
A water bottle was put to his lips. “Sip,” Karim said.
Luis did, slowly. Water still spilled out of his mouth and down his face. He managed two swallows before Karim pulled it away again. Then Luis was being laid gently once more in the backseat. He lay there shuddering and still nauseous.
Maybe he did need the hospital. The thought of it made him want to cry.
“He threw a lot up; think he still needs hospital?” Karim asked.
“I don’t know. We have no way of knowing how much was in the drink or what his body already absorbed.”
“P-please.” Wetness was seeping from Luis’s eyes. Imagining all those hands touching him, the tests they’d have to run–the–theneedles.
His whole body quaked.
“N-no hospital. They’ll hurt me—they—you don’t understand, they’ll hurt me, hurt me so much–” He choked on the words, they were spilling out like a flood. The drug haddestroyed all his barriers. “H-home. I wanna g-go home. P-please.”
Luis put a hand to his eyes, trying to hide the tears. He felt like he was coming apart at the seams, unable to stop it.
“Julien.”
“We can’t help him if he overdoses, or has some other reaction to whatever he was given,” Julien said urgently.
“We could call Brennan,” Karim argued. “He could look at him. See if it’s that bad.”
Luis could feel eyes on him, and he curled up into a smaller ball. There were more words spoken, a back and forth. A heated argument.
Then,“Fine.Call him. But if he says Luis has to go, then he has to go,” Julien said.
When the car started moving again, a sob slipped out of Luis’s mouth. He curled himself up as small as he could in the backseat, sick and afraid of what was coming. They were going to take him to the hospital and—and—
“Hey, shh,” A gentle hand pet over Luis’s hair. It was Karim, twisted around in his seat to reach him. “We’re going home, okay? We’re not taking you to the hospital. We’re just going to have someone come and check you over, to make sure you’re okay.”
But Luis didn’t believe them, couldn’t. When something was wrong, she always, always took him to the hospital. He had acondition,so he didn’t have a choice.
Luis shook in the backseat, awash in the drugs and fear. Karim’s hand stayed in his hair, a single point of kindness in the storm that was wracking his body. He tried to focus on that and not the dizzy, sick feeling or the impending dread of what came next.
