Panic

 

 

I CAN’T breathe. The panic is all-consuming. Everything is dark and cold and I’m confused. I don’t know where I am. But this desperate need floods through me, makes me focus on this one essential thing: I need to breathe.

I have to fight.

With a deafening whoosh, there is air on my face, light blinding me, and I’m gasping in breath after breath. The world is too bright. I keep sinking back down and I have to fight so hard to keep my head above the water. It must be my boots. They’re so heavy they’re dragging me under. I can’t kick them off, but it’s not just them—I’m holding on to something. There is material in my fist.

Dieter, I think suddenly.

Using all the strength I have left, I pull his body up next to mine.

Dieter’s face is slack as he breaks the surface. His curly wig has gone, leaving his fine pale strands of hair sticking to his head.

How long were we under?

I hold my good arm around his chest and kick as hard as I can, but I still can’t keep us from sinking below the surface again and again. Our clothes are too heavy. I can’t swim well, and I’m not strong. One of my arms is useless—I can’t make it do anything. I have nothing left. No energy. But I have to keep going, keep kicking, keep pushing us up to the surface when we sink. I don’t think about anything else. I can’t hear for the roar of blood in my ears. My heart is beating so hard and my ribs ache every time I try and catch a breath, every time I choke from the water I swallow. I can’t even focus my gaze on the riverbanks to try and somehow swim us towards them.

Help me. Someone please, help me.

I don’t know how long I struggle. It seems like an eternity.

I don’t see the boat, so when arms reach over me and Dieter’s body is lifted from my grasp, I stop kicking and sink below the water for a moment, shocked. But I don’t sink far—strong arms hook around my chest and under my shoulders, dragging me out of the water and onto a small orange lifeboat. I open my mouth to cry out from the pain, but there is no air in my lungs. Someone rolls me onto my side, and I throw up lungfuls of water and cough, and cough, and cough.

When I roll over, I see two men in lifejackets surrounding Dieter. One is compressing his chest, the other squeezes a clear bag attached to a clear mask he holds on Dieter’s lifeless face.

One of the men shouts. His arm holds me in place on the floor and the boat starts with a jerk and a roar. It hardly bounces as it cuts through the water. It moves so fast that everything’s a blur.

My shoulder throbs dully. The man holding me asks me questions, but he might as well be singing them like a bird—I can’t understand him. I can’t think. My brain tells me I’m safe, tells me to let go. My eyes close and I feel like I’m floating. Neither awake nor asleep. Not feeling anything.

I wonder if this is what death is like. I wonder why I don’t feel sadder.

Something jerks my shoulder and the pain brings the world back into sharp focus for a second, but only a second. I’m loaded onto a stretcher and into an ambulance, and I’m gone.

 

 

I WAKE up pinned to a bed. It feels as though someone has driven a spike through my shoulder and into the floor beneath. I gasp from the pain when I try to move. My eyelids are so heavy, I imagine they’ve been sewn shut.

There’s so much noise around me. People, chaos. I don’t like it.

“It’s all right. You’re in hospital,” a woman’s soft voice says from beside me.

I’m not good with hospitals.

The pain in my shoulder is almost unbearable. The rest of my body feels like it’s been beaten with metal bars or run over by a heavy truck. I focus on opening my eyes and trying to sit up.

I’m in a corridor, on the stretcher I was probably wheeled in on, and my clothes are cold and wet.

Something happened, something big, but I’m having trouble remembering what.

A very frail-looking woman in a wheelchair is smiling at me. There is a puddle beneath her. Her hands shake.

“They didn’t come and get me.” She looks apologetically at the puddle, then at me as if I’m somehow going to be disgusted.

I try to tell her it’s okay, it’s not her fault no one came to take her to the toilet, but my voice is too weak. I close my eyes again, unable to stop myself drifting. I’m not quite asleep, but I see myself falling as if in a dream. I’m scared. I’m cold, and I don’t want to die.

Dieter, I think suddenly with a sharp intake of breath. I open my eyes again and force my hurting body to roll to the side, and somehow I swing my legs off the bed. I need to find him, need to know if he’s okay. I’m not even sure if I have enough strength to walk, though.

“You should stay in bed.” The woman tries to grab my arm, to steady me, maybe, but I flinch away, scared I’m going to land on her if my legs give way.

“I’ll find someone to come help you,” I tell her through gritted teeth as I try to stand up. Moving hurts so much.

I stumble up the corridor, leaning against the wall whenever I think I’m about to fall over. People hurry past. Porters wheel gurneys. Kids run around.

My clothes are so heavy and cold, I wish I could take them off right here. God, that would probably get me arrested, but it would feel so good. I don’t think my brain is working properly—but when does my brain ever work properly?

The corridor widens out into a packed waiting room.

Someone touches my arm and I swing around, alarmed. A nurse. She has beautiful eyes, short black hair, and dark skin that sort of glows. “Demi” reads the name tag pinned to her chest. I can’t look at her.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Is anyone seeing to you?”

“I need to find someone.” I can barely get the words out. I feel as if I’m about to pass out with pain.

She leads me by the elbow over to a plastic chair next to the nurse’s station.

“Are you in pain?”

I wince as she touches my arm—the arm I’m cradling and trying not to move. I want to curl myself tight around it.

“What happened?”

“Dieter,” I say. “I need to know if Dieter is okay.” There is something else too, something important, but I can’t put my finger on what it is.

I hear her sigh and I look up, but she’s not exasperated.

“What’s your name?”

“Danny.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.”

“Danny, if I find out, will you let me help you?” she says calmly.

I swallow and nod.

Demi walks into the nurse’s station next to us and picks up the phone. Every so often she glances over at me as if checking I’m still there. After a few minutes, she puts the phone down and comes back. She crouches down in front of me, and I take a deep breath to steady myself, sure she’s going to tell me bad news.

“No Dieter, but there is a nameless young man currently in resus who apparently jumped in the river. Is that your friend?”

She hasn’t told me if he’s okay, but I guess if he’s still in resus, that means he’s alive. I don’t correct her about Dieter being my friend.

“Did you jump in with him?” She touches my trousers as if to check they are indeed as wet as they look.

“There’s a lady in the corridor who’s been forgotten about,” I say, suddenly remembering.

“Okay, I’ll let my colleague know. But first I need to sort out this arm of yours.”

“Is Dieter going to be okay?”

“Hopefully. He’s stable.”

All the tension that has been making it hard for me to breathe lifts a little.

“Are you in a lot of pain?” she asks, frowning.

The lights are dancing. There are so many different voices in such a small space. Has she asked me this before? Confusion threatens to overwhelm me. I can’t reply. All I can do is wince at her.

“Okay, I’m going to take you through to a treatment room.”

Placing her arm around my good shoulder, Demi helps me up and leads me through to an empty cubicle. She draws the blue plastic curtain and helps me up onto a bed.

“I’m going to find you a hospital gown so you can get out of those wet clothes.”

I nod and lean back on the soft pillow even though what I really want to do is get up and get out of here, go home to my shell, and curl up in my nest until my body stops hurting.

Micky.

I remember the flowers I left on the bridge—I was on my way to see him. I pat my pocket for my phone. It’s still there, but when I pull it out, the screen is full of river water and I know it’s never going to work again.

Dieter’s words come back to haunt me: Why don’t you give up?

I didn’t really have an answer for him. I still don’t.

If I gave up, all this hurt would go away.

Yet I keep going, keep climbing through the days, never looking back… except I know why Dieter said what he did; I know how everyone sees me. No one is ever going to love what they see when they look at me. Plenty of people are uncomfortable around me. Enough people that I wish I could crawl out of my own skin.

But not everyone. A voice that sounds suspiciously like Dashiel’s butts in and fills my head. Not the people that matter.

Longing makes my chest ache, and I curl onto my side.

Longing for having my best friend back… longing for someone who is not my best friend… and the guilt that causes.

If I had a single wish right now, it would be for someone to hold on to, or for someone to hold on to me. Not because they feel obliged to, or because they have to, but because they want to, because they want me.

Like I want Micky. I squeeze my eyes shut.

It’s a stupid wish, I know.