Chapter 3: Steve

Tom's boyfriend, who's in class at a local college, receives an alarming phone call from Jessie who tells of Tom's fate. He's on a race to get from school to the hospital

Chapter 3: Steve

I’m so ready to get out of this class, I can’t stand this biology course.  I was just a few points away from testing out of the class so I wouldn’t have to take it in the first place.  I look over at the clock, it’s only 2:37, it doesn’t get out for another 43 minutes.  These classes take forever to end.  They just go minute by minute by minute.  This teacher sucks too.  You can barely understand her thick german accent, and her powerpoint presentations are hard to follow.  Majority of my classmates have dropped out because of this teacher, but I don’t have a choice because I have to take microbiology next semester or risk delaying my graduation by a year.

My phone started vibrating, and I took it out of my pocket to see who it is.  My friends and family know that I don’t answer calls before 4 because I’m in class all day and I can’t interrupt class.  It was Jessie, she knows that I don’t like being bothered in class, something’s got to be up.  I stand up in the middle of lecture and scoot my way through the ten other students that are in my row of desks, almost killing myself tripping over a book bag that shouldn’t be out that far in the isle.  After a few seconds, I pick up my phone as I’m near the door.

“Hey Jessie, what’s up?”  I hear sobbing on the other line.  I hear words coming out of her mouth, but I couldn’t make any of it out because she was crying too hard.  “Jessie, calm down.  I need you to breathe and tell me what’s wrong.”  She took a few deep breaths in and out, sniffling her nose as well.

“It’s Tom…”  My heart sank as she sobbed harder.  Tom has so much going on with him medically, the possibilities are endless as to what could’ve happened.

“Oh God no, what happened?”  My mind starts racing trying to figure out what it could exactly be.  I keep thinking only to have the choking feeling in my throat start up and get pretty intense.

“We were running, and he pushed himself too hard.”

“What happened to him?”  I start tearing up because that narrows it down quite a bit, but still leaves a lot of possibilities open.  She tries to speak but all of this air goes into the phone from the hyperventilating she’s doing.  “Jessie….. I need you to tell me what happened to him,” I keep trying to keep myself composed because even though I’m not in the classroom anymore, and classes are going on, there’s still people out in the hallway.  I can’t show emotion out in public, it’s not my thing.  Even among friends, I have a hard time letting it out.

“He went into a crisis.  Within a minute, he was unconscious and had stopped breathing”.  She takes a few more deep breaths before continuing, “I did mouth to mouth on him but after three minutes, he was gone…” she broke down.  I couldn’t mouth any words, the only thing that could come out was air.

“Is he gone?”  I started bawling and shaking.  I love him, he’s my whole world!  I can’t imagine life without him.  Soon people start staring, but I don’t care anymore.  The only thing I care about is my sweetheart.

“It took 3 minutes of cpr from me, and about 12 minutes of being shocked by the EMTs, but he came back,”  I huge wave of relief came over me knowing that he’s at least alive.  That’s the one thing I can hang onto right now.  I have to keep repeating to myself in my head that he’s alive, he’s okay.  He’s alive, he’s okay.  “He’s on a ventilator right now, they just took him back for a ct scan to see how much brain damage has happened to him from being gone for that long,” she’s sounding a little calmer.  Actually breathing now, not full out sobbing since she said that he was alive and it had acted as a reminder to her.

“What hospital is he at?”  I say running into the classroom to grab my stuff.  I get a lot of weird looks from my classmates as well as my instructor.  I dart past the students and throw everything in my bag.  I didn’t put anything in any folders or close out of any laptop tabs, I just threw it all in a bag.

“He’s at Riverview,” Jessie replied.

“Okay, I’m leaving now, see you in 20 minutes.  Tell him I’m coming, okay?”  I see the teacher flagging me down as I attempt to leave the classroom.  I hang up the phone.

“Excuse me!  What the hell do you think you’re doing?  Why are you interrupting class?”  My teacher screamed at me.  She’s extremely strict with how she runs her class and has high standards as to what her expectations are for every individual student.  She calls you out if you’re caught talking in lecture or checking your phone for a brief second.  She’s quite a bit older, so maybe that has something to do with it, I don’t know.

“My boyfriend went into respiratory failure and into cardiac arrest minutes after,” I feel the tears starting to come.  I take a few deep breaths as I see my teachers jaw drop.  “They were able to bring him back, but he’s on a ventilator now and I have to go to him,” I wipe my face a tad bit to get any tears that had fallen down my cheek that I might not have felt.  I start going out the door and quick because the tears are coming and I can’t do a thing to stop them.

I’m darting down the hallway with every single person I go past staring at me like I was so stupid.  You generally don’t see people running anywhere on a college campus, definitely not in any halls or buildings.  Within 30 seconds I made it to the elevator that, by luck, was already on my floor because someone by the door had pushed the button to go down.  This young woman looks over at me, thankfully she was the only one around currently.  Less people the better right now.

The elevator opens and I walk in at a steady pace trying not to run in like I’d want to.  I know it won’t make the elevator go faster and it’d just make me look like an idiot honestly.  The tacky carpet was waiting for the two of us, it was blue and gray speckled, probably to match the school colors.  One of the four lights over top of the elevator was flickering ever so slightly that it would annoy anyone with any sort of OCD.  The door closes and I just walk to one of the back corners, having the woman already pressing the ground floor button.

My mind just races, picturing him laying there with a tube going into his mouth, hooked up to IVs.  I’m trying to mentally prepare myself as best as I can, even though I know that it’ll be more upsetting than what I’m picturing.  The more I picture him, the more vivid the room looks, the harder it is to not start bawling in front of anyone.  It’s one thing to be a girl and cry, but a man?  There’s social standards I have to live up to, a reputation I need to uphold.

The elevator door opens and I run through the door, almost running over the poor girl.  I’m sprinting around the corner and to my left which takes me through a student lounge full of studying students.  Thankfully there’s a small wall separating me from the students so they don’t see me sprinting full speed.  Within seconds, I reach the end of the student lounge and I open the wooden door on my left.  I don’t know why it feels heavier and harder to push today than it is on a normal basis.

Through the wooden door was the concrete walls that housed the half flight of stairs leading to the wooden door that opened up to the entrance leading outside.  Out of habit, I put my hand on the yellow metal rail that hasn’t been painted in several years.  I feel a bit of paint chip off with my hand as it runs down the railing.  I almost trip at the bottom because I’m skipping stairs, trying to make it down as fast as possible.  I burst through the wooden door, almost taking out an older looking professor carrying a brown suitcase upon opening.

“Sorry!!”  I cry out to the professor as I continue darting toward the automatic door that was currently opened still from the professor entering it.  Before it has a chance to close all the way, I reach it and it opens back up.  I run down the two concrete stairs leading down onto the ground.  The air is so humid, and I feel the sun hitting my back as I run out from underneath the small roof housing the entrance.

Thankfully I lucked out with parking and I was able to park pretty much right at the entrance of the school, only have to cross one street with no cross walk signs, just a pedestrian walkway where the white lines are.  There’s hardly any cars going past the street so I continue to sprint, not even going to the pedestrian crossing.  More people are outside, giving me more and more odd looks that say, “what the hell is that guy doing?”.

I make it across the street and I’m met by several rugged bushes.  I’ve tried to go through them before, but it doesn’t work, so I go to the left and around them.  As I’m running through one of the few pathways into the parking lot, I’m trying to remember exactly where I parked the car.  There’s so many cars here, it’s almost impossible to see past the first row of them.  

My mind is just a racing mess trying to focus on where my car is and at the same time I can’t stop having images flood through my head of how Tom looks right now.  Even though I wasn’t there, and I had a very vague description of the events that had taken place, I can picture it way too well in my mind.  I don’t want to see it anymore, my heart breaks everytime I see him unconscious and hurting.

After running straight back, weaving and jumping left and right in between cars, I finally find my red cobalt that was about ten cars to my left.  Four seconds later, I make it to the car, unlocking it with my alarm button.  I rush inside and turn on the car.  I sat there for a minute, just absorbing everything I’ve been bottling up since I’ve been around people.  I decide to let it all out while I can.  I have to be composed when I go into the ER and see him.  If I’m a mess, Jessie will be more of a mess than she is already.  And if Tom is in there, he can’t hear me like that.  I need to be strong for him, let him know that he’s okay.  If I cry next to him, and he hears me, he may fear the worst.  He probably will anyway, but he needs people around him to keep calm and comfort him.

After a couple minutes, I turn on the car, and find a CD that I focus on instead of having a silent car ride.  I find some Fall Out Boy and crank up the volume so that it’s blasting throughout the car, and can probably be heard outside the car.  I honestly don’t care, it’s good music to me, not like I’m blasting ridiculous stuff that no one likes or has never heard.  I pull out of my spot, head through the parking lot, taking a right out of it, and heading down the road towards the freeway is way quicker than doing back roads.  As I sit waiting for my turn, I still see images.  I can see him going into respiratory failure, he being fully aware of what’s happening to him and what’s to come within minutes, and how scared he is.  I can’t see anything else, just his fear.

Author's Note

Positive critiques welcomed