Not again. Please, God, don’t let this happen again.
I can’t make myself move. If I walk the five steps across to the sofa, if I extend my arm to check his pulse, my entire life might crumble around my ears.
Just a few seconds more. A few seconds of Ant living in the Schrodinger’s land of being dead and not dead at the same time.
You selfish bitch. He could be in treatment right now. All you had to do was fall asleep for a few hours with the boy you’re so desperate to shag.
“Ant?”
There’s so little breath behind my query, it’s no surprise he doesn’t stir.
That’s all it is. That’s the only reason.
I try to open my mouth to give a louder call and can’t. Every cell in my body is locked in place, eyes bugging from my head.
Then his leg twitches and he inhales a raspy breath.
I fly across to him, dropping to my knees, pulling him off the sofa and into my arms. Crying. Babbling. “Ant, wake up. Wake up.”
His head rolls, sickeningly loose on his neck. I slap the side of his face, my palm leaving a reddened imprint behind, then do it again.
His body shifts, arms stirring, eyelids fluttering.
I should’ve been here when he injected. Not been gallivanting around in a school where I’ll never belong.
“Wake the fuck up, Ant.” I shake him, then roll his weight off me, running to the drawer where we keep the ampoules of Naloxene, berating myself because I should have started there.
I tug the handle, drawer pulling halfway out then sticking while I scream at it in frustration. I kick at the one beneath like that’ll help. My palm slams it back into place, then I yank, and this time it comes all the way out. The unexpected weight bends my wrist until I let go, the drawer spilling half its contents onto the floor.
“Fuck!!!” I scream at the top of my lungs, dropping to my knees, hands desperately scrabbling among the scattered belongings, seizing one with a triumphant cry.
But the relief is short-lived. My hands shake. The ampoule is tiny. With the blue dot facing me, I crack the tip off, then freeze, uncertain whether to use the same needle—the syringe that might still hold traces of whatever harmed Ant in the first place—or to hunt for a new one.
“No,” Ant mutters.
“Yes.” I grab the used syringe, better a bad decision than a slow one. “You have to.”
I get beneath him and shove him upright, getting him into position so he leans back against the sofa. One moment, he’s floppy and unresponsive, the next he grabs the syringe from my hand.
“Give it back,” I yell, reaching for it while his other arm blocks me.
But he slams it against the floor, snapping its tip, rendering it useless.
I slap him again, not to wake him this time but because I’m furious. Tears and snot roll down my face while my breath hitches, making me cough when I suck tears straight into my lungs. “You fucking arsehole.” I bunch up the front of his T-shirt and shake him, then collapse against him, burying my face in his chest.
“Shh. S’okay.”
My crying fit eventually converts into individual hitches and sobs. At some point, I’m able to sit up, wiping my sleeve across to clean my face, still feeling like I’m perched on a precipice, staring straight down into an abyss.
It’s an hour before Ant is coherent enough to guide back into a sitting position on the couch. My hand keeps snaking out tocheck his pulse, counting off the seconds on my phone. Keeping check that he’s heading in the right direction.
“You’ve got a mean slap,” he whispers, laughing into my hair as I burrow beside him.
I want to laugh, too. Rid myself of the awful tension, but I can’t. I’m shaking from the aftermath. Heart frozen in the moment when I turned… and thought he was dead.
As the evening settles, he wakes more fully, enough to eat a meal that I force feed him until the container is empty. I make him drink a glass of water, then another. Finally, hours after arriving home, my panic dissipates. My mind clears.
I can’t lose him.
