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Ictal Manifestation
by Katie Knecht Empty plates are stacked in the center of the table. Satisfied moans and compliments to the chef, Tommy’s mom, make their way around the room. My boyfriend is busy with a portable flosser that he keeps in his pocket for post-meal cleanings. I grin and take an extra second to watch him and let this scene saturate my mind: us in the dining room with walls of dark green, surrounded by Tommy’s family, who are now slowly disbanding to the living room and kitchen, watching Tommy’s nieces battle post-meal sleepiness and piling leftovers in Tupperware; sleepily full on fruit salad, chicken and veggie kabobs, with the promise of oatmeal raisin cookies (Tommy’s favorite) and ice cream to follow; celebrating Tommy’s upcoming yearlong adventure to Spain; and him doing as he always does, keeping himself as healthy as possible, down to his gums. He glances up at me, and smiles around his hand, which is halfway in his mouth. His older brother, still seated at the table with us, snags a final piece of chicken from a remaining plate and declares he might burst he’s so full. Their sister gives Tommy a squeeze on the shoulders before joining the action in the living room revolving around two little girls. Their mom comes back in to collect plates and I stand to help her. She spots her point-and-shoot camera sitting on the edge of a dark oak cabinet against the wall. “Oh!” she exclaims, reaching for it. “Let me take your picture before I forget.” I find my seat again and tug Tommy’s hand playfully away from his mouth. We lean our heads together and she takes a photo, an image of the two of us forever stationary, that I know will soon be posted to Facebook with a mother’s proud love of her handsome son. The flash goes off, creating bursts of light when I close my eyes and look back to Tommy’s brother who sneaks in another piece of red pepper, saying that this time he really is finished eating. “Katie,” I hear from my right. It’s so quiet I’m not sure if I imagined it. I glance down to see Tommy’s arm outstretched toward me, his hand slowly rising and falling. He is staring straight ahead. “Take my hand,” he says quietly. For the briefest of moments I want to ask him why he’s suddenly acting oddly. That half-second is gone and I see: he is going to have a seizure. He has told me about this, and I used to half-expect it to happen any time. But it has been so long since his last seizure—before I even knew him—that I thought of it as something from the past. He takes medicine for it, but he doesn’t like to because it makes him groggy, which is not suitable for someone so active. I have always understood that he wants to skip a pill here and there, but now it seems outlandish. He can always feel his seizures coming on a few seconds beforehand. Once he collapsed in a field on a hot summer day, and another time he sat down to watch television with his roommates and everything went black. He says he seizes for a minute or two and it passes. There is nothing anyone can do. “Don’t call the ambulance,” he told me the first time I stayed over and asked to know more. “It’s a waste of money. I’ll be fine as soon as it’s over.” I immediately saw a vision of myself, heroically comforting Tommy after a seizure and his look of admiration for my courage. These thoughts course through my brain like underwater torpedoes. I am drowning in fear. I believed Tommy when he said his episodes were nothing to be scared of, but he has never seen himself have a seizure, and I have never been more afraid. I’m watching this scene unfold from the ceiling of his parents’ dining room, slowly zooming out, away from the horrible, dead look in his eyes; now I see the two of us petting his 14-year-old border collie in his backyard earlier tonight; I see us walking hand in hand in the city I moved to so we could be closer to each other after nine months of long distance; we’re curled up in a chair in his tiny living room because he doesn’t have a couch, and he’s explaining light sabers to me as I watch Star Wars for the first time; I am sitting in his floor crying as he tries to comfort me because his crazy ex-girlfriend sends him cathartic texts at 2 AM when he has done nothing to provoke it; I’m sliding into bed with him and lying awake after he falls asleep, watching his slow breaths, wondering how we will do with an ocean between us, a silent tear dripping onto his brown sheets; and now I’m afraid none of this will ever matter if he was wrong about his seizures. He goes rigid and begins to convulse rhythmically as I pull him toward me. I can’t let him hit his head on the chair. His brother is next to me; his hands, which held Tommy as a newborn, meet mine to form a makeshift berth under him. His sister flings herself from the living room, stumbling over her own urgency, and surrounds him from the remaining side. My instinct is to save Tommy, to grip his condition by the collar and throw it down in disgust. A black surge of indignation rises in me. But he has told me what to do. “We just need to let it happen and keep him safe,” I say, surprised at how even my voice sounds over the ragged breaths of my boyfriend. He is still shuddering violently in our cradle of human hands. “It’s okay, Tommy, it’s going to be okay,” I tell him even though he cannot hear me. “Just keep talking to him,” his brother says to me. I think it comforts him more than Tommy. “We’re right here, Tommy, it’s us, we’re right here. You’re going to be fine. It’s almost over,” I say, not knowing how far we are from his stillness. He continues to shake, his pale blue and aqua-striped shirt rubbing against my palms, out of his control and mine. His brother and sister-in-law’s wedding photo smiles up at me, frozen in a moment, from the cherry cabinet behind Tommy’s chair. Next to their ornate white frame, his sister and her husband grin at each other on their wedding day, only a year ago. Tommy and I witnessed their vows to each other on a cozy farm in Kentucky on a yellow June day. “Hold him, keep holding him,” his sister, who had been a beautiful bride, tells us. His brother is an accountant. His sister wanted to be a veterinarian; maybe she knows about medical conditions. His grandparents are stuck to their flowery-upholstered seats in the living room. His parents watch their son at the mercy of this unpreventable health condition, his mother with her hands to her mouth. We all know about the perfectly straight scar across the middle of his head from the brain surgery he had 13 years ago. We know seizures aren’t supposed to be fatal, but I feel helpless. I am not the golden hero I imagined I would be. A yellow glow from the old, tiny chandelier hanging over the dining room table drapes itself around the room. The air is damp with food gone cold. Tommy’s hair is stuck to his forehead with sweat. He cannot control his body; he, who monitors everything he eats and runs 20 miles a week, does not even know he is having a seizure. Spit is sliding out of his mouth between his guttural, struggling breaths. His eyes are closed to the dark violence of his body. Then he is still again, once more the 160-pound, 6-feet-2-inch man we know him as, and he is limp in our arms. His siblings and me move him to the floor in hushed tones. Someone scoots the kitchen table away from us. Momentary, cool relief hits me like an ocean’s tide and I collapse next to his chest. It is not rising and falling. His lips—they’re blue. “He’s not breathing, he’s not breathing,” I half-shout in panic as my stomach clenches in alarm. He never told me to expect this. His clothes are disheveled, his stomach exposed and shorts askew. “Tom, do something, do something!” his mother yells to her husband. “Call 9-1-1!” is all I can say as I succeed in pushing back his hair, matted in fear, away from his face. His brother’s phone is in his hand and his sister is at Tommy’s other side, pumping his chest, giving him CPR because I don’t know how. I grasp for his wrist that is a confused medley of hot and cold, looking for a pulse. I think I feel one but now my hand is the one trembling so violently that I cannot know. His lips have not gained back their color, they are as blue as his shirt, and I think to myself for the first time: I’m going to watch my boyfriend die. |
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