Chapter Thirty-Eight

Amelia curled into Brian's chest, shaking from her fear as she listened to John's screams and the other sounds coming from his room. "Brian!" She sobbed as another gut-wrenching scream tore from John's throat, echoing through the house like thunder.

He held her closer, letting his mother curl around them to try and save her from the sounds of John's fit. "Mom?" He turned his blue eyes up to her, as if asking what he should do.

She shushed him, watching as Clarissa paced at the base of the stairs, and Thomas held his head in his hands with worry. She knew that John was like a son to them, and she couldn't imagine what they were feeling after having been through so much with him and being the ones who'd seen the worst of his withdrawals and seizures. She could see Kaylie and the other burner children standing in a tense group, knowing that they were fighting their instincts to rush to their leader's aid. She listened as the racket from John's room stopped, panic shooting through her at the suddenness of the change. She locked eyes with Clarissa, rushing up the stairs right behind her, followed by Jan, Kathrine, and Dana close on their heels.

Clarissa stopped in the hallway, seeing that John's door was hanging off of its hinges and that Claire was nowhere to be found. "John?" She called, cautiously stepping toward the boy's room. "Claire?" She peered into John's bedroom, her hands flying to her mouth as she took in the scene.

Claire was holding John's head as his body convulsed on the floor, his blood soaking into her jeans from the gash in his scalp. His arm was bent at an odd angle at the shoulder, and his other hand was deeply cut and the fingers were obviously broken. "John!" She rushed to their side, wanting nothing more than to somehow stop the seizure and take his pain away. "Johnny, come on baby, snap out of it." She brushed her fingers though his hair, listening to her daughter sob as he convulsed in her lap. "Johnny, please."

John's head began to bleed more, the skin tearing farther as his body twitched and jerked.

Claire choked on her tears, blaming herself for the seizure. "It's my fault!" She cried, letting the moms take over John's safety while she was comforted by her own mother. "I got mad at him, and now he's having an attack!"

Clarissa rubbed her back, listening as John's grunts of pain seemed to fade as the other sounds of the seizure slowed. "What happened?" She asked, looking down at the young man as his body stilled, his chest heaving with every breath.

Claire shook her head, burying herself farther into her mother's chest.

John's eyes were glazed over, making Mary wonder if he'd sustained any head injury other than the cut in his scalp. "Johnathan? Can you hear us?"

John looked right through her, not hearing anything happening around him or feeling any of the contact of the moms as they tried to asses the damage he'd done to himself.

Kathrine looked up at Clarissa and her daughter, feeling over his shoulder. "His shoulder's dislocated, and his middle and ring fingers are broken on his left hand." She lifted his head into her lap, running her fingers along either side of the gash in his head. "This isn't from blunt trauma, he probably cut it on the bed frame or the corner of his desk when the seizure hit." She looked at the wound on his hand, wrapping it up with an old bandanna she found on John's floor, being careful of his broken fingers. She looked up at Claire, knowing that the girl was too shaken up to ask any questions of her right now. "Take her to her room, we'll take care of him."

Clarissa nodded, dragging her daughter from the room as the other women started to move John onto his bed. "Come on baby." She cooed, her heart breaking at Claire's struggle to be with John.

"No! I have to be with him!" She sobbed, lunging for her boyfriend's side. "I have to stay!" She clung to the edge of his bed as Clarissa tried to pull her away, reaching for John as her father joined in pulling her away from him. "NO!" She screamed, fighting against her parents as they dragged her to her room. "JOHN!" She cried, knowing that if he was in his right mind he would tell them to let her stay. "JOHN! Tell them to let me stay!"

John didn't even flinch at her cries of distress, instead he remained in his own world where there was no such thing as pain, and only the best joy he'd felt in his short life. He remembered the first time he and Claire had kissed, the feeling he got when she touched his skin, when her fingers would run over his stomach or the back of his hips. The taste of her tongue in his mouth, the feeling of her braless chest against his.

He felt something pull on his shoulder, crying out in pain as it popped back into place. "Fuck!" He shouted, returning to the real world at the shock to his system. "Claire?" He asked, looking at the faces in the room, ignoring the pain in his hand and his arm. "Where's Claire?"

Jan placed her hand on his forehead, hoping to calm his growing anxiety. "She's in her room." She looked up at Ryan, watching as he unwrapped John's cut hand.

He sighed, looking at the gash that went deep into his flesh. "I'll go get my stitching kit." He gently tugged on John's broken fingers ignoring John's cries of pain as the bones set themselves. "I'll be back in a couple minutes. Make sure he doesn't move." He ducked from the room, stepping over the broken bookshelf in his path. "I'll have Thomas postpone the court date until Friday, he should be feeling a little better by then."