To be fair to Ben, he was normally fairly observant. Unfortunately, he wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders right now. His vision kept blurring in and out. He felt like his lungs couldn’t keep up with his body’s need for air yet he also couldn’t catch a single deep breath. He couldn’t control his breathing at all, for that matter. He kept staring at the night sky to remind himself that he was out of that place. Most of the other man’s words completely escaped him. He barely noticed the man’s presence and heard the last two words.

Ben reached out a hand, much cooler than a human hand was meant to be and quite sweaty despite the comfortable weather. “Please,” he whispered, struggling to just get that out. Clearly, he was not stumbling home from a bar with less than an hour until dawn. Anyone with medical knowledge would be able to tell quickly that this was something quite different from alcohol poisoning.