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“But the ones that are can be life-threatening,” she fills in.
“Says to ice and elevate.” I pull her in for a hug and wrap my arms around her in a very non-brotherly way. I snag an ice cube from a glass of lemonade and rub it against the spot.
“Careful, Heath. We’re still at school,” she whispers.
“Fuck it. We graduated. We don’t need anyone’s approval,” I whisper into her ear as I hold her even tighter. “We’re finally free of all of their bullshit.”
Kat eventually lets go about the spider after safeguarding it in a Ziplock bag and tucking it away to look at against her field books later.
We dance together as the sun goes down and give up on keeping up appearances for the sake of not alarming our teachers at school. We’re no longer at the mercy of pleasing others or trying to pretend we’re something we’re not. We don’t have parents to hide from or even Henry to make us tiptoe on eggshells.
We kiss openly under the expansive ocean sky and feel like we’ve finally made it.
The last thing I remember is riding to the emergency room with Kat at the wheel of our hatchback, driving like a bat out of hell, berating me for blowing off the spider bite.
“I told you it was poisonous, Heath. We should have gone straight to the hospital!”
My throat is swollen to the point of asphyxiation, or I’d respond. I reach out and squeeze her thigh to reassure her I’m okay.
It’s a fucking spider bite, not a gunshot wound. I didn’t want to ruin our graduation night and have some stupid insect reaction overshadow our hard-won achievements. I try to let her know, but the walls seem to be closing in on me, and darkness clouds my vision, wiping out my view of the woman I love.
“Kat, don’t worry about me,” I try to tell her.
It comes out unintelligible, and she takes her eyes off the road to look at me, her expression full of worry, cornflower blue eyes stricken with panic. Pain rips through my body like a streak of white-hot lightning. Who knew a little spider could take down a full-grown man on one of the happiest nights of his life?
Then my whole world goes black.
When I wake, my airway is blocked, and I immediately try to rip the tube out of my throat that seems to be suffocating me. The gesture sends multiple alarms into high gear, and then a nurse is hovering over me, trying to explain to me why I’m here.
Her pleasantries do nothing to calm my fears, and I grab for the IV in the ditch of my arm and rip it out. Blood squirts out everywhere.
The hospital room floods with light and medical staff, and soon someone injects me with a sedative that immediately puts me out.
Hours later, I open my eyes again to find myself bound to the hospital bed in four-point restraints.
“Where’s Kat?” I ask in a scratchy voice that doesn’t sound like my own.
“Miss Shaw comes nearly every day,” the nurse tells me. “She should be here around four. You’re lucky to have such a supportive sister.”
“How long have I been here?”
“You came in early June, I believe. It’s November now, Mr. Cliffton, almost Thanksgiving. Hopefully, you can be home with your brother and sister for the holidays.”
I cringe at this woman calling Henry and Kat my siblings, but I try not to let it show.
“Toxic shock set in and you eventually slipped into a coma. You’re lucky to have that leg, Mr. Cliffton. The doctors here at Stony Brook worked nothing short of a miracle on you.”
I move my legs when she says it and breathe a deep sigh of relief when I can feel both of my limbs.
“A spider bite did this to me?”
“A brown recluse, Mr. Cliffton. An extremely dangerous spider. You’re lucky your sister saved the specimen so it could be identified, and the doctors could proceed with the correct treatment.”
I bring my hands to my face and scrub my fists through my hair and groan. Not because of the time I’ve lost, but because of the nurse insisting on calling Katelyn Shaw my sister when she’s anything but. I’m so head-over-heels in love with Kat, I need her more than the oxygen that runs through the cannula in my nose.
The nurse finishes changing the IVs and raises the bed so I’m inclined on my way to a sitting position. An orderly enters the room and sets a tray of hospital food in front of me, but I have no appetite.
“Do you want to see the infection site?” the nurse asks me.
Her bedside manner isn’t the most comforting, and maybe I’m being paranoid, but it seems like she enjoys revealing the horrors of my situation to me.
“I guess so.” I don’t want to see it. I want to get the fuck out of this hospital and see Kat. I don’t like the idea of her being alone with Henry in Wainscott Hollow for five months without me. “Now that I’m awake, can I get discharged?”
