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They did it.
Holy shit, they fucking did it.
There had been a moment of silence as they pulled off into a parking lot before Naomi was cheering. Her enthusiasm was infectious, until even the oldies in the back seat were halfheartedly going along with it.
But it’d passed, and now they’d settled in to breathe. It’d been a few hours of horrible, awful, extremely stressful bullshit. He needed a nap. Or a smoke, or something. Robert was on the phone with someone in the back, sounding like he was talking through ground teeth. Travis had no idea what, exactly, the hell was wrong with the guy but he sounded like he was in plenty of pain.
The woman who came with him, she looked to be texting someone. Travis wasn’t gonna try to guess who, the exhaustion from the night slumping on top of him like a thousand pound weight now that he could finally take a minute to process.
He squinted out of the dirty windshield. There was this weird blurry spot in his vision, like a bugged computer monitor or something. Almost staticky. He tilted his head, and it followed, leaving behind a trail like a sparkler.
He frowned. That was weird.
“You alright?” Naomi’s voice was quiet to not interrupt Robert. He turned to her. The spot was in the perfect spot to blot out one of her eyes.
He could’ve sworn it’d been… smaller…
“Shit,” he blurted. Shit. Panic dawned on him, thick and suffocating.
“What?” Naomi and Trini said at once. He shook his head.
Damnit, couldn’t it have waited until he got home or something? He knew he tended to get stress induced seizures, why the hell didn’t he expect to have one after some crap like this? He should’ve been like oh, can we pull off? I gotta pee, like, crazy bad. and then locked himself in a bathroom or something.
He figured he could maybe cut himself some slack, he had a lot on his mind. Still. The front seat of some beat up piece of shit car from fifteen years ago wasn’t exactly ideal for a seizure, and neither was the hard concrete parking lot they were parked in.
The spot in his vision was growing, and with it a headache was starting to push behind his eyes, like it was threatening to pop them out of his skull. He fumbled for the door handle, hands shaking so badly he struggled to get it open. Behind him, he heard the three others saying his name.
He needed to lay down somewhere. He’d rather get soaking wet in the rain than deal with having a seizure sitting up. The pain he’d wake up in would be so much worse.
But what if water went up his nose or something? He’d choke. Fuck, this sucked so much.
“Travis!” Naomi grabbed his arm, having come around the side of the car. He could barely see her face, squinting against the blank spot in his field of view, “What’s wrong?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. His tongue felt thick and dry. He closed his eyes against a flash of lightning, “S–” He slurred, pulling away from her, hand coming up to pinch the bridge of his nose. He needed to lay down. “Seizure,” he managed, “Need t’ lay down.”
Naomi didn’t respond, but didn’t let him go either. He squinted his eyes back open to look at her, and managed to angle his head so he could see that she was gaping at him, “What?!”
“Kid, hey, look at me,” another hand landed on his shoulder. He nearly tipped over in response, two sets of hands grabbing at him was the only thing that kept him up, “Woah– okay, you said you’re gonna have a seizure?” He nodded. The world was spinning– or was he spinning? “Robert, I need to get him in the back seat.”
“What?” The rough voice responded, “Shit. He’s not infected, is he?”
“If he was infected you really think I wouldn’t’ve shot him already?” She snapped, “How much can you move?”
“Not much. Maybe enough to shuffle further in, but that’s not gonna be enough room to get him laid out.”
Their voices were fading in and out. His head hurt. He thought he made some sort of noise– a keen or a groan, he couldn’t be sure. Nausea curdled his gut, and his headache had graduated from minor annoyance to near debilitating. He was being held up more by Trini and Naomi than his own two feet.
Then they were manhandling him, and he let them. Part of him wanted to fight it, but he knew better by now. He was carefully laid out on the ground, footsteps pounding around him. Water poured down on his face, uncomfortably sliding into his ears.
Then, it stopped.
Everything stopped.
…
…
…
…
…
The next time he was aware, the first thing he noticed was how damp he was. Cold clothes sticking to clammy skin. He groaned, shifting.
A sharp stab of nausea in his gut, a gag so rough his entire upper body jerked with the force of it.
Hands on him, moving him, rolling him onto his side. He coughed, heaving. Voices spoke around him, but he couldn’t make anything out. It was like he was hearing words in another language.
He tried to move his head, to push against the ground and sit up. Hands kept him laying down. His limbs were shaking so much, he could hardly get any force behind the attempt regardless. His muscles twitched and ached. There was some sort of burning pain on the backs of his arms, like a fresh scrape.
“Travis, can you hear us?” A hard, feminine voice spoke. He grunted, “Good. Can you speak?”
He clenched his eyes until it hurt, working his jaw. He swallowed down bile and spit, “Y–” he coughed, stomach clenching against his will, “Yyyes.”
“Good, good. Can you tell me where you are?”
He dared to squint his eyes open. It was night. He could see the lower half of someone crouched down in front of him, thick military boots on dark, wet pavement. He furrowed his brow, flicking his eyes around. After a long moment, he grunted, “Nn’.” Another wave of nausea cut him off, a gag forcing its way up and out of his throat.
He managed to push himself up at the elbow, tilting his head. The hands on his shoulder pulled away, letting him move in time to throw up all over the ground beside him. The muscles in his abdomen twitched painfully. He let out a pathetic sob.
A hand landed on his upper back, making him jerk and gag again, “It’s alright, Travis,” Naomi spoke behind him, voice awkward but caring, “Let it out, you’re alright.”
“Throwing up after a seizure’s perfectly normal, kid,” the woman added, “You’ve had ‘em before, right?”
He spat thick saliva out, taking greedy breaths and heaving at the smell. He nodded, “Since I was little,” he said, “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Robert sounded further away. Travis turned his head to see the man still in the car, but shuffled to the passenger side and partially leaned out toward them all, face pinched, “Not your fault. You feelin’ alright?”
He groaned. He wanted to lay back down. Instead, he forced himself to sit up fully. He was still queasy, but his arms couldn’t hold him up for much longer, “I guess,” he rolled his tongue around in his mouth, working out the numbness. It was getting easier and easier to think and talk, which was a relief.
Naomi dropped down beside him, and for the first time he realized the reason why he wasn’t being rained on was the large army green umbrella she was holding above him. She heaved a breath of relief, “You scared the shit out of me. I’ve seen enough people die for one night.”
“I wasn’t gonna die!” he reared back.
“It looked like you were!” She gestured to where he’d just been lying, “Twitching like that, I was half expecting you to– to explode or something.”
He slouched, averting his eyes, “Sorry. I don’t exactly control my seizures,” he drawled, “I usually get ‘em after stressful shit, though. Sorry. Could’ve warned you sooner or somethin’.”
Naomi sighed, and shook her head, “No. No, it’s fine. You just scared me.”
He nodded. He heard boots scraping on the pavement and looked up, “You two done?” Trini raised a brow at them, “We should get a move on, Robert’s gonna need a visit to the hospital. You two should get checked out while we’re there.”
Naomi was kind enough to help get him standing, and Trini took up his other side when his knee buckled and he nearly tumbled back to the ground with a grunt. It was just one foot after the other, and they got him back in the front seat.
Naomi sat vigilante by his bedside when they got him admitted in the hospital, no matter how much the doctors tried to force her out. She told him about her daughter, how her mother was bringing the little girl to them so she didn’t have to leave him.
Sarah was a ball of energy and kindness. She brought a daisy into the room with her when a tired older woman came in with her running ahead, handing it straight to Travis and exclaiming that it was for him in a voice far too loud for so late at night.
It was a welcome shift in circumstances compared to the rest of his night.