Chapter Three-Hundred and Thirty-Five
Clarissa bit her lip as John's eyes turned yellow at the sight of the plane pulling into the terminal. "Are you okay?" She asked, noticing that his breath had changed.
He shook his head, looking around for something to distract himself. "No…"
She stood, letting John turn to her daughter for comfort while she found Ryan.
He was standing in a line outside of the men's room, tapping his foot while he waited. "What's wrong?" He asked, noticing that Clarissa was chewing on the inside of her cheek.
"John needs something to help him relax." She hated to use drugs on him. It always made her feel like a villain in some messed up fairytale. Like Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty, forcing a child into a drugged sleep just so they didn't cause trouble. She knew that it was helping him, but at the same time… she felt like she was hurting him more. The drugs had to be hard on his body, not to mention the fact that he'd stopped eating the night before and had hardly slept a wink with the nightmares.
Ryan nodded, stepping after her as she returned to John. "How bad?" He asked, afraid that John may have already pushed himself so deep into panic that he would have to knock him out entirely.
"Not too bad, but he does need to be sedated a little."
Ryan knelt before John, sighing when he saw that he'd almost completely shut himself down. "John, I'm gonna give you a muscle relaxer. It'll make you really tired but it won't knock you out all the way." He carefully filled a syringe with a small amount of the drug and injected it into John's wrist. He thanked got that the kid's veins were easy to find, but even so, injecting anything into him. Especially anything with addictive qualities.
John's body relaxed as the needle pierced his flesh, relishing in the calm that overtook him as the drug was injected. It wasn't as good as a high, but it was something. It was something to make him believe it was a high, something to distract him, something to calm him, something unnatural to the human mind and body.
Claire watched as he exhaled through his nose, remembering the few times she'd seen him get a buzz off of weed. It scared her to see that, scared her to think of a relapse. After all, this was her John. Her fiancé. The father of her future children. If she lost him, her entire future would be lost as well.