Chapters One Way To Graduate Chapter 7
Ethan spun round to find Nora still in the midst of… a seizure? Her whole body was tense — tenser than usual — but her eyes, while unsteady, were trained on him. He left the door to fend off the blaring music and dashed back toward Nora just as her chair started to rattle, her knee bouncing, her body beginning to spasm and far more aggravated than before, grunts escaping her throat. What the hell was going on?!
“Nora!? Nora!! What is it, what should I do?”
Nora’s entire body tensed, even her lungs refusing to let her breathe for a terrifying moment, before devolving into a tremor, and then a squirming, and then the large movements began. Her hands hit the tabletop and her body bucked forward, shoulders digging into the bars keeping her pinned to her seat, her head tipping forward to hang and lose all the sweet orange buildup into the waiting bib, before her neck fired it back into the headrest, with a moan of pain.
All she could think was, ‘of all times, why now??’
Her body seemed intent on escaping the braces and tethers and security of her chair, all without any input from her, the passenger inside.
She was about to eye her tablet and tell him what was happening, but just as Nora realized the tracking wasn’t following her restless shaking, Ethan grabbed her head and held it firm to the headrest as her body shook and arched, one hand on her forehead above her glasses, while his other hand held one of her arms down so it wouldn’t block the sensors. She was way stronger than he would have imagined her to be, his agitated breath near her ear.
“Hey, shhh, it’s okay. What’s going on?” he asked, obviously terrified, “Should I go get Victoria?”
No!! Nora looked downward hard before realizing he couldn’t see her signal. That’s the last thing she needed! Sure, Vicky knew the basics of her care from school, but this had only happened once with her there, and the reluctant caregiver had frozen completely; a contrast to the firm, decisive hands holding her restless body now.
Nora tried her best to focus on the screen as her eyes glanced up-left intermittently, her arms pulling hard at their tethers, each fist wishing it were curled against her chest painfully, wrists rolling against their immobilizing braces; Nora’s ankle orthotics suddenly tightened in her shoes as even her feet tried to twist. Her body bucked forward and back over and over as if someone was giving her the Heimlich — and it didn’t feel much better — but luckily her shoulder bars and Ethan’s hands kept her mostly in place. Still— repetitive, intense movements kept Nora from even breathing easily, her tongue thick in the back of her mouth, and typing was slow.
Ethan felt so far out of his depth, afraid this cute girl was about to die in his room.
“I am fine. Wait. Hold me.” she finally made out, opting for quick and short. And he did as instructed, aghast that the girl violently convulsing in front of him could call this ‘fine’. And Nora would have admitted — if words were less precious — that she was in severe pain, but this was far from her first dystonic episode and if she didn’t want probes in her brain to quell the fits like the specialist had recommended, then she just had to wait for these storms to die down.
Yet as much as she hoped this might be fleeting, it just wouldn’t die down! Nora was already burning from pretty much every muscle, rubbed raw by her restraints affixed for this very reason, and as embarrassed as she was of exposing her… ‘workings’ to Ethan, she needed to do something more than wait it out.
Ethan held on from behind the chair as the girl inside flexed and bucked, her slim body moving in a way he didn’t want to think about right now, all the while acting like this was… normal? Luckily she began typing again, and he watched Nora page through screens and scan for what she wanted to say, in between full body spasms, until she reached a page called ‘Emergency’, and selected something called ‘Dystonia.’
“My name is Nora. I am okay. This is not a seizure, it is a storm of uncontrollable movement overriding what I want to do. I am still conscious while this happens. I need some water, and a pill, but it is kind of complicated. Are you able to help? Please press ‘Continue.’”
Mustering something akin to confidence, Ethan told her he was… and with a tap, the instructions poured out of the tablet’s speakers in sections. He let go, and anxiously left her to spasm helplessly while the script autoplayed in front of her.
He set to work. There was a pouch on a hook behind her shaking chair, almost like a plastic IV bag, ending in a thin tube which Ethan followed to a little plastic pump before the tube snaked around the seat and under Nora’s shirt. The thought of a tube entering his body did not feel… comfortable, but Ethan tried his best not to think about it.
Taking a small bottle of water from her hanging care kit, Ethan hastily dumped it in the feed bag before sorting through more pill bottles than he had ever seen for the one the instructions called for. He held Nora’s head steady again so she could confirm with a glance to the up-right, away from her reflexes, that it was correct. He smashed two pills on his desk with the butt end of the bottle and brushed the powdery bits into the bag, before shaking a bit to dissolve it faster, finally hitting a green button on the tiny pump.
Nora just had to wait — that’s all she could ever really do — and hope her Mom’s prepared instructions were clear enough, before Ethan returned and held her tight into her seat again, his strong hands resisting her body’s best fight. “It’s done, it’s… going in.”
Sure enough, the water started moving along the feed line, up Nora’s shirt and into the g-tube port on her belly. It wasn’t audible but she felt the familiar coolness enter her tummy.
“Thanks for poisoning me. You are the best!” she typed while her neck pulled and tensed. She held whatever poker face she could manage for juuuust a second, but inevitably a squeal and a big prankster smile cracked through!
“Oh my god, you’re terrible!” he balked, heart beating like crazy, “Now, of all times to make a joke! Can’t make it easy on me, can you?”
Amid the squirming and rattling and the pain and anxiety, the two couldn’t help but laugh in their distinctly different ways, and Ethan relaxed somewhat, fear turning to embarrassment as he realized how close the two of them were, and how much she still needed him there.
“What? Am I not easy enough?” Nora typed with another messy smile between spasms, adding a loud “Ahhhhh-eeee” at the end.
Had she just said what he thought she said?
Glowing red, he admired Nora closely as he held her from behind; her cute nose and freckles, her surprisingly straight teeth, and the sharp hazel eyes trying to look back at him, even when her neck had other ideas.
When Ethan first saw Nora, it had been impossible to tell what the girl inside felt when she had barely any control of her body, her expressions, her body language; and the lack of tone to her ‘voice’ didn’t help either. But between her over-the-top displays of emotion bursting through her shell, her ridiculous humor, and a certain… intuition, Ethan was starting to read past the broken façade, to understand who Nora really was, and he had this feeling her innuendos — her ‘mistakes’ — were something more. Yet it gnawed at him that he couldn’t be sure, because if he was wrong… he didn’t want to be wrong.
Just as the most violent motions were starting to subside, a quiet “guhhhhh” interrupted Ethan’s reverie, and he followed Nora’s eyeline down to her chest, the bib in disarray, her shirt all stretched and twisted from the convulsions; her green v-neck revealing one cup of a lace bralette, threatening to reveal more. He didn’t have to hear the tablet’s “Please” or see the blush on her cheek before he readjusted her shirt, her back arching conveniently, and then pulled the bib down to cover most of her exposed skin and cleavage.
Nora was self-conscious, but only because she didn’t usually wear something so… the words ‘impractical’ and ‘age-appropriate’ competed in her head. To be honest, she was more likely to have a sweatshirt on at home or school, like the one she had received from the university as part of their welcome package, which was already on its way to threadbare with how often she asked for it when being dressed. No; she didn’t usually wear something that highlighted her chest so much, or something that had a risk of exposing even more when her body was bouncing up and down in a rare storm; or when her arms were outstretched and pushing together; the list goes on…
But what had changed in the last year of school, her senior year with Vicky as her assistant, is how she saw boys sneaking looks at the long-legged, stylish, vapid girl by her side, and how much Nora realized she wanted to be seen that way too, even if it was awkward and fleeting, maybe unrealistic. Not as a curiosity, like most saw her, but as a young woman with goals and a life and desires and significant roadblocks, that’s all.
Desire and courage were two different things though, and there was her Mom to deal with too, who bought all her clothes and had to be convinced that even this simple outfit wasn’t ‘impractical.’ But using that word put her down, made Nora feel like maybe she was a lost cause, like: ‘Life with CP is hard enough, why complicate matters?’ It had been her Dad who stepped in and said something to her Mom that saved her, she didn’t know what.
All that effort for a form-fitting v-neck with long sleeves; the lace bralette was a whole other story — with definitely no rescue from Dad.
But to her surprise, the battle hadn’t been pointless! She was sure she caught Ethan looking before he fixed her bib. She was sure of it!
Nora had spent her whole life watching people from her fixed perspective; looking up from her chair, or a bed, seeing their emotions pass across their faces effortlessly, transparently, when they thought no one was looking. Nurses and caretakers were the worst, especially back before she had a voice when they took her intelligence at face value; while Nora was stuck behind a mask that had its own ideas, they had zero filter. It was easy to pick up.
And honestly, once she noticed him that way, Ethan wasn’t any less obvious than those jocks watching his sister; his eyes wandered across Nora’s body at every chance they got, no matter how much he tried to recover.
‘Too late, caught you,’ Nora couldn’t help but giggle inside.
It was clear, Ethan was undoubtedly affected by watching her move — even if little of it was ‘her’, per se — and yet he was still a perfect gentleman who squared her up; straightening her glasses again and more importantly pulling up her neckline and relaying her bib — more modestly than she wanted, but far better than it was.
But now that the anticonvulsant meds were working and she was quieting down into that same-old, slow, athetoid twist in her chair, and now that the fire in her muscles was cooling to a dull ache she would surely feel in the morning, his hands were still holding her, and she could appreciate how close he was, undistracted by life inside a jackhammer. His touch was so much firmer and more real than her parents or caretakers’ perfunctory duties throughout the day. He really held her, carefully but honestly. Nora wanted to touch him back, hold him tighter in return, but that had never been in the cards for her…
Or was it? Her eyes glanced to the screen, reviving a bit of that confidence she thought she left on the front porch.
“You have saved me twice now.” the speakers recited, flatly.
“What do you mean? You said you were fine!” Ethan poked her, making light of it but obviously bitingly sarcastic. He realized her fit was mostly over and loosened his hold. Not wanting to come off inconvenienced like some jerk, he added awkwardly, “Really, it was nothing.”
Nora typed furiously. It wasn’t nothing to her.
“No. You had a party-ending disaster and took care of it. Actually. Twice. And. You saw my feed line and wiped my spit. How the hell are you not afraid of me yet?”
He balked and stood up, zipping up her care kit, hanging it from her handlebars, and retreated to his bedside, to which she followed the few feet.
“Afraid of you?! Nora, I was afraid for you! I thought…” he let out a sigh, “I thought you might die, or at least need an ambulance! How often do you have to go through all that?”
He waited, wishing he could still peek at her screen, but it felt better to sit across, in front. Watching Nora compose her thoughts over her shoulder had felt… intimate in some way, and he didn’t think he deserved to cross that line. Nora’s tight hands touched together in the middle of her tabletop, and he caught her eyeing him eyeing her, before darting back to her screen. Ethan could tell she didn’t like how long it took, getting anxious, but he was patient, grabbing his drink and giving her some too.
“More when I was a child. Now it is like one or two times a month. So. Lucky you I guess. People do die from it. But. Only if I were left alone for a long time. Breathing is hard. Muscles burn. It is like running a marathon. Or so they tell me.” Nora added a big smile when the voice got to that last quip, but Ethan’s face was far from amused.
He honestly couldn’t imagine his body not only refusing his commands, but also liable to go into such a frenzy at any time. “That’s awful. Is there a cure?”
Nora looked up before typing so he got the gist before the details, but those came quicker this time. “Sure. Deep brain stimulation.”
Ethan almost did a spit-take of his soda. “That sounds a bit… invasive, doesn’t it?! Why am I picturing a deep tissue massage with your head cut open? Like ‘Oh Doc, I’ve been real tense, give it your all!’”
Nora’s whole body shook and spasmed with a laugh that squealed out of her open mouth, before she had her eyes back on the screen building her reply. “It is not much better than that. I heard the word PROBE and said. No. Way. If it happened to me more often then okay. Maybe. But no. Medication works fine. I just cannot be left alone.”
“Wait, so you’re never alone?” he had to ask.
“No. I love the gap between Mom’s van and the school front door. I drive myself in and wait for Vicky to arrive. All by myself. It is great. But now school is over. I am always within eyesight of someone. Morning to night. Then the health monitors take over.” Nora stopped there, not wanting to tell Ethan how her Mom or Dad had to come in every few hours to turn her in bed.
What was said was enough. Ethan’s eyebrows raised at the now-obvious consequences of Nora’s disability. Somehow he fully understood that Nora needed help with virtually everything, but he hadn’t fully grasped the fact that she required someone, nearby 24/7, having zero alone time, no sacred space to escape to whenever she wanted to. He grew a little more thankful then for his room, even if it was under his parents’ roof.
Ethan didn’t know what to say. “Well, I hope you can be yourself here, like you’re alone… or something, I don’t know.” he ruffled his messy curls and tried again. “Consider this room a private space. It’s off-grid, no trackers or health monitors or anything.”
Nora smiled silently, thinking of the phone under her leggings, or the GPS in her Dynavox. Still, if she just… tuned it out — the devices, the tickle of medicated liquid slipping into her, the ache of her braces trying to correct her in every which way — Nora realized she was alone… with him. She was miles away from a safety net, a girl alone in a cute boy’s room, and anything could happen…
“I just hope you’re still having a good time, considering.” He gestured to the room with its two occupants alone, muddled pop music hammering on the door, and the obvious traumatic event now behind them.
“Oh my god. Shut up. Asshole.” Nora typed at his ham-fisted goodwill, interrupting her fantasy. Maybe she was overstepping, but he needed to talk to her as honestly as he touched her. “I am having a good time. Yes. Thanks to you. No one from school would have helped. I would be alone with that shit tee music all night. If I had a dystonic storm out there with those idiot plural. I could have hurt myself. Badly. I have done it before. That is why I am all tied down. Instead I am in here with you. Our private space. And. Good time. Is an understatement.”
Nora reread her thoughts. It was crude and honest, too honest, but she eyed the “Speak” button anyways and looked at Ethan as seriously as she could. Of course her face continued to move and so did her tongue. She made some throaty “UH”s where she wanted emphasis, but mostly let the words speak for themselves. Most of all she just focused on his face as each word was recited.
Ethan suffered the sharp end of Nora’s unlocked tongue, blinking dumbly at the sudden change of tone, when he had sat there for like five minutes expecting a very different response. It was softened only by Nora grunting and rolling her eyes dramatically, but she was right. He had helped her, because… he had to admit he found Nora attractive, whether it was in spite of her tied-down, uncooperative body or because of it; he didn’t know. He had to start treating her normally, that’s all she wanted…
The flat voice interrupted his inner debate, “What is up? Remember I am the one who cannot talk. Right?”
Ethan glanced up at Nora’s eyes sparkling with her wit locked up inside, before they pulled up-left and her arms shook, spasming straight out. ‘Perfect timing,’ she thought, but luckily it only lasted a moment, and then her braced right fist wasn’t hitting the hard plexi but instead his open palm; warm, soft. Nora looked at Ethan, confused.
“I was trying to think of what we were doing before you seized up,” he white-lied with a smirk, looking at her, his heart beating a mile a minute. “I offered to unlock anything else, but I guess I didn’t just mean your voice. I can… help you with other things, if you want.”
Nora’s lashes fluttered, her back pasted to the chair seat. Was he asking what she thought he was?
“I mean… have you ever held a guy’s hand? You yourself said I’m handsy, you must agree I know how it’s done.”
She melted in her seat, looking down at the useless fist, curled tight. Yet she felt his palm on her fingers. Her arm shook even as she begged it not to move an inch.
“I do not know if I can.” she said eventually. The tone was flat but her words held all her uncertainty and desire, bare, heart on her sleeve.
He smiled gently. “Let’s give it a try.”