The office was unabashedly lit. The floor-to-ceiling windows had no curtains, letting all the bright, fall light stream through—spilling over and exposing the tall and immaculate potted plants, a balance perfectly struck between faux and real, the doctor’s chair and her own. It made her uncomfortable. Just like the mostly bare walls and spotlessly clean, near sterile appearance of the room had made her anxiety spike when she’d first walked in. She nervously rubbed her tellingly sticky palms against her thighs that were clad in jeans that begged to be washed.
Blinking and shaking her head in an effort to shift her focus from the welcome distraction of her embarrassingly unkempt pants, she lifted her face to the doctor who was perched right on the edge, the absolute edge of a clean-lined armless chair that looked like it had just come off the floor of some overpriced furniture store. No doubt a tag would still be attached upon further inspection.
The therapist barely looked old enough to be out of college. Platinum blonde hair cut in a painfully symmetrical bob accentuated the curves of her cheeks, the smooth, unblemished line of her jaw. Thick, black plastic glasses perched on a nose that looked a little too well chiseled, with lenses so clean they looked invisible. From where she sat, which felt like an oddly far away distance for a therapy session, she couldn’t tell if there were laugh lines or wrinkles masked underneath her perfectly mastered I’m-wearing-makeup-but-it-looks-like-I’m-not look. The doctor’s skirt-blazer combo, her impeccable posture, her hands eerily still as they perched on the keyboard of her laptop ... Pressed, polished, professional.
All of her observations made her skin start to itch underneath all the layers of clothing she’d worn to combat the relentless chill of October in New York. She was bundled in a faded olive green jacket that’d been with her forever, carelessly shrugged on over a gray hoodie that might’ve been thrifted, or picked up after someone had left it behind at some party or library or dance studio. A dark gray knit beanie was slid on over dull brown hair that was so greasy it hurt. Large plastic glasses were perched on her own unwashed nose with lenses that were thick with smudges and grime.
Dirty jeans. Feet slid into sneakers that she’d only worn once before when she’d thought she’d commit to going to the gym—they’d seemed like the best choice for this appointment since she thought it very likely that she may just end up having to get up and run out.
Commit. Right. That’s why she was here. To commit to herself, to her health. Never mind the fact that therapy had been strongly recommended to her a plethora of times by doctors, friends, colleagues, and anyone with a goddamn tongue. Never mind that it was something she probably should’ve started six months ago. Right after her life had been irrecoverably unraveled, resulting in the only serious relationship she’d ever had destroyed beyond recognition. Her nails were constantly bitten down to the flesh. Paranoia was her new unwelcome roommate. Indifference was as vital to her as the oxygen required to breathe.
Lost. She was lost. Desperate to cling to some part of herself. The past, present, future her—she didn’t know what parts she should be concerned about trying to salvage, or focus on nurturing, or adamantly be forgetting. It was from within those thoughts that she finally found her gaze falling on the doctor’s eyes. Or at least the bagless skin underneath them. That was good enough, right? She couldn’t remember the last person she had looked in the eye. It required far too much effort to keep everyone’s gaze separate from the one that had ruined her all those months ago.
So she took in the pattern of the doctor’s faint freckles—were they real or precisely placed with makeup?—and tried to let the annoying brightness of the office fade into her peripheral.
“Now Anna, I understand that this is your first time seeking out any type of counseling or therapy since the incident that occurred six months ago. I commend you for taking the first step in getting help. It’s never easy and can be quite daunting.”
She found her head nodding along absentmindedly as the immaculate doctor prattled on with her clinically approved lingo. The demons were already starting to bubble and boil up under her skin. Wanting to scream and swear and lay out every ugly moment and thought and truth from her life since it had fallen apart. To paint the bright white walls a deep black they would never recover from, if only to see how this perfectly put-together doctor would react. Would she cower with fear? Anxiously document every word with eager eyes as she thinks about her upcoming fame from having dealt with the demons of a girl made demented from the horrors forced upon her?
“While your story is familiar to me due to the brief survey you filled out a few months ago, I’d like to hear it from you, from the beginning.”
The walls of the room seemed to lean in closer, the pressure around her increasing tenfold. Then the familiar high-pitched ring came into her ears. She forgot how to breathe.
“You want me to do what?”
There was a subtle shift in the doctor’s posture as she cocked her head slightly—a gesture that shouldn’t have felt condescending, but did. The pressure in her chest started to grow as her anxiety climbed to uncharted levels. Her hands gripped her thighs in an effort to ground herself in the now—sitting in a painfully well-lit office wearing her grungy shell staring down the fact that she thought she was ready for therapy. She reminded herself that the darkness closing in around the corners of her vision and brief flashes of memories seeping into her mind were the very reasons why she was here, panicking in a chair she thought she was ready to sit in.
“I know of your story and situation through what you told me in the brief online form, but in order to help you and for me to do my job thoroughly, I’ll need you to start from the beginning. Now what that means is up to you, whether it’s sometime before the incident, the hours leading up to it or … ”
Wrong.
Eerie reflections from the mirrors in the dark studio. The sharp pain of her gym bag digging into her back. A sweaty hand pushing so hard against her mouth that she thought her teeth might crack, unable to move her head in the slightest. The strong smell of sweat from both herself and from him. The muffled echoes of her own screams that the world would never know. Eyes wild with insanity and hungry with destruction boring into her. The name of the man she’d loved being repeated over and over again as she was shattered into a million pieces. Into dust. Into nothing.
She kept her eyes as open as her sockets would allow, afraid of what else she might see if they closed, even just to blink. Hyperventilation kicked in as her flight instinct overcame any reasonable thought she might’ve had.
“I have to go.”
Managing to unlock her frozen joints and limbs, she staggered from the too-stiff chair and got her shaking hands to the handle of the heavy door as quickly as she could.
“Anna I know this is difficult, but running away—”
The rest of the doctor’s sentence was lost to her slamming of the door. As if closing it hard enough could displace the images and memories slipping into every corner of her mind.
It was getting difficult to see as her hyperventilating turned into a full blown panic attack. She found herself in a long hallway, with a staircase towards the end.
Options. What were her options? She couldn’t go outside. She didn’t have time to try and find an empty office or room. She didn’t have the mental capacity to locate a bathroom. So she decided to go towards the stairs as her vision blurred from tears and sobs snaked their way up her throat from deep within her chest.
Up. She’d go up the stairs and at least get to a floor that wasn’t home to the awful therapist and horribly bright office that she had just left. She’d find somewhere to sit and let this shit happen to her so she could just get the hell out of here and go home.
Up and up her feet went. Voices floated to her as she passed some floors, while others were just as quiet as the floor she was trying to escape. Before she realized it, her feet had carried her until there were no more stairs left to climb. She turned to find an identical layout to all the floors she had just passed—a long, brightly lit hallway with several offices on either side. But unlike the others, this one had a corner directly across from her with a bench framed by two potted plants.
In the number of steps it took for her to reach the bench, tears started pouring from her eyes and her hyperventilating had morphed into full blown sobs. Her body assumed the position that had become second nature to her over the past months—arms wrapped around her stomach with her head dipped forward, making it easy for her to rock back and forth in time to the peaks and valleys of her own mind’s attack.
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Each memory that drifted into her brain had fresh pain barreling through her chest. This was the worst attack she’d had in a while. She had been numb, content to no longer feel any of the fear and anger and sadness that left her exhausted and empty. It also meant she felt no happiness, no contentment, no joy. That was the part of her that had her fancy sneaker-clad feet walking to this office building today. The part that knew she needed to feel good things again. But the demons from the incident all those months ago still had whatever joy she might find held hostage under lock and key.
During one of the valleys where her breathing tried to find normalcy and her eyes drifted open to focus on anything but the images inside her skull, she found two feet wearing well-polished brown dress shoes in her line of sight as she tried to stare aimlessly at the floor. Through the peaks of her breakdown, she hadn’t heard the person approach.
Suddenly a new kind of panic surged in her chest. Someone had cornered her here, on the top floor of a building where she sat on a bench by herself. But before the fresh panic could take hold, the next peak of her raw, gutting emotion had her losing herself to her body again. Her eyes clenched shut and the rocking returned. Any concern about whoever was standing in front of her was lost to the gaping void cracked open inside of her heaving chest.
A void so paralyzing that she didn’t even jump or become startled when a voice spoke softly yet firmly from right next to her.
“It helps if you put your head between your knees and try to take deep, even breaths.”
It was the unmistakable voice of a man. But the fear inside of herself was already being funneled into the void that had formed in her chest from that night all those months ago. She had no will, no energy, no logic to let the fear of her current reality into her mind. Against all common sense, against every grain of her being, she put her head between her knees and tried to take deep breaths through the forceful sobs that made her back ache.
“There you go, that’s better. It’s going to be okay. It will pass, it always does. It will be over soon.”
The light tone and soothing quality of his unmistakably British accent was nearly hypnotic. It gave her something else to pin her focus on, something else to consider. Enough of a distraction to draw her thoughts away from what was spiraling out of control in her mind.
Her sobs became more sporadic as she forced deep breath after deep breath through her dry, swollen lips. Tears had drenched her face and neck, while globs of snot streamed from her nose and dripped off onto the floor. What an absolute fucking mess she was.
She mastered herself enough to find her voice and croaked out unevenly, “Now that’s just gross,” as she observed the small snot puddle beneath her.
“Eh, I’ve seen worse.”
Somehow an ill-placed chuckle managed to escape from her as she took in just how much of a mess she currently was. A sharp throbbing was beginning to pierce through the space between her eyes and her temples. Her back ached from the powerful sobs and her stomach rolled with nausea and hunger simultaneously. She pushed it all aside for a little longer as she aimed her focus onto something besides herself. Anything besides herself.
“Who are you?”
“Me?” Posed as a question, as if he wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear his life story or just his name. He seemed to make up his mind quickly and continued on without much of a pause.
“Name’s Sam. I heard you through that door over there. I was just getting ready to leave when I thought I heard someone out here having a hard time. I thought I’d come see if I could be of any help, since I’m pretty well-versed in the art of not having my shit together either.”
Gobs of snot were pouring from her nose. Her face was soaked with tears. Why hadn’t she tucked tissues in her pocket before she left? It was something she always did before heading out—the few times a month she did actually leave her apartment. She was going to therapy today for Christ's sake and she’d not thought twice about it.
“I’m a fucking mess.”
“Everyone’s a fucking mess—don’t let them you fool you.” There was a brief pause, the sound of fabric moving, and then his smooth, rhythmic accent filled her ears once again, closer and even softer than before. “Here, take this.”
A plain white handkerchief appeared in her line of sight as she continued staring down at the shiny tiled floor. She took it from a large hand with skin that looked soft and had slight traces of calluses. The sight of it caused her brows to furrow for a second. What kind of hand had she expected? Before she could dwell on the thought of hands and inevitably end up dredging up more gut-punching painful shit, she straightened her hunched spine and managed to sit up despite every inch of her body protesting.
She placed her horribly smudged—and now wet—glasses on her lap before wiping her face from top to bottom in one swipe with the pleasantly soft handkerchief. It smelled clean, like laundry detergent faintly mixed with natural musk.
“I promise you it’s clean—I put a fresh one in my pocket every day, and I haven’t used it yet.” How meticulous and old fashioned of him.
With a shuddering breath, she dabbed her eyes, and then under her nose in an effort to wipe away the last bits of evidence from her first panic attack in weeks. No matter all the other side effects she couldn’t simply wipe away, like her red face, swollen eyes, congestion, headache and nausea that would now follow her around all day as permanent reminders of her fucked up existence.
“It may never come clean again after all the nastiness I just wiped on it.”
A deep chuckle came from next to her as she took a few deep breaths in a feeble effort to ground herself in the aftermath of her utter failure of a day. She tucked her glasses onto her ears beneath her hat and pushed them back on her nose. Handkerchief still in hand, she assessed herself. Tired, hungry, ashamed. Home. She needed and desperately wanted to get home. To crawl back into what was safe and far, far away from the shrink’s office, the building, the witness next to her.
Standing proved more difficult than she anticipated with stiff joints and pulsing temples. She stuffed her hands into her jacket pockets and stood from the bench with a grimace as her entire head throbbed in time to her pulse. It was as she turned around that she noticed just how sweaty she was under all the layers she’d donned to fight off the chilly weather. Just add it to the list of things that were already causing her great embarrassment today. She steeled herself for facing Sam and getting herself out of the building, back to the subway and into her bed in as few words as possible.
What she hadn’t steeled herself for was to be completely derailed from her minimal-speaking plan of action when she finally took in the man who had come out into the hallway, sat down beside her and offered up his help along with his handkerchief.
A tall, lean frame sat bent forward with forearms resting on perfectly ironed dark blue dress pants, his hands interlaced between them. Her eyes trailed to the silver watch at his wrist that peeked out from the cuff of a suit coat that was mostly covered by a dark gray peacoat. She took in his face last—strikingly chiseled, handsome features offset with deep set, bright blue, nearly gray eyes that rested on her with a softness that made her want to shift on her feet. The small dents of dimples accented his subtly smiling lips, and the last thing she combed her eyes over were the neat layers of rich brown hair that he wore long and loose, each strand seemingly placed with admirable precision.
He looked historic, from a time long since passed. It bore a gentlemanly air that she thought only existed when carriages were tugged down dirt roads and ladies wore suffocating corsets that mirrored their own female existence.
“Thank you, Sam, for helping me. I’m Anna, by the way, and I really need to go now.”
He set his hands on either knee and sat up straight as he looked up at her, no doubt taking in all the nervous tics—the fidgeting of her hands in her pockets, the tapping of her foot against the floor, the twitch of her cheek as she chewed on it between her teeth.
She was just getting ready to turn around and take the stairs two at a time to get to the relief of fresh air when he started to speak again.
“Look, I know you want to get out of here as fast as you can, but if you’re hungry there’s a damn good hole-in-the-wall diner just down the block. I know I’m always weirdly starving after having a breakdown or whatever the hell you want to call them. Anyways, it’s really good if you’re looking for food. It was nice meeting you, miss Anna.”
All she could manage was a brief nod of her head before she turned on her heel and made for the stairs. Everything seemed to blur together as she cleared the stairwells, nearly jogging through the last too-bright hallway and finally pushing through the double doors. The bite of cold air against her burning cheeks caused her to draw in a sharp breath through chalky lips—it dried her mouth and throat and made her eyes water with the shock of it.
The wind, the cold, the act of walking; the mundaneness of it all filled her head, consumed her thoughts. She focused on anything but what had just happened, and desperately worked to convince herself that everything was alright.
She managed to distract herself while waiting at the subway station, while riding the train, on the walk back to her apartment. She kept it together as she walked the stairs up to her floor, as she unlocked and relocked all the new locks on the door that seemed to say “defeat” with each click, as she took off her boots and coat.
And as she hurriedly threw the needle onto her decrepit, old record player and tossed herself onto the couch to bury herself beneath too many blankets, it all came apart again. The failure, the helplessness, the endless cycle of grief and loss.
As she lay there, absorbing not the notes of the music but the grit of white noise, two thoughts came from some forgotten corner of her mind that harbored some semblance of lightness.
“Try to take deep, even breaths. Everyone’s a fucking mess.”
From the darkness of her dirty apartment that looked about the same as the unkempt shell of a person she’d become, she tried to will herself to take the advice of some New-York-as-hell sounding stranger who had offered her kindness when he had no reason to.
After what could’ve been hours or days or minutes, the sound of her sobbing faded away into the therapeutic blend of ambient sounds from outside her window and the record softly playing from the corner of the room. Sleep tugged at her eyelids harder than the hunger churning in her stomach. And for another night, she fell asleep without eating, without drinking enough water, without being okay.
And just like the doctor had asked her hours ago, her mind—without her consent—started replaying the beginning.