Arius was throwing up. The highway could be heard through the last layer of trees separating it from them. Hand on Arius’s back, Gabriel waited while the teenager finished choking up thin, watery bile. He needed to eat something. The clinic required Arius and Amana to go without food for twelve hours before the appointment, and the gluten-free crackers Arius usually ate afterwards were in the SUV.

              “We’re almost there,” Gabriel promised as Arius dropped panting against a nearby tree. He reached out and carefully removed several strands of damp hair from the boy’s vision. It was strange and unsettling how Arius let Gabriel touch his forehead without so much as a glance in protest. “Hey, you’re gonna be okay, alright? Hang in there.”

              Dark oval eyes lifted to Gabriel’s face. The look in them was so dull, it seemed almost skeptical. For a heavy moment, Gabriel was left staring into that face, an uncomfortable feeling twinging in his chest. It was not the anxiety of their situation, not even fear for Arius. It was a feeling he had had before: the last day of the previous semester, right before summer break began. Gabriel had been walking with a friend to her car at the top level in a parking garage. Finals done and brain empty of terminology, Gabriel’s mind had been void. Void until he spotted that figure in the empty parking lot below.

              “Damn,” Becca had commented, “I didn’t know anybody on campus skated—I mean, outdoors—like that.”

              Arius had wings when he wore roller blades. Skating down there all alone, those stupid headphones on, he probably felt like he was flying. He looked nothing short of it. He made it look easy, impossibly graceful: the speed, the way he picked up his feet, executed heart-freezing jumps, changed direction, cut smooth turns on the uneven pavement, spun effortlessly.

              “That’s Arius,” Gabriel had said, voice a low grumble.

              “Damn! That’s your little brother?”

              “He’s fucking stupid. That shit is fucking dangerous.”

              “Well, he looks fucking amazing,” Becca had laughed.

              He hadn’t liked her looking. For a while afterward, he thought it was because he was jealous Becca had complimented Arius. Jealous that she had admired him. Bitter also that Arius had such a reckless, strenuous hobby for someone so fragile.

              But now, with that same feeling crawling up his back like a parasite as he stared down at Arius’s pale face and trembling body, he wasn’t so sure. It was more like crashing into a wall. Slamming headlong into a cinderblock barrier, wrecking everything as he collided, only to step back and see the wall was still perfectly intact.

              “Come on, Arius.” Gabriel put his arms under Arius’s and pulled the frail figure carefully to his feet. He could feel Arius was dizzy. The way the boy could neither balance himself nor walk in a straight line. His dark, feverish eyes lifted to the path ahead but strayed like he saw nothing.

              They broke through the tree line, and Arius dropped to his knees in the grass. By the time Gabriel had advanced to the edge of the highway, Arius was lying down several feet behind him. Two bands of pavement cut through the green, forming a four-lane highway. Gabriel raised his arms in the air and attempted to flag down the first vehicle he saw. But the sedan sped past him. The eighteen-wheeler that followed switched lanes and carried on past as well. The cars behind it followed suit. But when a police vehicle mounted the hill preceding where Gabriel stood, he was not passed up again. Lights flashing, the patrol car pulled over.

              The passenger side window rolled down to reveal two officers in the vehicle. Gabriel felt the nearer officer’s eyes sweep him, doubtlessly appraising mud-smeared clothing and a desperate expression. “What’s up?” The officer smiled politely, but he was looking at Gabriel like he suspected the twenty-two-year-old was crazy.

              “My brother needs to get to the hospital,” was the first thing out of Gabriel’s mouth. He turned and pointed to where Arius lay in the grass.

              The officer’s face sobered instantly. He stretched in his seat a little, peering over the grassy slope at the side of the highway. A moment later, his seatbelt clicked off, and he pushed open his door. Hand resting on his belt, the officer took several steps in Arius’s direction. The driver leaned toward the open passenger window and called out to him. “Should I call an ambulance, Sir?”

              “My mother and sisters are still at the clinic,” Gabriel spoke up hurriedly. “I—I don’t know what the situation is, but they may need—”

              “Clinic, you say?” The officer turned to look at Gabriel again, peeling his eyes off Arius’s collapsed figure like he was tearing his gaze from something horrific.

              “Yes, the…” Gabriel made a meaningless gesture over his shoulder, his mind suddenly blanking for the name. “I—I forget the name, it’s west of here, I think—five miles, or so.”

              “Arouras Labs down there on Redwood?” There was something strangely cautious about the way the officer said the name.

              “L…Labs?” Gabriel blinked. “It’s the clinic.”

              “Can he walk?” The officer lifted a hand to gesture to Arius. It seemed odd, the way he had started over to the boy, but seemed uninterested in fully approaching.

              “Yes, I think,” Gabriel confirmed. He started immediately toward the collapsed nineteen-year-old.

              “We’ll take them to the hospital, no need to call an ambulance,” the officer told the other.