Page 55 of My Cowboy Freedom
I smell pee.
Pastor Everett wiped my face with a damp towel.
So I was laying there, and everything hurt. Everything. And that was so very not good, because it meant what I had wasn’t a complex partial seizure but a full tonic-clonic seizure. I’d foamed at the mouth and pissed myself in front of an audience of teenagers.
And somebody had probably already uploaded the video to YouTube.
I had no illusions. Once upon a time, I would have doneexactlythat.
“Rock?” Pastor Everett leaned over me, backlit by the track lighting on the ceiling.
He looked like an angel and suddenly I hated him for that.
Hated him for his perfect life and his perfect wife.
Hatedthe fact that my dad would have given anything to have him for a son instead of me and everyone knew it... I pulled my face out of the spatter of foamy saliva and vomit I’d left all over the indoor-outdoor carpeting and shoved him out of the way.
This is the part where I’m lying like a giant among Lilliputians, as disoriented as a drunken bull rider who has been kicked one too many times in the head.
I’m ashamed and I’m still full of rage.
It’s not safe for me and it’s not safe for these other people whose only desire is to help me.
Cecilia was talking on the wall phone, probably calling for paramedics. Maisy was going berserk trying to get my backpack to me. She was dragging it over, but people were crowded around me blocking her way.
“My... pack,” I managed.
Aiden grabbed it, unzipped it, and pulled things out willy-nilly. “What do you need?”
I grabbed for a water and an emergency glucose tube, because my blood sugar is always for shit after a tonic-clonic episode like that one.
It had been a long, long time since I’d had one of those.
This means doctors and tests and managing meds again.
I let myself sag back onto the floor and reviewed where things stood.
The pain was overwhelming.
Every muscle was exhausted.
The pressure of those muscles contracting during my seizure could possibly have fractured my bones, but I didn’t feel anything that said “broken.”
It felt like I’d run a marathon, barefoot, over broken glass.
It was pissing myself, not the generalized loss of muscle control or the vomit or the ugly stares I got from those entitled little shitlings watching me that bothered me most.
Pee should be the last thing on my mind. Everyone pees. But to me, it feels like the end of the world. I saw two kids, holding a phone between them, tittering nervously. Okay, I hate that almost as much.
“Get away.” I shoved at all the people trying to help me.
I needed to find space to breathe, to recover.
I thrashed and crawled, and dragged myself away from the pile-up with the help of Maisy, who wasn’t afraid to lunge at anyone to get them to move.
Good girl, baby. Go!
By now I’m thoroughly panicked.
I’m shouting. “Get away from me, goddamnit.” But it sounds all garbled.
They’re still on me. I’m flailing my arms. I’m starting to black out.
“Leave. Me. Alone.”
I am shouting now and fear has replaced worry in everyone’s eyes.
Good.
That’s good.
