The second the jet's wheels touched the tarmac, and we started taxiing down the runway, I went into full panic mode.
Hansel had gotten worse. So much worse.
His skin had gone from feverish and flushed to a deathly white that made him look like a corpse, and his skin looked like thin paper stretched over bone. The only way I could tell he was still alive was the laboured, rattling sound of his breathing—each inhale seemed to take tremendous effort, and each exhale was coming out as a pained wheeze.
The sweating had intensified, too. He was drenched to the extent that a small pool of water was forming around him. His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his body was slick with moisture despite the cold towels I'd been pressing against his skin for the entire forty-five-minute flight.
But what terrified me most were the jerks.
