Page 54 of 40 and (So Over) Fixing It
Carter rolled onto his back. His eyes rolled back in his head.
“Carter!” She leaned over him, her gaze centered on his face. “Carter!”
His eyes closed.
“Dad?” Thad skirted Carter to lean in on his other side. “Dad?”
That was when the convulsions started.
Terror shot through her. “Carter?” She glanced around frantically. “JD!” Oh my God.
JD ran up to them and dropped to his knees at Carter’s head. “Shit!” He yelled over his shoulder, “Lily, call an ambulance!”
“Thad, move back,” Erin said, wanting him safe. Not wanting him to see his dad die.
Thad shook his head. He leaned down, his face near Carter’s head, far enough away that Carter’s jerking body wouldn’t hit him but close enough his words registered in Erin’s ears. “It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay.”
“Thad—” No, this couldn’t be happening. “Carter.” She reached for him.
“No!” Thad slapped her hand away. “Keep back. He’s okay.”
He definitely wasn’t okay. “His heart—”
“It’s not his heart,” JD said as the jerking of Carter’s body continued. “It’s his blood sugar.”
What?
Thad murmured words as close to Carter’s ear as he could get, but Erin noticed the tears streaking down his cheeks were fresh, not from earlier. Her fists clenched around limp grass and crispy fallen leaves. “Thad…”
Linc leaned over Carter’s legs, a hand on his friend’s thigh. Erin was vaguely aware of others around them, but her brain wouldn’t register who they were. She watched as Carter’s body stilled, eyes closed, the tension in his muscles seeming to seep away.
Oh God, was he— “Carter!”
“He’s okay.”
How the hell could JD sound so calm? Erin tore her gaze from Carter and noticed JD’s fingers on his neck, checking his pulse. Thad reached across his dad’s body. “We have to turn him—”
Carter’s body went board stiff again. Another seizure.
“Go look in his room,” JD barked at Linc. “He should have sugar tabs. Or grab some juice.”
She knew for a fact Carter wasn’t swallowing anything right now. Even juice.
JD must have noticed her confusion. “For if he wakes up,” he explained.
“I don’t understand. What’s going on?” she asked.
Thad was the one who answered. “His sugar’s too low.”
The words were logical, and on some level it registered that Thad must have seen this before, but she also noticed an edge of hysteria in the boy’s words. So did Lily, she guessed, because her friend knelt beside Thad. Not touching—Thad seemed too intent on Carter for that, too tense—but giving him the comfort of another human being close by.
Carter calmed again, his body going still. God, she couldn’t believe she was thinking of him as a body.
At Carter’s head, JD gripped his shoulders and heaved. Automatically Erin assisted, and with everyone’s help they got Carter onto his side. JD shucked his coat and shoved it below Carter’s ear to keep his head steady. “We just need to get his sugar back up.”
Erin tried her damnedest to follow JD’s words, but her brain kept flashing back to Stephen and those awful last moments of his life. When Claire wrapped an arm around her shoulders, she realized she was crying.
Lily had a hand on Thad’s back. “He’s gonna be okay,” she murmured. “The ambulance will be here soon.”
