Chapter Thirty-Three
Tony had been on a whirlwind of Mr. Fix-it projects this past week, and today was clean out the basement day. Tony and Lucky worked hard all day and into the evening, sweeping, boxing up odds and ends, and collecting unwanted items for charity. "Hey, Tony, what's this?" Lucky called over from one end of the basement. Lucky pointed to a huge cardboard box in the far corner with QVC stickers plastered over its entire surface. Tony dusted his hands off on his torn work jeans and stepped over to more closely inspect.
"That would be my bachelor wild man box," he quipped. "What?" inquired Lucky with a puzzled tone of voice.
"That's my 'Mr. Universe Handy-Gym 2000' that I bought after my divorce." Tony laughed. "I was gonna get all buff and charm the ladies of Port Charles. A different date every night, you know. You see how far I advanced with the program." Tony shrugged and patted his expanding stomach. "I haven't had a date in over eight months! Why don't we take it out of the box and put it together? You might be interested in using it. We can clear a corner of the basement for a home gym. What do you think?"
"Cool," Lucky agreed. Lucky dragged the awkward, heavy box from the corner, and Tony ripped it open with a steel boxcutter. Lucky turned the box onto its side and shook the contents onto the floor. The metal pipes clanked and tinkled out onto the hard cement floor. Lucky slowly backed away with rapidly blinking eyes and started choking and wheezing for air as his shaking hands sought out the rough, concrete block wall behind him for tactile connection and support. Lucky cringed and furrowed his brow as he watched the pipes roll and collide together. He couldn't stop staring at them as his mind raced back to a time and a place where the sound of metal on metal meant torture and untimely death. Lucky swayed on his feet as his world started spinning.
"Lucky!" Tony moved over to his nephew and eased him down to the floor. "Bend your head over your knees and try to breathe in slowly," he instructed. Lucky tried, but his body shook with the effort to draw in enough air, and the racing heart in his chest felt tight and painful. Tony ran upstairs to get a paper bag, and by the time he got back down the stairs, Lucky was on his side, wheezing desperately. Tony pulled Lucky up into a sitting position and placed the bag to his mouth. "Breathe in and out," he said. Lucky complied and started to feel a bit better after a minute. He wearily leaned back against the cool wall and sighed.
"What happened?" asked Tony.
"It was the metal sound," replied Lucky in a raspy voice. "It has to do with Faison." Lucky's face pulled tightly when he said the name.
Tony's face softened, and he helped Lucky to his feet. "Why don't you take a break and watch some TV or study for your test," he suggested. "I'll put the gym together, and you can help me finish the basement tomorrow. What do you say? I bought some butter pecan ice cream on my way home from work yesterday. You can try it out and let me know if it is any good." Lucky nodded, took his paper bag and slowly walked up the basement stairs.
~*~*~*~
Lucky purposefully strolled into the kitchen, opened a plain wood cabinet door and pulled out two prescription bottles, turning them in his hand and reading the content labels. Ignoring the daily dispenser, he swiftly wrenched open the lids and shook out three pills each, cupping them in his hand and jerking his head back as he gulped them all down at once with a glass of water. He carefully placed the bottles back. That should do for now.
Two hours later, Lucky hurriedly grabbed a random bottle, shook out eight more bi-colored pills and chased them down with a can of soda. He placed his hand on his stomach and pressed it firmly in an attempt to quell the fear snaking coldly through his guts and curling wickedly around his heart. Every time he thought about returning to the cold basement with its metal gym, he needed to reach for the paper bag to catch his jagged breath. Lucky sat down awkwardly and sloppily onto a padded kitchen dinette chair. His right leg was only half on the seat, and he slid down, bruising his knee on the cream and blue flecked vinyl floor. His head was feeling funny and his vision blurred a little, but he didn't notice in his preoccupation with stopping his panic attack.
Lucky glanced up at the kitchen clock, which registered a fuzzy 9:30 in his brain. He rubbed his hands repeatedly over his face, but his vision never cleared. He stumbled out of the kitchen, lost his balance and crashed into the doorjamb with his shoulder. He steadily moved down the hallway toward his room, bumping into walls and stepping forward with legs that felt heavy and filled with sand.
~*~*~*~
Tony woke up suddenly in the middle of the night to suspicious noises erupting from the spare bedroom. He threw off the covers and listened intently as his eyes tried to adjust to the dark room and his hands blindly felt for his robe.
Tony had always been somewhat of a light sleeper, and his experiences as a father with a young, diabetic son cemented that tendency. Lucas went into convulsive insulin reactions during the night once or twice a year if he were coming down with the flu or a virus. His small body was unable to handle the drastic changes in his metabolism. Tony would awaken to the grunting and gasping sounds of his son deep in the throes of a convulsion. He'd reach for the glucose gel in the medicine chest and squirt it in his son's cheek while he waited for it to reach Lucas' brain and calm his body's reaction to the lack of life-sustaining glucose in his blood. Lucas would slowly come around, and then father and son would sleepily head for the kitchen to fix Lucas a peanut butter sandwich with plenty of milk to wash it down.
Tony instinctively ran for the spare bedroom, his barely awake brain expecting to see Lucas in another convulsion. When he whipped on the light, he was slightly surprised to see Lucky, not Lucas in the seeming grip of a night terror. Lucky was sprawled on the floor next to his twin bed, wrapped and trapped in his sheets and blanket, twisting and writhing as he grunted and yelled incomprehensible words. His body was covered with the slick sweat of desperation, and his clouded eyes blankly stared out of his red face in terror. Tony kept his distance from Lucky's aggressive movements and gently nudged him with a foot. Lucky responded by rearing up and violently thrashing out with a wild swing, and he inadvertently slammed his left forearm forcefully into the sharp wooden corner of the oak nightstand that separated the bedroom's two twin beds. He quickly dropped back down onto the floor with a strangled cry of pain. Lucky's breath rushed from his lungs in a swift hiss as his muscles stiffened and his eyes rolled up into his head. A trickle of blood started at the corner of his mouth and meandered along the trail of his chin before dripping down his neck and coloring the top of his tee-shirt with scattered red dots. For a moment, Lucky's body quietly hugged the hard floor.
~*~*~*~
Lucky's body shattered with a violent flood of pain, and in gentle contrast, he felt himself floating away, taking the long slide down into a dark velvet limbo between mindfulness and death. He nestled in the soft folds of confusion, pushing deeper and deeper out of the blue and into the black, and farther away from the sensations of his body.
He thought someone was calling out a name and slapping a face on each cheek. He felt sorry for the body on the floor, but it really wasn't his concern, and he turned away from the sounds and sensations. After awhile, a very loud wailing sound stirred him briefly, and he heard voices talking, shouting and murmuring all at once. Lucky watched from afar. Why were they pushing that unhappy body around, poking it, lifting it, standing over it and wheeling it away?
~*~*~*~
Tony numbly sat inside the ambulance speeding its way to General Hospital. His eyes never left the body beside him, the one firmly strapped onto a stretcher, and his hands tightly gripped several bottles resting in his lap.
~*~*~*~
Ian Thornhart walked out of ER 2 and approached the couple sitting together on a couch. "He was fortunate and only suffered a moderate overdose of his prescription tricyclic antidepressant." Because Ian was speaking to a doctor and a nurse, he didn't translate his medical jargon. "Lucky's QRS interval by ECG was under 0.12, so we've administered sodium bicarbonate, IV bolus. We performed a gastric lavage followed up with active charcoal. Dialysis shouldn't be necessary. He's been given phenobarbital to stop any more seizures. Since he should sleep through the night, Kevin Collins opted to wait until the morning to speak to him and determine whether or not this was an actual suicide attempt or an accidental overdose."
Tony reached for Bobbie's hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Bobbie looked over at him appreciatively.
Ian scratched his head tiredly and sat next to Tony with a loud sigh. "He'll live. Wonder when he'll show up in my ER again?" Ian shook his head. "My heart goes out to the kid. His life's a mess."
Tony spoke to Bobbie after Ian left them. "I feel like I'm in a time warp. I spent a lot of time in the eighties waiting in hospitals for news about Frisco's latest injuries from one escapade or another. Only, Lucky's drama seems to be within his own heart and mind." Tony shook his head sadly. "I tried to keep a close watch on him. Maybe I should have done better."
Bobbie wouldn't have any of that talk. "Tony, you've been there for Lucky since day one. Ever since you found out about his problems, you've done everything that you could. If he didn't have you in his life, he would have died several times over by now. Tony, I can never tell you how grateful I am that you were there for him." Bobbie looked at Tony with tears in her eyes.
Tony stood up tiredly with a yawn and held his hand out to Bobbie to help her off of the saggy couch. "Let's go and see how our nephew is doing," he said.