A New Chance To Live

7

Warnings:
-None

Clay's POV

I went home after school and saw my mother sitting on the couch. 'Hey,' she said when she saw me.

'Hi, shouldn't you be at work?'

My mother was a nurse in the emergency room. She was often suddenly gone, at night as well during the day.

'I'm free this afternoon,' my mother said with a smile. 'Do you want some tea?'

'Yes please,' I muttered. She stood up and walked to the kitchen, turning on the kettle.

'Mom?'

'Yeah, what's wrong?' she asked as she turned around to me while waiting for the kettle.

'Do you know a lot about asthma? Since you're a nurse and whatever,' I questioned quietly, looking up at her.

'Yeah, quite a lot,' she answered as she nodded her head. 'Why? What do you have to do with asthma so suddenly?'

'Can you tell me about it? There's a new boy at my school and he has asthma. He had an asthma attack at school today and I want to know what to do if it goes wrong.'

My mother smiled, filled cups with the hot water and gave me some tea flavours. She sat next to me and smiled. 'First of all, make him sit up. He can't lay down, he has to sit straight up. If there's anything tight around his neck, remove it immediately.'

I nodded and my mother continued.

'You need to give him four puffs of his inhaler. If this doesn't work, wait ten minutes and do it again. If he still has trouble breathing, call an ambulance right away.'

I nodded. 'And what if it's already too late?'

'If he's unconscious and not breathing, give him CPR.'

'How does that work?'

My mother moved closer and held her hands on my chest. 'You hold your hands like this on his chest and press it like this. You do that for thirty seconds and since it's important for people with asthma to get more oxide, you need to give him five rescue breaths after. Then you start pressing his chest again and you continue that till he's either awake or the ambulance is there.'

'What are rescue breaths?'

'That's mouth-to-mouth.' My mother explained to me how everything worked and stood up. 'I have an old doll as big as a human. You can practise to make sure.'

I nodded and my mother walked off as I drank my tea slowly. A while later she came back and started explaining everything to me. I practised for an hour and she smiled. 'You're doing well. Just practise a bit more and you'll be able to perform CPR on people when they need it.'

I smiled. 'Thanks for teaching me. I've always wanted to know how CPR worked, definitely after that boy needed an ambulance today. It was really scary to see him suffer so much and I've never seen someone having such a bad asthma attack before.'

'Only perform CPR when he's not breathing anymore. As soon as he moves, he doesn't need CPR anymore.'

'Okay, thank you.'

She smiled. 'How was school?'

'Oh, fine,' I lied. I wasn't going to mention the three breakdowns I had.

She nodded slowly. 'We are all at home today for dinner. It has been a while since we were all together.'

I smiled. 'Yeah, it has.'

An awkward silence filled the room and I cleared my throat. 'I'm going upstairs for a bit,' I said, standing up.

'Okay,' my mother said. She didn't seem to mind a lot about it and I walked up the stairs, entering my room to lay down with a sigh after I closed my door.

I immediately rolled to my side and grabbed my bisexual flag out of my drawer. A sad feeling overwhelmed me and I stared at the pink, purple and blue colours in front of me. I wished to feel valid again, but after everything that happened, I didn't believe in it anymore.

I closed my eyes and felt a tear roll down my cheek as I blinked. It was itching on my chin and I angrily wiped it away. I was a really emotional person, but I barely cried as much as I did now. Only after the betrayal of the boy I liked back then.

I decided to call Sapnap again since I couldn't stop crying anymore and he picked up immediately, just listening to me sob.

'Hey dude, what's up?'

'Sapnap, am I valid? Am I worthy?'

'Of course you are, why wouldn't you be?'

'Do I actually just need to pick a side? Should I give up girls and choose boys? Or maybe the other way around?'

'No, you shouldn't and you can't. Bisexuality is a real thing and you like both of them which is totally normal and fine.'

'I'm sorry for crying so much, I'm just really broken and I cry about everything. I even want to cry because my hair is messy.'

'You need to relax a bit, dude. Take a bath with some music or a book. Or just watch some random videos on YouTube. I don't care what you do to relax, but you need to calm down a bit.'

I sighed. 'Fine. I guess I can just take a bath, but I can't concentrate on reading.'

'I don't know, do you like- touch yourself?'

'Uh- yeah,' I muttered. 'Why do you ask that, dumbass?'

'Well, I guess that's stress relieving.'

'You're such an idiot,' I said with a small giggle.

'It's a normal thing!' Sapnap yelled. 'You even do it yourself so don't judge me.'

'Pfft, sure. Just make up excuse. Oh my goodness, shut up and never call me again.'

'You called me,' Sapnap giggled.

'Bye,' I said with a giggle, hanging up. I stood up to go to the bathroom and filled the bathtub while listening to music. I undressed and sat in the bathtub until my mother called me.

'Clay, dinner is almost ready. Are you coming?'

'Yeah,' I muttered. I quickly stepped out and dried off, dressing up after.

Everyone was already at the dinner table and my mother looked at me. 'Why are your eyes so red?'

'Oh, uh- soap in my eyes,' I lied since I didn't want her to know that I cried. I quickly poked my fork in my dinner to avoid any attention.

1060 words