“Don’t touch him. Just let it pass. It will pass.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing you can do right now. I’m sending help. Tell me your location.”

His head fell downward, but his limbs didn’t stop. He vomited onto the front seat. I covered my mouth and nose with one hand and opened my door with my other because the car suddenly smelled like a gas station bathroom.

“He puked,” I whispered into the phone.

“Did it come out?”

Wasn’t that the definition of puke? “Yes.” I ran around the car to Carson’s side and opened his door just as Troy eased his car onto the shoulder behind us.

“He’ll be fine as long as the airway is clear. Tell me your location.”

“Um, the highway.”

“Which highway?”

“I don’t know! Right outside Anderville. He hasn’t stopped.”

“He’s fine unless it lasts over four minutes. Or if he has consecutive seizures. It’s only been a little over a minute. Now, which highway is that?”

It had only been a minute?

Troy got out of his car and leaned against it. “Stay the hell away from us,” I said.

“Who are you talking to?”

I didn’t answer. I started laughing. “It stopped,” I said. Carson’s head hung limply on his chest, but his chest was moving. Up, down, up, down, I counted the breaths. He was fine. He was breathing. He was alive.

I snapped the phone shut and kept laughing. Tears clouded my vision, but I saw Troy’s shape still hovering by the car. I stopped smiling and sent him a smug look. Then I unhooked Carson’s seat belt and hauled his limp body out of the car because it smelled of sickness and help was coming. I fell under Carson’s weight, and he landed on top of me. And yet, it didn’t hurt. A fall had never felt so good. I scooted out from under him and turned him sideways like I’d seen Janna do all those years before.

Carson blinked and focused on my eyes. “Are you an angel?” he whispered.

“I am today,” I said, running my fingers through his curls. And then I stopped.

My fingers. My twitching fingers. I pulled them toward my face and studied the movement. Then I looked over at Troy, who was still leaning against his car and shaking his head very, very slowly at me.

Carson’s eyes rolled back. I scrambled backward through the snow.

He seized again.

Chapter 15

“Help me!” I screamed at Troy.

He jogged toward me, and I could tell from his face that he wanted to help. He wanted to be that person. He wanted to save him. “How can I help you?”

“Not me. Help him!” I pointed at Carson, at his limbs jerking at an unnatural speed. He kept thrashing, digging himself deeper into the snow, until small mounds crested over and buried his bare hands, his bare neck. He was cold. He needed gloves. And a hat. His clothes would be wet. He was wearing jeans. Nothing worse than wet jeans. And he’d be so mad at me that I had moved him from the warmth of the car.

Troy yanked me up to standing and tightened his arms around me. “There’s nothing we can do for him. You know that.” It was true. That’s what the woman on the phone said. Just let him be and he’d be fine. Unless he had more than one. This was more than one. Was there something else I should be doing now? But even Carson told me seizures don’t kill. That’s what he’d said.

Seizures don’t kill.

This second seizure definitely lasted longer than a minute. Troy’s zipper dug into my shoulder. It’d leave a mark. Two minutes. Troy held on tighter and tried to shift my body away so I wouldn’t see. I still watched. Three minutes. And then stillness. Carson covered in snow and filth and God knows what else. Troy whispered, “It’s over.”

I tore away from Troy and fell to Carson’s side. He was still. Too still. Lifelessly still. I moaned and flipped him onto his back. Oh God, where was I supposed to put my hands? I moved my fingers across his chest, feeling the ribs, trying to remember the right placement from that CPR lesson last year. The hell with it. I placed my hands somewhere near the center of his chest and pressed down. I did it again. I silently mouthed the count.

“Delaney. You need to stop. He’s dead.”

I shook my head and closed my eyes and counted out loud. Troy was wrong. Seizures don’t kill. “Delaney, concentrate. Feel. You know.” I didn’t. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.

Because seizures don’t kill.

I tilted his head back forty-five degrees and brought my lips down to his own. I blew my breath into his mouth and watched his chest rise and sink again. And I thought of the oxygen in his lungs and my hands pumping the blood to the organs, keeping him alive.