(It seems the only dull moments around here are the ones in which I blink. Also, I'll now be playing the role of Personal Assistant to Satan. Again. Indefinitely as requested. Sorry.)
Caleb's thumb continued to trace my ear for two more songs and then he sort of tapped my face and I looked up at him and he asked for help.
Help because he felt so sick and he didn't know what to do. And it's not like I knew what to do. Just because I'm a mother doesn't make me a general practitioner but it seems as if I'm the expert most of the time on all these things.
He said he felt as if he would throw up and I managed to get him up and was leading him to the bathroom when he fell to his knees in the middle of the hallway, taking me down with him and he threw up on the floor.
The first thing I thought was, so he really is sick and the second thing I thought was OH FUCK OH FUCK OH FUCK. And then I slipped and fell because his weight was incredible on my shoulder and he just kept on dry heaving. He couldn't catch his breath. He was struggling and I just started to scream.
For the record, I have an epic horror-movie-calibre scream.
Loch was the first one there and by now I had Caleb on his side, propped up against me and I'm trying to hold him there. The rest of the boys show up and within moments Caleb has color again. I was sent back to the main house to clean up and I stood in the shower and cried and cried and cried.
And then I couldn't cry anymore and the water got cold and I realized Ben was sitting on the other side of the shower door holding a towel for me. I realized I am paper-thin, water-soaked and torn. Fragile like a little bird with too many choices. Eat? Fly? Hunker down in the nest and ride out the storm? I don't know, for my brain is the size of a pea, my lifespan a whopping two years, if I'm lucky.
Caleb is sleeping now. Here, in the main house because I'm loathe to leave him alone and Henry is worried too but we have assured him that Caleb is okay. It was a reaction to some of the medication they keep changing to try and circumvent the headaches he's been having, which was already a bad reaction to the medication. And the bourbon he keeps drinking, even though he said he wouldn't. He'll be okay. You know, for now. Whatever that means. He's mildly dehydrated and exhausted but I know just what to do for both of those.
He will be livid that I wrote about this at all. I don't think he minds being viewed as evil, but he would never want to be seen as weak. But I had to put it somewhere or I might have exploded from the tension and from the strange turn of events that saw me go over there on a night where normally I would have chosen not to go at all.
