Sebastian was less than a foot away when the ice gave way. He knew if he didn’t act fast things would escalate and quickly go from bad to worse. On his stomach he slid over to the small hole Jaxsen had fallen through. Moments passed that dragged several eternities; Sebastian’s world began to cave in. Suddenly, as if in a last ditch effort to survive, Jaxsen’s head shot up and Sebastian snatched his jacket at the neck and pulled him from the water. Sebastian quickly got them off the ice, laying Jaxsen down on the snow covered bank. In short order Sebastian checked his pulse and checked to see if he was breathing. He wasn’t. Clearing his airways Sebastian lifted his head back and breathed, hoping Jaxsen hadn’t swallowed or inhaled too much water. He went through five cycles before he got a response. Jaxsen coughed up water, sputtering and cold, but breathing. Grabbing his own jacket, Sebastian wrapped Jaxsen within it and lifted him into his arms, ran fast as he could toward the house which was several minutes walking time.

Sebastian ran, his body screaming in protest as he pushed it further and further. Finally the pale yellow house was in view. Sebastian could only hope he wasn’t already too late.

Nizhoni and Rose were in the kitchen chatting idly as they prepared a late lunch for when the boys returned. As she was washing a glass at the sink, a horrifyingly desperate feeling washed over Nizhoni and she looked through the kitchen window above the sink.

“Oh, my God.” Nizhoni saw Sebastian running, Jaxsen clutched to his chest. They both ran to the front door to receive them. Sebastian stumbled a couple times, his lungs and legs and arms quivering painfully with adrenaline and exertion. Nizhoni opened the door just as Sebastian reached it. 

“Mom! Mom!” Sebastian called as he approached the door, ignoring Nizhoni’s inquiry about what happened. Rose, who wasn’t far behind Nizhoni, met him in the living room. Carefully Sebastian set him down.

“He fell in the pond. I got him out as quickly as I could. He wasn’t breathing but I got him breathing. Mom, is he breathing?”

Rose, who was a retired RN, went about checking for breath and pulse. He was still breathing, if only shallowly, his pulse weak, but present. 

“We need to get him warm. Nizhoni, go get the kitchen scissors. We need to get these clothes off him. Sebastian, go get him dry clothes, a towel, and a stocking cap.”

Sebastian sprinted into the bathroom for the towel before gathering clothes and blankets and dragging it all back. Rose was cutting away the last of the sodden clothes. Soon he was dry and in dry clothes, and towel drying his hair before putting the black beanie over his head.

“Here, these’ll help.” Nizhoni had four heat packs wrapped in dish towels which were strategically placed under both pits and on the inside of his groin. Sebastian then cocooned him in several blankets. At some point during the chaos Rose had the state of mind to start the car and warm it up.

“Sebastian, we need to get him to the E.R. We’ve done what we can here, but he needs to be checked out.” She kissed the side of her son’s head. “I really believe he’ll be fine, but better safe than sorry. He’s already getting his color back.” She was right. His lips were losing the blue twinge and pigmentation was also making its way back into his skin. Sebastian stood, careful not to jostle the boy too much.

Sebastian paced around the waiting room unable any longer to remain devoid of movement, while remaining almost completely in the dark about his son’s condition. He was dimly aware he was cold, his clothes still quite damp from the water and melted snow. Almost an hour passed before a doctor finally came out to speak with them, by which time Sebastian was hardly in control of his emotions.

“Mr. Green?” The doctor was an inch or so shorter than Sebastian, stout in the body with a rotund head that adorned a rat-face with beady little eyes smashed too close together. His voice, likely the only thing soothing about his person, was a soft and gentle sound, methodical. 

“How is he? Is he alright?” Sebastian said, cutting off anything else the man was going to say.

“He’s resting. We sedated him so he should sleep for several hours. He did have some water in his lungs, but we have removed the liquid by a procedure called ‘lavage’. It’s a simple procedure using a suction catheter to suck up water from his lungs. It went smoothly and he’s being transferred to floor three, room 237.”

Sebastian nodded. “What about hypothermia? Is he in danger of it?”

The doctor, Doctor Stiles, shook his head. ‘No, that danger has since come and gone. He was in shock when you brought him in, but the heat packs and your quick actions very well saved his life.” The doctor paused in contemplation of his next words. “Mr. Green, upon my examination of Jaxsen, I noticed an…abundance of old scar tissue…”

Sebastian gave him a sharp look at the insinuation. “I recently adopted Jaxsen. The abuse to which you’re referring happened while he was in foster care. I love my son, Doctor. Can I see him?”

“Of course. As I said, he’s resting, but you can go see him.” 

“Thank you, Doctor.” The doctor smiled tiredly, nodded once, and went back the way he had come. Sebastian closed his eyes and took a deep breath before taking several more. He willed his heart rate to slow down, but the closer he got to Jaxsen’s room, the quicker it pounded behind his ribs. When finally Jaxsen was beside him he felt like all of his resolve and self-control were unraveling at a cut-throat pace. Sebastian fingered a bit of hair away from his son’s sleeping face and placed a soft kiss to his forehead. His skin was warm and of healthy color, yet in direct contradiction to that, he looked fragile and small. He stroked his hair and kissed his head again. He felt himself begin to slip, his resolve beginning to crumble. He fought to remain in control and focused on taking deep breaths.

“Sebastian, let me take you back to the house. You need to change. You’re wet and you’re freezing.” Sebastian felt a small hand on his back.

“I need to be here with him,” he answered Nizhoni, who stood to his left.

“You’ll do him no good if you catch pneumonia.” Sebastian said nothing, continuing to stroke the boy’s hair. He missed the shared look between Rose and Nizhoni, his concentration on Jaxsen. 

“Sebastian.” Rose waited until he’d made eye contact. “Go home. Take a shower, clean up, change and come back. I’ll stay with him. And besides, he'll still be asleep for a while.” He seemed to consider this a moment before minutely nodding his acquiescence. 

“You’ll stay with him?” he said to his mother, his eyes shining with worry.

“Yes. Now go before you get sick.”

Sebastian was silent all the way back to Rose’s house, everything in his being screaming at him to turn back. He hesitated before walking in the house, feeling the knots in his chest and throat tighten.

“I, uh, I sh-should,” he stumbled, “clean up. I, uh, I--” He hadn’t moved toward the pile of cut, wet fabric lying in a heap on the light gray carpet.

“Sebastian,” Nizhoni said, but even as she spoke his name she knew he no longer heard her. “Sebastian!” She grabbed onto his shoulders as she spoke, aiming to catch him if he fell, if for nothing else than attempting to keep him from landing directly on his face. She knew this face well enough. She’d seen it many times, especially after Daniel died. “Sebastian, he’ll be alright.” She led him to the couch and guided him onto it and crawled onto his lap, her knees on either side of his legs, facing him.

She placed both hands on his chest and called his name again softly. “Bastian.” Finally he looked at her. He was worried, she knew, scared out of his mind. “He’ll be fine. He is fine,” she reassured. “They’ll release him in the morning.” 

He nodded. “You didn’t…when I pulled him out…he was blue. His lips, his his his eyelids, his little fingers. He wasn’t breathing, Zhoni. He wasn’t…” He collapsed forward into her chest, his hands clutching the clothing against her back. Her arms held him tightly as his fearful sobbing echoed in the silence of the house. “I can’t lose him. God…Nizhoni, I can’t lose him, too.” He sat up, his hands falling limply beside his thighs. Tears fell unnoticed from his eyes. 

“I can’t lose him. I was just maybe a foot away from him when he went through. He must have pushed off the bottom or something…I wouldn’t have been able to get him. I was…if he’d gone under the ice, I wouldn’t have been able to get to him. I was alone and the hole wasn’t big enough for me to fit in to try and save him. He almost…” He choked on the last word, unable to give it voice. He pressed the balls of his hands into his eyes to staunch the arrant tears.

“I…it’s my fault. If he’d have…God, it’d have been my fault.” She slid off his lap at his signal and he began to pace the room. “How the fuck did I think I could do this?” Nizhoni watched his anger surface to protect his heart that was hurting. 

“Sebastian, you’re not a bad father. And you can do this. Jaxsen needs you.”

“Needs me? Needs me? Needs me to almost drown him for fuck’s sake?”

Nizhoni stood and blocked his path. His eyes were feral, desperate, haunted. “Sebastian, you’re not a bad father. You weren’t a bad father with Danny, and you aren’t right now with Jaxsen.”

His eyes closed in defeat as he tried to block out her words. His brows knitted as tears shimmered gleamingly in his eyes. He pressed his lips together to create a thin line as his mind and his expression dulled. He lowered his head and wrapped his arms protectively around himself. He shook his head to discount her words. His chest rose and fell with rapid breaths as images of the car slamming into his beautiful son just before he reached him, and Jaxsen falling through the ice as soon as he’d reached his arms out to grab him.

He clenched his fists tightly in his hair in an attempt to stave off the manic-like scream building up deep from his bowels. He opened his eyes. His world was silent, his vision blurry at best, and the last thing he saw was Nizhoni’s face hovering worriedly above him before everything went black. He came to several minutes later, his head pounding with a tenacious audacity that refused to kowtow to logical reason. Said logical reason being that he had to get back to Jaxsen. Sebastian cracked his eyes slightly before slamming them shut again. His forehead furrowed and his mouth twisted into a grimace of pain.

His head throbbed with his pulse making his eyeballs feel as if about to burst from their sockets.

“What happened?” He kept his hands clasped over his eyes.

“You hyperventilated yourself and passed out. Are you alright?”

“Yeah. Headache is ebbing some.” Gingerly he sat up rubbing his temples. She kissed him and sighed.

“Go take a shower, Bich’aa naasha, so we can get back.” She kissed his lips tenderly, her eyes closed, completely lost for just a moment in his essence, relishing the feel of his stubbly cheek beneath her fingertips.