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The day, no, the entire week was… absolute chaos.
The crew’s first shift of the week was on Monday, filled with what felt like non-stop, back to back calls across the city. One hour they were at an accident at a construction site, and the next they were at one of the campgrounds right outside of the city picking up a kid who fell off their bike and probably broke their leg. Then there were the car accidents, accidental kitchen fires, and everything in between that they seemed to be called out to every shift.
On their next shift on Thursday, things didn’t slow down in the slightest, in fact, their workload only picked up. From thirty minutes after the shift started to nearly seven p.m. they had barely more than five minutes to take a breather at the station.
So it was no wonder that the following couple of days, Ryan was feeling exhausted all over, from both the lack of sleep and the constant running around he had been doing that week.
It was also no wonder that Ryan had dismissed the first symptom - fatigue. Anyone would be fatigued after the week they had. Even Blue was showing some tiredness when they met up at the manor on Saturday, and Blue was like an energizer bunny.
“You sure you’re okay?” Blue asked, an eyebrow raised as he studied Ryan in the middle of their next shift on Sunday morning. They had just gotten back from a call, their only one so far that day. After their last two shifts earlier that week, it felt like a miracle only having one shift in six hours so far.
“I’m fine, just a little behind on sleep still,” Ryan said as he poured himself a cup of coffee.
“Well, you should work on that,” Blue said.
Ryan rolled his eyes. “Easy for you to say,” he mumbled.
Ryan stirred his coffee and picked the mug up, as he turned to step away from the counter he paused, looking down. His foot felt… odd.
He set the coffee mug back on the counter as he looked down at his foot. He tried to curl the toes in his boot, had no idea if they did anything though as all of a sudden he realized he couldn’t feel anything.
“Something wrong?” he heard Blue ask, the younger man was now looking at him in concern.
Ryan glanced up at Blue for a second before looking back down at his feet. “Uh… yeah, I think.”
Carefully, Ryan took a step backwards from the counter, though as he tried to put weight primarily on his right leg, despite the sides of his boots coming up a couple inches over his ankle providing support, it still instantly buckled.
Blue was at his side near instantly, catching Ryan’s shoulders before he went crashing to the ground. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked.
Ryan stood there dazed, leaning most of his weight against Blue as he blinked down at his legs. “I- I don’t know,” he said.
Blue helped Ryan move to one of the chairs they had at the table, Ryan wasn’t much help with a foot that wouldn’t move.
That was when Don walked out of his office and a couple of the other crew members came up from downstairs. “What’s going on?” Don asked. Blue looked at Ryan, having no clue what was happening with him.
“I can’t move my foot,” Ryan said.
“What?” Don said as he walked around to face Ryan. “What do you mean, you can’t move it?”
Blue knelt down in front of Ryan, helping him take his right boot off. Ryan stared down at his foot as he once again tried to move his foot… his toes, his ankle, nothing moved. “I can’t move my foot,” Ryan repeated, as he looked up from his foot to his father’s face.
The expression on Don’s face mirrored Ryan’s, one of slight fear and a whole lot of confusion. He knelt down next to Blue, taking Ryan’s foot into his hands as he ran a finger on the bottom and pinched a toe. “Do you feel any of this?” he asked.
Ryan shook his head. “No.”
Don blew out a breath through tight lips as he ran a hand down his face, looking just as stressed as Ryan was starting to feel.
“Alright, tell us immediately if something changes. When Roxie and Taylor get back, they’re taking you to the hospital,” Don said. Right, they were still out delivering one of the patients from their last call to the hospital. “They should be back any minute.”
“Yeah…” Ryan was tempted to say that wasn’t necessary, it was just his foot. But it wasn’t just his foot. Just about everything below his knee, he couldn’t feel. He took a deep breath and nodded, growing scared.
What the fuck was wrong with his leg? He hadn’t done anything weird to it, at least not from what he could remember.
So what was happening to him?
Roxie and Taylor got back to the station less than five minutes later, and Blue ran down the stairs to meet them.
“Hey, we need your help upstairs,” he said as they were getting out of the ambulance.
“What’s up? Someone get hurt?” Taylor asked.
Blue flustered for a second. “It’s- It’s- I don’t know, something's wrong with Ryan,” he said quickly.
“What happened to Ryan?” Roxie asked as she rounded the side of the ambulance and walked up behind Taylor.
“It’ll be easier if I just show you,” Blue said hurriedly. “We’re all upstairs.”
They moved quickly up the stairs behind him, going into the kitchen and finding Ryan sitting on one of the chairs with one boot off, a group of people seemingly gathering around him.
“What’s going on?” Roxie said as people parted around Ryan and allowed her to go up and stand next to Don.
“I don’t know,” Ryan started. “One second everything was fine, then I couldn’t move or feel my foot.”
Roxie raised her eyebrows in surprise at hearing that. She knelt down, taking Ryan’s foot from Don, performing the same actions on it that he did minutes earlier. “You don’t feel any of this?” she asked.
“No,” Ryan said. “Nothing.”
Roxie moved her hand up her calf, slowly applying pressure in his mid calf. “Fell this?” she asked.
“No,” Ryan said. He could definitely feel that a couple of minutes ago. Why couldn’t he now?
Roxie shared a quick look with Don. “We need to get him to the hospital,” she said, leaving no room for argument.
“That’s what I had planned,” Don said.
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They quickly got Ryan downstairs and into the ambulance. As Taylor drove to the hospital, Roxie was in the back with Ryan.
“You tell me if you feel anything change,” Roxie said as she began taking his vitals to give to the doctors and nurses at the ER.
Ryan nodded as she moved around him. As the ambulance drove, he could feel the vehicle moving, jostling his body somewhat as it went over a couple bumps. As Taylor drove down a smooth stretch, Ryan was staring down at his feet. He furrowed his eyes slightly. There was something else now that felt… off.
“Can’t feel my left foot now,” Ryan said with a daunting realization. Not feeling one foot was one thing, but not feeling both? He kept thinking this day couldn’t get worse but it kept proving him wrong. He looked at the watch on his wrist. This had all started less than half an hour ago. “This progression, it shouldn't be this fast, right?” he asked Roxie.
“We don’t know what’s causing this in the first place,” she said. “I can’t answer that for you.”
“Do you know what could be causing this?” he asked, his voice desperate for any sort of answer. “Have you ever seen anything like this?”
Roxie let out a sigh, one that Ryan could tell didn’t mean anything good. “No, I haven’t.”
Ryan chewed on his bottom lip, a mix of fear and anxiety. He could feel a pit forming in his stomach, one that he knew would only continue to grow as time went on unless someone knew what was going on and could fix it.
Taylor pulled up to the doors outside the emergency room, and the back doors of the ambulance were quickly pulled open. In less than a minute, the gurney holding Ryan was being wheeled into the ER bay.
“Ryan?” Sam called his name as she saw Ryan being brought in. “What happened?” her eyes instantly started roaming over his body, trying to find any obvious injuries that could be seen over his clothing, but coming short. “Are you hurt?”
“Not exactly,” Taylor said as she pushed the gurney, Roxie standing on the other end.
“He has a sudden onset of numbness and paralysis in his lower leg,” Roxie explained.
Sam’s eyes turned to make eye contact with Ryan, all she could see in his eyes was confusion and fear. “Ryan, talk to me,” she said. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I- everything was fine and then I couldn’t move my foot or even stand up.”
One of the ER nurses directed Roxie and Taylor to move Ryan to an open ER bed. They rolled the gurney up parallel to the bed. “Need help moving over?” Taylor asked him.
Ryan tried to move his right leg closer to the edge of the gurney, but nothing happened. Fuck. This, whatever it was, was now taking up his whole leg. He tried to move his left leg. Also nothing.
Double, no triple fuck.
“I can’t move either of my legs now,” he said, looking up, eyes darting between Sam and Roxie with fear.
“What?” Roxie asked. “When we got you in the ambulance, it was only below your right knee that you couldn’t move.”
“Yeah,” Ryan said looking down at his legs with dazed eyes and seemingly like he was about to freak out. Not seeming like it, if this continued, he was about to freak out. “I could ten minutes ago, now I can’t.”
That got the attention of nearly every doctor and nurse in earshot. Ryan looked towards Sam, and even she was looking at him with a mix of fear and bewilderment, like she had never seen something like this before. Now that Ryan thought about it, he was pretty sure that if she had, she would have told him a story about it at one point. She liked telling him about the weird cases she came across here.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” another doctor asked as he came up to them while Ryan was being moved off the gurney and onto the hospital bed. Ryan looked up at him, recognizing him as one of Sam’s close coworkers and fellow ER doctor, Martin Smith. Ryan had met him a handful of times, he knew that Martin was one of the doctors Sam trusted and relied on here.
“Sudden and progressive onset of numbness and paralysis in lower limbs,” Roxie explained again.
Martin’s eyes widened in slight shock. “Any trauma recently?” he asked.
“That would have caused something like this? No,” Ryan said.
“Okay,” Martin said as he turned to the nurse who was quickly taking Ryan’s vitals and hooking him up to an IV and pulse ox.
All his vitals were normal right now if not slightly elevated due to the well… panic going on because of everything in his body. Martin let out a small displeased hum as he read over the numbers.
“I’ll start a neuro exam on him,” Martin said. “If you can page neuro upstairs for a consult?” he asked, looking towards Sam.
“What do you mean?” Sam asked. “I got him.”
“Sam, you’re his wife. You know you can’t work on him,” Martin said.
“It’s okay, Sam,” Ryan spoke up, his voice sounding lighter than it usually did.
“I’ll take two minutes to do this, then I’ll be back,” she said as she stepped out of the curtained off area. Ryan nodded, expecting nothing less from her.
“So now then,” Martin said as he took hold of both of Ryan’s hands. “Squeeze my hands as hard as you can.”
Ryan did as he was directed, looking down at his hands as he did so. They still moved. It took a second longer to move than it should have, but they still moved. “It’s slower,” Ryan mumbled.
Martin raised his eyebrows momentarily at that. “Okay, can you try to raise your arms above your head?” Ryan tried, though he was only able to raise them a couple inches above his lap before they fell down. “That’s alright,” Martin said as he took a light out of one of his pockets as he shined it in Ryan’s eyes. “Your pupil response is normal, follow the light as I move it.” Ryan did as he was told with no problem or delay. As Martin turned the light off and put it back in his pocket, Ryan noticed a small frown on his face.
“Do you know what’s wrong?” he asked, growing more and more scared with each look of confusion a doctor gave him.
“Not right now,” Martin said, making Ryan’s stomach fall deeper into the ever growing pit of dread inside of him. “We’ll have to wait until neuro gets here. In the meantime, next step, let's see if you can sit up on your own unsupported.” He helped Ryan sit up from where he had been leaning against the propped up bed. When he took his hands off of Ryan’s shoulders though, Ryan remained sitting up for a couple of seconds before he started leaning forwards, his abs providing no support. Martin helped Ryan sit back against the bed as he started probing Ryan’s stomach. “Can you feel this?” he asked as he pinched the skin right above Ryan’s belly button.
“No,” Ryan said, after a second he asked. “This- This is bad, right?”
“It’s certainly not good,” Martin said, his voice tense, foreboding.
Sam came back into the room then, followed by Blythe.
“Mom?” Ryan said, shocked that she was already here.
“Hey,” Blythe said as she came up to him on the side of the bed opposite Ryan.
“What are you doing here?” Ryan asked.
“Don called me as soon as you left the station,” she explained. “I was already in the area so I was able to rush over.” She put a hand on his shoulder, comforting. “What’s going on?” she asked, looking between Sam and Martin.
“He was brought in about twenty minutes ago with sudden and progressive onset of numbness and paralysis in lower limbs,” Sam said.
Blythe looked towards Ryan. “I can’t move my legs, mom,” he said.
“Do- do you know what’s going on?” Blythe asked as she looked back at Sam.
“No,” Sam said. “We’re still trying to finger it out.”
The group lapsed into a tense silence, broken up by Martin saying they should finish up with the neuro examination.
“”Let's finish up here. Only two more questions,” Martin said. Ryan nodded, silently asking the man to continue. “Have you been experiencing any headache? Pain anywhere, especially in your back?” Martin asked as he tried to run through any possible symptoms that could help him figure out what was plaguing Ryan.
“No,” Ryan said, giving a small shake of his head, at least he could still do that.
“Okay, while we’re waiting for neuro to get down here, we’ll run a full blood panel, see if anything obvious pops up. I’m also putting in orders for a lumbar puncture as I’m sure that’s something that they’ll want the results for,” Martin explained as he stepped out of the room.
He stepped out of the hospital room, and Sam followed him out, telling Ryan and Blythe she would be back in a couple of minutes.
“You have to have some idea of what’s going on,” she asked Martin as he walked over to one of the computers at the main work station.
Martin sighed. “It will depend on what the tests come back showing, but right now, it could be any number of things,” he said, just about as unsatisfied as she was.
Sam took a small step back, looking at the ground as she rubbed the sides of her forehead, wracking her brain for possibilities that could be causing this, but coming up short.
As Martin and Sam stepped out of the room, Blythe turned to face Ryan, she placed a hand on the side of his face, running a thumb along his cheek. “How are you feeling right now?” she asked.
“Scared,” he said, going for straight honesty. “I’m scared mom.”
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The neurologist, Dr. Michaels finally came down to Ryan’s room an hour later.
“Sorry for the wait,” he said as he introduced himself. Ryan resisted the urge to complain to him. Things had only progressed even further in the hour that they had been waiting here. Now he couldn’t feel anything below his chest, and couldn’t move his hands or forearms. “Lets’ see what’s going on here,” Dr. Michaels said as he grabbed a tablet with Ryan’s chart. “Your blood test came back normal, as did the lumbar puncture results.”
“So you still don’t know what’s happening to me?” Ryan asked.
Dr. Michaels let out a tight sigh. “At this time, no.”
Both Ryan and Blythe sucked in tight breaths.
“So what happens now?” Ryan asked. They did all that they could without knowing what was doing this to him right? What else was there to do but watch him… get worse? How much worse would he get?
“We’re still looking into what might be causing this,” Dr. Michaels said. “For now, if anything changes, let us know immediately.”
How was that different from what they had been doing for the last hour?
It was like they were just waiting to see how bad he would get while trying to wait for a thought to pop into his head. All while it felt as if he was slowly dying.
“What are you thinking?” Sam followed the two doctors out of Ryan’s room and asked. “Is it a spinal stroke or something?”
Dr. Michaels frowned as he read over Ryan’s records. “No, he would have felt some sort of pain if it was that. You also said he hasn’t had any sort of infection or illness recently?” he asked Sam.
She shook her head. “Unless it was something really minor, no,” she said.
“Then we can probably rule out Guillen Barre,” Dr. Michaels mumbled to himself. “That also wouldn’t spread this quickly. You said this all started only a couple hours ago?”
Sam nodded. “He was brought in two hours ago, ambulance brought him in right after his symptoms started.”
Dr. Michaels let out a displeased hum at hearing that. Symptoms progressing this fast… there were only so many things that could be causing it.
“Hey Sam,” Blythe called out to her from the door to Ryan’s room. Sam looked over at her, she looked worried, a whole lot more worried than she had been even five minutes ago. “He’s having trouble breathing now.”
Sam and Martin rushed back over to Ryan.
“What’s wrong?” Sam asked as she looked him over.
“Breathings… it’s… get- getting hard,” Ryan gasped out between breaths. He tried to take a deep breath into his lungs, but couldn’t get anywhere as deep a breath as he was usually able to.
Someone brought out an oxygen mask, pressing it to his face as they wrapped the strap around his head. It helped… a little bit, but it was still hard for him to take a deep breath.
“Is that better?” Sam asked, moving so her face was directly in his line of sight.
“A- a little bit,” Ryan gasped, still taking in exaggerated breaths. Though now that he thought about it, “Can’t feel my arms at all now,” he said, voice quiet.
“There has to be something we can do,” Blythe said as she looked towards Martin and Michaels.
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As the hours progressed, Ryan’s breathing continued to grow more and more labored. Even with the supplemental oxygen, it was taking everything in him to be able to get air into his lungs. It felt like there was a band constricting them, making it impossible to take in a full breath.
“If you continue to decompensate-” Sam started.
“No,” Ryan said, his voice barely able to be heard around the mask. “I don’t-” Ryan knew what she was going to say. A ventilator, a machine breathing for him. With the way he was slowly losing control of his body, that thought absolutely terrified him.
“I know you don’t want it,” Sam said, turning towards him. “But even with the mask it’s getting harder for you to breathe…”
Ryan shook his head, tears gathering in the side of his eyes. He knew if this kept going, he would need it, much sooner than later. Even now it felt like each breath he was getting was coming through a tiny straw. But if they put him on a ventilator, what else did he have left to move?
“Please,” he said, begging Sam and Blythe not to go to this next step, at least not yet.
That was when Dr. Michaels ran back into the room. “Have you checked him for a tick yet?” he asked, hurriedly.
“A tick?” Sam repeated, slightly confused.
“Yes,” Dr. Michaels said as he came near Ryan’s hospital bed and ripped the blanket off of his legs, starting to examine each and every part of him. A part of Ryan felt like his privacy was being invaded, but at this point, if it meant this entire nightmare would be over soon, he would put up with anything.
“It’s rare, but there have been many reported cases of tick causing paralysis,” Dr. Michaels started to explain as he was going through Ryan’s body. “And the progression follows almost exactly what you’ve been going through this afternoon.”
They eventually found two ticks hidden in the folds of Ryan’s hair. Carefully pulling them off of Ryan, making sure the heads came off, Martin placed them in a small glass jar and tightened a lid over the top.
“Those little things did all of this?” Ryan asked as the jar holding the ticks was held in front of his face.
“Yes,” Martin said as he placed a label on the side of the glass. “Now we send the little guys to the lab for identification.”
“So, what happens to me now?” Ryan asked.
“You should start regaining movement and sensation any minute now,” Dr. Michaels said. “You should regain all function by tomorrow morning, we’ll be admitting you and take you upstairs just for observation.”
Ryan gave a short nod, that all made sense. As he tried to bring in a deep breath into his lungs, he could already feel them expanding a bit more than he had been able to twenty minutes ago. He still needed the max and supplemental oxygen, but it was with a much lighter feeling on his shoulders than it had been an hour ago.