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Somebody else leans in over me. His face glows red, then orange. I don’t understand a word out of his mouth. I don’t understand anything until he’s reaching for my face with plastic in his hand.
“Jameson,no—”
A plastic mask,thatplastic mask, meanshospital.It means bleach and antiseptic andI would consider his condition to be critical.I’d rather die than go to the hospital. Another coughing fit chokes off everything I want to say. It’s never hurt so much to cough.
Jameson laughs a little. “It’s just oxygen, big bro. Just a mask. It’s not as bad as jumping out of a window.”
The paramedic says something to Jameson. I don’t hear what it is, because he’s stretching elastic around my head and putting the mask on. I can’t stop it.
Got you.
That voice sounds like falling. Nothing I can do to stop it. Jameson’s grip tightens. Not too much. Like he’s afraid he’ll crush me. I can feel that he’s talking, but the words are meaningless sounds.
“You have to breathe it in, Gabriel. Come on.”
Jameson doesn’t slap my back. He can’t. Not with his arms around me like this. He rocks me, very gently, instead. It hurts every rib. I have too many fucking ribs. All individual cracks.
I open my mouth to tell him that I’m not holding my breath, I just can’t do this, I can’t, and get a lungful of cool air. It’s…soft, somehow. Soothing. It settles down the coughing, at least enough to inhale.
Other voices get closer. One of them sounds like the man from the alley.
“Time for the ambulance.” Jameson shifts underneath me, and motherfucker.A groan that was supposed to be words gets caught in the mask. “Gabriel. We made up for that fight, okay? We’re good. You have to let go.”
I don’t know what hurts more. My entire body, or the pain in Jameson’s voice. There’s no bite in his tone. If he’s afraid, he’s doing a hell of a job hiding it.
The oxygen’s doing something strange to my head. Easier to breathe, but the headache is worse. My heart is in my skull, somehow, pounding like an unrepentant asshole.
“I can’t.”
My arms only exist to get my hands to his shirt. My hands only exist to hold on. It’s not a choice to curl my fingers in harder. The paramedics talk and talk and talk. Louder. Softer. The peaks hurt my head.
Jameson adjusts me enough to pat the back of my hand. “It’s just a shirt. Not even your shirt. No need to get possessive. It’s okay, Gabriel. Let go.”
There’s aclunkbehind me. “I’m fine. No hospital.”
“No hospital, my ass. You’re going to feel so much better when you get the good drugs. All you have to do—damn, Gabriel, that’s agrip.Look. You can hold my shirt in the ambulance, if you want, but I don’t want to get hit by a steel beam that’s on fire.”
He resorts to prying my fingers off his shirt one by one, and then the paramedics descend. I’m on my back, my chest a band of pain. My hips. The stretcher lifts, and Jameson comes back into view. I get my hand onto his shirt again.
“There, see? The shirt’s fine.”
“No.”
“Nothing a little dry cleaning can’t fix.” He climbs into the ambulance with me, letting the paramedics jostle him. Then my brother unhooks my hand from his shirt and holds it so he can sit in the jump seat near the stretcher. “It’s an ambulance, Gabe. You’ve been in one of these before, haven’t you? No, I guess not. They don’t hold fancy parties in ambulances.”
“Want to go home.”
Too many people are touching me. Every time a hand makes contact, my body jolts like I’m still falling. “No choice, man. You hit your head pretty hard. Come to think of it, you hit the rest of you, too.”
Two more tears squeeze out of his eyes, but Jameson’s grinning his best jackass grin.
“What are they doing?”
He glances over the paramedics. Shrugs. “Doctor stuff. The kind your overbearing ass tries to drag me to, I’d assume.”
“Not. Overbearing.”
“Oh, that’s right. That’s Mason. You belong at clubs, not jumping out of windows.”
