Title: A Change in Me, Part One
Author: Storydivagirl@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of All My Children. I'm nothing but a fan of Greenlee Smythe du Pres and found myself thinking up this unlikely pairing.
Summary: This is somewhat based off Greenlee's current state as town pariah, but set in the future with much angst (would Greenlee have it any other way), when Greenlee finds out that she's facing the toughest fight of her life. She ends up turning to the most unlikely of people and this is mostly going to be about their relationship through it all.
Feedback: Always welcome—the good, bad, and ugly.
Part One: Smack in the Middle of the Story
There was one clear thought running through Greenlee's head at the moment: Boyd looked good standing there. He wasn't even doing anything. His eyes were focused on the horizon—the type of sunset that felt so close that if she reached out ohsofar, she could grab it and stuff it into her pocket—and he kicked aimlessly at nothing with his worn-out loafers. The wind ran through his blonde hair and flanked his shirt from underneath his jacket. Maybe it was all the medicine she was on or lack of sleep, hell lack of options, but that one thought was like lightening in the clear evening sky, and it made her wonder exactly when the dynamic between them had shifted. Boyd wasn't her typical choice, but these weren't exactly normal circumstances and, well, did it really matter?
Boyd had more than proved himself to Greenlee over the past few months and, though she wasn't sure she'd ever admit to him, he was the first guy since Leo died that made her feel like everyone else, like normal was within her grasp. Pretty ironic given her current predicament.
Boyd caught her watching him, how she didn't know. Sometimes she was sure that he had an eye in the back of his head or had some weird telepathic link to her. He lowered his head so that his chin rested on his collarbone and shot her a strange look before he asked, "What?"
"I didn't say anything."
"I noticed."
"Aren't you usually threatening to duct tape my mouth shut? I thought you'd be reveling in the moment."
He chuckled to himself, as if it was a joke Greenlee wouldn't get, and said, "You were staring."
"No, I wasn't."
"You were."
"I was plotting," she lied. She crossed her arms off the dubious look on Boyd's face and said, "There is a subtle difference, I'll have you know. I don't stare, Boyd. I plot."
"If you say so," he replied with a shrug. He took a seat on a rock near her and shoved his hands into his pockets, thankfully changing the subject, "It's getting cold out here."
"I guess." Greenlee stared at Boyd for a minute, tilting her head to the side as if he was a trinket from a faraway land, before stretching her legs out on the rocks and saying, "Thank you for bringing me here."
"Don't thank me. You look like a Greenlee Popsicle and I'm starting to regret sneaking you out of the hospital in order for you to commune with nature."
"Boyd, do you know—"Greenlee paused. She picked up a rock and tossed it haphazardly into the water, watching the ripples it created, small waves carried off to the other side by sheer force and a bit of help from the wind. She inhaled the familiar aroma, one of those through-the-mouth-and- nostrils sort of breathes, and stated, without an inkling of emotion, "This is where Leo died."
"Oh."
That's all he said. She hated when he did that. She couldn't decide if it was because his face would twist into an inscrutable wasteland as he said it or the fact that after all this time (not much in the long run, but when a guy has cleaned up your vomit, it makes time almost null, Greenlee believed), she knew nothing about Boyd. He was a stranger to her in most ways—she knew nothing of his history aside from the fact that he was yet another poor schmuck drawn into Kendall's poisonous blackhole who barely made it out—but she felt comfortable with him; comfortable enough to bring him here with her. If he could read her mind, he'd say that she knew the important things: it's a sin to put pepperoni and bacon on the same pizza, Carly Simon is the Einstein of music, and Dirty Dancing is everyone's guilty pleasure.
She felt her lips curl upward of their own accord. She immediately forced a frown—she couldn't be doing this. Not there of all places. She blurted out, "I don't know why I like to come here—maybe I'm masochistic."
This elicited a laugh from Boyd, but upon noticing Greenlee's glare, he shrugged and said, "It was the last place you saw him. It makes sense."
"Does it? Because I hate this place. I hate everything about it—from the spray of the falls right down to the stupid little cricket yelping in the background—and when I'm here, sometimes I think I hate him."
"Him? Leo, you mean."
She nodded. It was her turn to say nothing. Anything she could think to say wouldn't come out right anyway and the last thing she needed was to push away the only person still on her side. They say that illness made a person re-examine her lifestyle and the choices she's made. Well, Greenlee didn't know who they were, but she didn't do reassessment easily. Trips down memory lane were for insipid types that couldn't survive in the present. But, God help her, there were moments during the past six weeks where it had become all too clear to Greenlee that something was definitely wrong with her life. And not just the cancer. That was a separate entity onto itself, a person in the room at all times when she went somewhere. Greenlee and her cancer. It was why she had made the decision not to tell many people—not that there were many people to tell.
This was a different kind of wrong. She had always prided herself on being able to survive on her own. She didn't need anyone—not the self-absorbed mother or the wannabe father who came into her life too late, or those few- and-far between friends that occasionally tried to get through to her—and that was the way she liked it. There was no one to disappoint that way, no one to leave you behind, and that should've been the best feeling in the world. If anything, losing Leo had reinforced that belief. So why was so worried about what Boyd thought of her?
"I don't think you hate him as much as what happened to him."
"Oh no, I hate him. He left me behind."
"Not by choice."
Greenlee scoffed, "As if that makes it better? He didn't want to die, Greenlee—suck up the comfort." Greenlee stopped herself. She didn't want to be like this, bitter and angry all the time, but it came so easily, sometimes without her even realizing it. Despite her best attempts she blurted out, "Leo died trying to save me, and for what? For this?" For emphasis, she pointed at herself. The black bags under her eyes, the skeletal, pale look, and the missing chunks of hair that gave her the air of a six-year-old that got her hands on her mother's pinking sheers. She laughed mirthlessly and went on, "Seems like a waste to me."
"Do you always have to be so cynical? I've watched you the past few weeks. You're so damn stubborn, so unwilling to let anyone in, to let me help you."
"Didn't I ask you to get me out of the hospital? In fact, our entire—whatever—is based on me needing help from you!"
"I know. You make it clear every time we're in the same room. I'm a necessity at the moment and once your better things will change."
She frowned. She almost bit his head off, resisting the urge to scream that she might not get better, but she knew not to do that. Boyd was one of those sickeningly sanguine types, never entertaining disaster for too long because it simply wasn't possible. It was one of the many things that made her skeptical of the strange bond they had forged. They were so very different—him of the crazy trust in the universe belief system and her of the much less sadistic faith-equates-to-a-kick-in-the-gut mentality.
So she frowned. No words or dramatic roll of the eyes. A frown, she found, could work wonders. And it's not like she could deny what he was saying. It was true that Boyd was a necessity. She still couldn't pinpoint what made her turn to him with this illness. There were other people she could've called on. She was certain her father would've come to hold her hand no matter how strained things were between them recently. Hell, even her mother would feign concern long enough to drive her back and forth to her chemotherapy sessions.
Boyd was there that night though. He was the one who had sat down on the lakeshore and listened to her talk about everything and nothing, rambling on and on until the sun started to set on the horizon. He was the one who had offered her his jacket rather than bolting the second he saw the town pariah, the girl who nearly got him five-to-ten for committing fraud with Kendall. Boyd didn't leave her there or stir uncomfortably when the tears started to fall without her permission or make some awkward gesture like patting her back as he promised things would get better. He sat there, allowing her to expunge all that she had sucked in that afternoon at the doctor's office, and finally said, "Sounds like you've had a bad day, Greenlee. How 'bout I drive you home?"
That was it, and by the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Boyd ended up her confidante. For some reason, his name was the only one that crossed her mind when broached with the topic of help. Boyd was the not-quite-friend-yet-semi-stranger who might help her because he was nice enough but still someone she would never consider a part of her life. That somehow made her decision easier in the beginning—because vulnerability and loss of control weren't things she did well on good days and she wouldn't want any reminders of that portion of time when things were over with.
It didn't hurt that there was no one else. What was she going to do when the doctor said that she couldn't go through this alone? Call her father back from his honeymoon? He probably wouldn't even come back—convinced by Erica and her daughters that it was another of her attempts to sabotage the happy family. Ryan had sworn her off at Kendall's trial, David had gone on some sort of adventure with no forwarding address, and pretty much everyone else had sworn her off except for Mia and Symone, who had their own dramas—and honestly, the idea of them holding her hand through all of this was a fate worse than cancer. Of that, she was positive.
Boyd had been her only option, that much was true, but everything else between them was something she didn't have the strength to deal with yet. Greenlee stared at Boyd for a bit before replying, "I'm sorry, Boyd. I'm not good with the whole letting-myself-count-on-people thing." Greenlee stood herself up and the wind pushed her back slightly. Boyd reached out and placed his hand on her arm to steady her and she added, "Thank you. For everything."
"I'm glad I could be here to help you, Lee," he replied, brushing a piece of her hair back. He smiled at her and said, "You're not a bad person, no matter what you've convinced yourself."
"I think you're alone on that hypothesis."
"What's important is that you learned a lesson from all the crap you've done—people make mistakes, sometimes huge ones. You've apologized and backed-off. I don't think anyone could ask anymore of you."
Greenlee laughed, waving her hand in front of her face as if Boyd's presence was nothing more than a hallucination, and she questioned, more to herself than him, "Where did you come from, Boyd?" He met her gaze and it became a test of wills until she forced herself to look away. She muttered, "You're a glutton for punishment, aren't you? Always trying to save the bad girls from their own machinations."
"You're the bad girl in this scenario, I take it."
"You tell me."
"I don't think you're as bad as you'd like people to believe. You try so hard to be tough and mean and...for what, Greenlee?" Boyd shouted. Why he was shouting, neither knew. He covered his face with his hands—evidence that she had pissed him off—and let out a loud groan. The Boyd Larraby equivalent of counting to ten. He peeked out at her through his fingers and said, "I don't believe for one second that you wanted anything bad to happen to Kendall."
"I wanted Kendall to get caught—sure, I wasn't behind the whole reverend thing and I didn't want her executed, but I did my fair share of plotting against her." Greenlee patted her chest and said, "Apparently introspection is one of those sickening side effects to cancer. Better watch out, Boyd. Soon I'll be praising the Lord and donating all my money to a pet in my will."
"You won't need a will. You're going to beat this."
As if her body wanted to argue with him, she coughed loudly and a bead of sweat streamed down her forehead. She grimaced in pain, but said nothing until Boyd reached out and picked her up. "Put me down. I'm not a complete invalid yet." She had wanted her voice to come across much more assertive than it did. Yet another thing she felt trampled by the disease—she no longer had the energy to endure fights of any kind, wanting to curl up in her bed and sleep it all away.
"If I don't get you back to the hospital, Dr. Grey will send out a search party for you. Do you want that? She's kept your illness under wraps at your request but—"
"I get it. I get it," Greenlee relented. She wrapped her arms around Boyd's neck and smiled at him, "I really am thankful for you, Boyd. I don't know why you're helping me, but it means a lot. You've been there for me and I won't forget it."
"I've liked the opportunity to get to know you, Greenlee."
She smiled, that rare, genuine smile that he wished he saw more often, and nuzzled her head on his shoulder. She let out a small yawn and said, "You surprised me, Boyd."
Boyd didn't know what to say. There were a few things running through his mind at the moment—that she had surprised him too, that she needed to have a little bit of faith in the people who loved her, that carrying her down a mountain was not his idea of a good time, and most importantly, that he cared about her more than he thought possible and wouldn't let her give up. He couldn't. He needed her and their evenings of action movies (Greenlee's choice, citing that she'd "rather watch someone die in an over- the-top explosion sequence rather than a slow demise to illness ala Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias.") and reality television. He found that with Greenlee talking wasn't always necessary—one look from her and the two of them would start to laugh, unable to stop for about twenty minutes and garnering the strange glares from passersby.
They were an unlikely match, but weren't most.
He didn't say that though. It wasn't the right time and he wasn't even sure how to say something of that magnitude. Instead, he focused on the Honda Civic a hundred or so yards away and complained, "It was your insane plan to come out here and I end up doing the manual labor. Can't say I'm shocked." He nudged her when she didn't respond and when she still didn't say anything he said, "Lee, I need to put you down to open the door."
He managed to get the door open despite his claims otherwise and once he had her seated, he shook her gently, "Hey sleeping beauty?"
Her neck slid down until her chin was resting on her chest. He shook her again, sure that this was some warped idea of a joke on Greenlee's part, but after a few more seconds of her non-responsive behavior, he knew that something was wrong.
Something was horribly wrong.
Author: Storydivagirl@hotmail.com
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters of All My Children. I'm nothing but a fan of Greenlee Smythe du Pres and found myself thinking up this unlikely pairing.
Summary: This is somewhat based off Greenlee's current state as town pariah, but set in the future with much angst (would Greenlee have it any other way), when Greenlee finds out that she's facing the toughest fight of her life. She ends up turning to the most unlikely of people and this is mostly going to be about their relationship through it all.
Feedback: Always welcome—the good, bad, and ugly.
Part One: Smack in the Middle of the Story
There was one clear thought running through Greenlee's head at the moment: Boyd looked good standing there. He wasn't even doing anything. His eyes were focused on the horizon—the type of sunset that felt so close that if she reached out ohsofar, she could grab it and stuff it into her pocket—and he kicked aimlessly at nothing with his worn-out loafers. The wind ran through his blonde hair and flanked his shirt from underneath his jacket. Maybe it was all the medicine she was on or lack of sleep, hell lack of options, but that one thought was like lightening in the clear evening sky, and it made her wonder exactly when the dynamic between them had shifted. Boyd wasn't her typical choice, but these weren't exactly normal circumstances and, well, did it really matter?
Boyd had more than proved himself to Greenlee over the past few months and, though she wasn't sure she'd ever admit to him, he was the first guy since Leo died that made her feel like everyone else, like normal was within her grasp. Pretty ironic given her current predicament.
Boyd caught her watching him, how she didn't know. Sometimes she was sure that he had an eye in the back of his head or had some weird telepathic link to her. He lowered his head so that his chin rested on his collarbone and shot her a strange look before he asked, "What?"
"I didn't say anything."
"I noticed."
"Aren't you usually threatening to duct tape my mouth shut? I thought you'd be reveling in the moment."
He chuckled to himself, as if it was a joke Greenlee wouldn't get, and said, "You were staring."
"No, I wasn't."
"You were."
"I was plotting," she lied. She crossed her arms off the dubious look on Boyd's face and said, "There is a subtle difference, I'll have you know. I don't stare, Boyd. I plot."
"If you say so," he replied with a shrug. He took a seat on a rock near her and shoved his hands into his pockets, thankfully changing the subject, "It's getting cold out here."
"I guess." Greenlee stared at Boyd for a minute, tilting her head to the side as if he was a trinket from a faraway land, before stretching her legs out on the rocks and saying, "Thank you for bringing me here."
"Don't thank me. You look like a Greenlee Popsicle and I'm starting to regret sneaking you out of the hospital in order for you to commune with nature."
"Boyd, do you know—"Greenlee paused. She picked up a rock and tossed it haphazardly into the water, watching the ripples it created, small waves carried off to the other side by sheer force and a bit of help from the wind. She inhaled the familiar aroma, one of those through-the-mouth-and- nostrils sort of breathes, and stated, without an inkling of emotion, "This is where Leo died."
"Oh."
That's all he said. She hated when he did that. She couldn't decide if it was because his face would twist into an inscrutable wasteland as he said it or the fact that after all this time (not much in the long run, but when a guy has cleaned up your vomit, it makes time almost null, Greenlee believed), she knew nothing about Boyd. He was a stranger to her in most ways—she knew nothing of his history aside from the fact that he was yet another poor schmuck drawn into Kendall's poisonous blackhole who barely made it out—but she felt comfortable with him; comfortable enough to bring him here with her. If he could read her mind, he'd say that she knew the important things: it's a sin to put pepperoni and bacon on the same pizza, Carly Simon is the Einstein of music, and Dirty Dancing is everyone's guilty pleasure.
She felt her lips curl upward of their own accord. She immediately forced a frown—she couldn't be doing this. Not there of all places. She blurted out, "I don't know why I like to come here—maybe I'm masochistic."
This elicited a laugh from Boyd, but upon noticing Greenlee's glare, he shrugged and said, "It was the last place you saw him. It makes sense."
"Does it? Because I hate this place. I hate everything about it—from the spray of the falls right down to the stupid little cricket yelping in the background—and when I'm here, sometimes I think I hate him."
"Him? Leo, you mean."
She nodded. It was her turn to say nothing. Anything she could think to say wouldn't come out right anyway and the last thing she needed was to push away the only person still on her side. They say that illness made a person re-examine her lifestyle and the choices she's made. Well, Greenlee didn't know who they were, but she didn't do reassessment easily. Trips down memory lane were for insipid types that couldn't survive in the present. But, God help her, there were moments during the past six weeks where it had become all too clear to Greenlee that something was definitely wrong with her life. And not just the cancer. That was a separate entity onto itself, a person in the room at all times when she went somewhere. Greenlee and her cancer. It was why she had made the decision not to tell many people—not that there were many people to tell.
This was a different kind of wrong. She had always prided herself on being able to survive on her own. She didn't need anyone—not the self-absorbed mother or the wannabe father who came into her life too late, or those few- and-far between friends that occasionally tried to get through to her—and that was the way she liked it. There was no one to disappoint that way, no one to leave you behind, and that should've been the best feeling in the world. If anything, losing Leo had reinforced that belief. So why was so worried about what Boyd thought of her?
"I don't think you hate him as much as what happened to him."
"Oh no, I hate him. He left me behind."
"Not by choice."
Greenlee scoffed, "As if that makes it better? He didn't want to die, Greenlee—suck up the comfort." Greenlee stopped herself. She didn't want to be like this, bitter and angry all the time, but it came so easily, sometimes without her even realizing it. Despite her best attempts she blurted out, "Leo died trying to save me, and for what? For this?" For emphasis, she pointed at herself. The black bags under her eyes, the skeletal, pale look, and the missing chunks of hair that gave her the air of a six-year-old that got her hands on her mother's pinking sheers. She laughed mirthlessly and went on, "Seems like a waste to me."
"Do you always have to be so cynical? I've watched you the past few weeks. You're so damn stubborn, so unwilling to let anyone in, to let me help you."
"Didn't I ask you to get me out of the hospital? In fact, our entire—whatever—is based on me needing help from you!"
"I know. You make it clear every time we're in the same room. I'm a necessity at the moment and once your better things will change."
She frowned. She almost bit his head off, resisting the urge to scream that she might not get better, but she knew not to do that. Boyd was one of those sickeningly sanguine types, never entertaining disaster for too long because it simply wasn't possible. It was one of the many things that made her skeptical of the strange bond they had forged. They were so very different—him of the crazy trust in the universe belief system and her of the much less sadistic faith-equates-to-a-kick-in-the-gut mentality.
So she frowned. No words or dramatic roll of the eyes. A frown, she found, could work wonders. And it's not like she could deny what he was saying. It was true that Boyd was a necessity. She still couldn't pinpoint what made her turn to him with this illness. There were other people she could've called on. She was certain her father would've come to hold her hand no matter how strained things were between them recently. Hell, even her mother would feign concern long enough to drive her back and forth to her chemotherapy sessions.
Boyd was there that night though. He was the one who had sat down on the lakeshore and listened to her talk about everything and nothing, rambling on and on until the sun started to set on the horizon. He was the one who had offered her his jacket rather than bolting the second he saw the town pariah, the girl who nearly got him five-to-ten for committing fraud with Kendall. Boyd didn't leave her there or stir uncomfortably when the tears started to fall without her permission or make some awkward gesture like patting her back as he promised things would get better. He sat there, allowing her to expunge all that she had sucked in that afternoon at the doctor's office, and finally said, "Sounds like you've had a bad day, Greenlee. How 'bout I drive you home?"
That was it, and by the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Boyd ended up her confidante. For some reason, his name was the only one that crossed her mind when broached with the topic of help. Boyd was the not-quite-friend-yet-semi-stranger who might help her because he was nice enough but still someone she would never consider a part of her life. That somehow made her decision easier in the beginning—because vulnerability and loss of control weren't things she did well on good days and she wouldn't want any reminders of that portion of time when things were over with.
It didn't hurt that there was no one else. What was she going to do when the doctor said that she couldn't go through this alone? Call her father back from his honeymoon? He probably wouldn't even come back—convinced by Erica and her daughters that it was another of her attempts to sabotage the happy family. Ryan had sworn her off at Kendall's trial, David had gone on some sort of adventure with no forwarding address, and pretty much everyone else had sworn her off except for Mia and Symone, who had their own dramas—and honestly, the idea of them holding her hand through all of this was a fate worse than cancer. Of that, she was positive.
Boyd had been her only option, that much was true, but everything else between them was something she didn't have the strength to deal with yet. Greenlee stared at Boyd for a bit before replying, "I'm sorry, Boyd. I'm not good with the whole letting-myself-count-on-people thing." Greenlee stood herself up and the wind pushed her back slightly. Boyd reached out and placed his hand on her arm to steady her and she added, "Thank you. For everything."
"I'm glad I could be here to help you, Lee," he replied, brushing a piece of her hair back. He smiled at her and said, "You're not a bad person, no matter what you've convinced yourself."
"I think you're alone on that hypothesis."
"What's important is that you learned a lesson from all the crap you've done—people make mistakes, sometimes huge ones. You've apologized and backed-off. I don't think anyone could ask anymore of you."
Greenlee laughed, waving her hand in front of her face as if Boyd's presence was nothing more than a hallucination, and she questioned, more to herself than him, "Where did you come from, Boyd?" He met her gaze and it became a test of wills until she forced herself to look away. She muttered, "You're a glutton for punishment, aren't you? Always trying to save the bad girls from their own machinations."
"You're the bad girl in this scenario, I take it."
"You tell me."
"I don't think you're as bad as you'd like people to believe. You try so hard to be tough and mean and...for what, Greenlee?" Boyd shouted. Why he was shouting, neither knew. He covered his face with his hands—evidence that she had pissed him off—and let out a loud groan. The Boyd Larraby equivalent of counting to ten. He peeked out at her through his fingers and said, "I don't believe for one second that you wanted anything bad to happen to Kendall."
"I wanted Kendall to get caught—sure, I wasn't behind the whole reverend thing and I didn't want her executed, but I did my fair share of plotting against her." Greenlee patted her chest and said, "Apparently introspection is one of those sickening side effects to cancer. Better watch out, Boyd. Soon I'll be praising the Lord and donating all my money to a pet in my will."
"You won't need a will. You're going to beat this."
As if her body wanted to argue with him, she coughed loudly and a bead of sweat streamed down her forehead. She grimaced in pain, but said nothing until Boyd reached out and picked her up. "Put me down. I'm not a complete invalid yet." She had wanted her voice to come across much more assertive than it did. Yet another thing she felt trampled by the disease—she no longer had the energy to endure fights of any kind, wanting to curl up in her bed and sleep it all away.
"If I don't get you back to the hospital, Dr. Grey will send out a search party for you. Do you want that? She's kept your illness under wraps at your request but—"
"I get it. I get it," Greenlee relented. She wrapped her arms around Boyd's neck and smiled at him, "I really am thankful for you, Boyd. I don't know why you're helping me, but it means a lot. You've been there for me and I won't forget it."
"I've liked the opportunity to get to know you, Greenlee."
She smiled, that rare, genuine smile that he wished he saw more often, and nuzzled her head on his shoulder. She let out a small yawn and said, "You surprised me, Boyd."
Boyd didn't know what to say. There were a few things running through his mind at the moment—that she had surprised him too, that she needed to have a little bit of faith in the people who loved her, that carrying her down a mountain was not his idea of a good time, and most importantly, that he cared about her more than he thought possible and wouldn't let her give up. He couldn't. He needed her and their evenings of action movies (Greenlee's choice, citing that she'd "rather watch someone die in an over- the-top explosion sequence rather than a slow demise to illness ala Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias.") and reality television. He found that with Greenlee talking wasn't always necessary—one look from her and the two of them would start to laugh, unable to stop for about twenty minutes and garnering the strange glares from passersby.
They were an unlikely match, but weren't most.
He didn't say that though. It wasn't the right time and he wasn't even sure how to say something of that magnitude. Instead, he focused on the Honda Civic a hundred or so yards away and complained, "It was your insane plan to come out here and I end up doing the manual labor. Can't say I'm shocked." He nudged her when she didn't respond and when she still didn't say anything he said, "Lee, I need to put you down to open the door."
He managed to get the door open despite his claims otherwise and once he had her seated, he shook her gently, "Hey sleeping beauty?"
Her neck slid down until her chin was resting on her chest. He shook her again, sure that this was some warped idea of a joke on Greenlee's part, but after a few more seconds of her non-responsive behavior, he knew that something was wrong.
Something was horribly wrong.