It was Carole.

She was having convulsions.

He had no idea what to do, and even as he kicked off the covers and twisted around, grabbing her shoulders, trying to hold her down and stop her from shaking, he was cursing himself for not attending the CPR seminar the last time they’d had a teacher’s in-service day. He hadn’t thought there’d ever be a practical use for it. Carole was in better health than he was, and he couldn’t see himself doing anything to help a stranger except dial 911, so he’d chosen to stay in his classroom and rearrange his bulletin boards instead of attend the emergency medical training.

Now he felt lost and frightened and completely out of his depth. Carole’s eyes were wide open and jiggling crazily in their sockets as her entire head shook in staccato spasms. Her mouth was open, tongue hanging out, looking twice as long as he knew it to be, and saliva was flying out in all directions, strings of it stretched over her cheeks and chin, independent spray hitting the pillow and the blanket and his arm. Beneath his hands, the muscles of her chest and shoulders were knotted and tight, much stronger than any muscles he’d ever felt before, and they were jerking nonstop in a frighteningly unnatural way.

He didn’t know what was happening. He was pretty sure this wasn’t a heart attack, but whether it was an epileptic fit or a stroke or the result of some sort of brain tumor, he had no clue. It was like something out of a movie, like a possession, and he had no idea if he was supposed to be holding her still or leaving her alone or giving her some kind of medicine. He’d heard somewhere that if someone was having a fit you were supposed to put a wallet in their mouth to keep them from swallowing their tongue, but Carole’s tongue was flopping around outside her mouth, and she appeared in no danger of swallowing it.

The fit wasn’t letting up.

He didn’t know how much time had passed since she’d started convulsing, since the shaking had awakened him, but even adjusting for his skewed perceptions, it had to have been several minutes.

Shouldn’t it have stopped by now?

If anything, the muscles beneath his grip were becoming more rigid, their vibrating spasms stronger and more violent. How long could a body continue undergoing something like this without sustaining permanent damage? Wasn’t her brain being smacked around in that jerking head? Weren’t her organs being knocked about inside her chest cavity?