Something had changed between us and would never again be what it was.
He moved in towards my lips and I froze for a moment before letting myself meet his kiss.
He ran his hand through my hair as he timidly slipped his tongue into my mouth. At first I felt clumsy, not knowing how to move or what to do, where to put my head or my hands; but above everything else he was sweet, and I was in heaven and scared at the same time, because he was Jason, my confidant, my right-hand man and I was the same for him.
Then I had a panic attack. I had blurry vision and a wild heartbeat, but not from the emotion.
All I remember is the darkness and the fear, and all this happened before I woke up in the hospital, with abipsound in my ears and the cry of my desperate mother ringing through the room.
That’s how we discovered my illness.
You see, there’s something wrong with my heart. The medical diagnosis is ‘Long Q-T syndrome’. It can be triggered by anything that provokes a strong emotion, for instance a terrible fright, an extended physical effort, the sound of the alarm, a ring tone that is too loud: in fact just about anything that provokes a sudden change could kill me. My heartbeat could accelerate dangerously, leading to cardiac conduction defect, which in turn can go on to cause shock, fainting, convulsions, or my heart could just stop beating with no forewarning, ending in a stroke, just like it did that time, when it came on like a lightning strike.
I’ll be on prescription drugs for life, and these have a boat-load of side effects. There are no cures for my condition.
I am thin enough to make you think I’m anorexic, although I’m not. I adore food but I don’t eat a lot, because of the nausea the medication causes. I’m tired, always out of breath, and I have a natural skin tone that makes me look as if I’m ill. No one would think otherwise.
Anything could kill me at any moment.
What’s more, discovering such a terrible thing, right after a fantastic guy like Jason kisses you isn’t the greatest way to find out. I never said anything about the kiss to my parents. I didn’t tell them what I was doing to cause it to happen. I was stressed out about exams, graduation, I had just been out running with Jason,thatwas my official version of how things went down. This was because I didn’t want anyone to discover the truth and somehow try to blame him. As I see it, I would have discovered it sooner or later and maybe on another occasion it might have been fatal. It’s just that…I wouldn’t have wanted it to happen the way it did.
It was difficult for me to accept, but it was even harder for the people around me. Especially for Jason. He had just lost his mother and was about to lose me, his best friend. And he felt responsible for what happened, as if he had caused me to have a stroke.
The doctors explained to me that it could happen in any moment and that this type of illness rarely shows symptoms until it’s fully and quite suddenly exploding, just like it happened with me. I seriously risked my life there and if I hadn’t been whisked off to the hospital, and if Jason hadn’t been with me that afternoon, I would not have survived.
And he was already hurt, so weak from his own pain, so lost. Seeing me in that state just pushed him into the oblivion of misery. And I should have been there to help him. I knew he wasn’t able to make it on his own, that it was all too much and that he couldn’t have born the burden of it.
So, I decided to distance myself from him. To deny myself his constant presence, his friendship and also maybe something more.
And now he’s back in my life, and with one glance, he’s managed to cancel the last five years. And I feel like I’m in danger, because I’m not a little girl anymore, I’m a woman with strong feelings and desires that I can’t suppress, especially when I experience the heat of his reawakening of my senses and have the desire to feel those emotions that all women my age have daily.
I’d like to be kissed and caressed, to let myself surrender to my instincts and fall into his arms without fearing for my life.
Or his.
