Luckily, having no one around to catch me has only happened once. It was my very first panic attack and I was at school. Of course, back then I didn’t know what a panic attack was and just assumed I was dying.
It was the weirdest thing. Mrs Dawson asked me a question in chem class, something about the periodic table, and my mind went blank. Everyone’s eyes were on me, I could feel fire around my neck, and my vision started to wobble. Like when the heat rises off the desert floor and smudges the landscape, everything was out of focus.
The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the ER, a train track of staples running down my forehead. Six staples. Things got really bad from there.
I spend the next twenty-five minutes of our journey wrinkled up in my seat, too scared to look out of the window. Angry-girl music blasts through my headphones, but it does nothing to quiet the voices listing potential disasters in my head.
Mom pulls into a space outside Bridge Lea Medical Center, kills the car engine, and turns to look at me.
‘Are you going to come inside?’
‘I can’t do it,’ I tell her, my voice weak and squeaky like a mouse’s. I’m not being awkward. I’m done. Seriously. Beyond exhausted and numb from the neck down. I don’t think my muscles could take my weight.
Mom submits in record time. Doctor Motivator and his know-nothing mental-health special can take a hike. Forcing your crumbling kid to move is near impossible for any parent with a soul.
Mom takes ten strides across the parking lot and goes to get Dr Reeves from her office.
Today’s therapy session will have to take place in the car.
Mom steps out of the door accompanied by the good doctor. Mom’s hands are lively, jumping about in front of her, reinforcing the apology that I know she’s spouting. As per usual, Dr Reeves sets a hand down on my mom’s shoulder, assuring her that there’s no need to apologize.
Dr Reeves is shorter than my mom. She’s closer to five feet and built like a twig. A strong breeze, and the woman would blow away. She’s smiling, drunk on life. She smiles a lot. A cynical streak expands under my skin. No one should be this happy at 9.00 a.m. on a Monday morning. No one.
Mom takes a turn to her right and heads over to the diner across the road. Dr Reeves fixes a narrow stare on me and climbs into the driver’s seat. She straightens her pantsuit and places her hands, one on top of the other, in her lap.
‘What happened?’ she asks, her voice calm and soothing, like ocean waves on a relaxation tape.
‘Couldn’t do it.’ I can’t look her in the eye. ‘I’m sorry, I just couldn’t.’ She exhales a sigh. She doesn’t like it when I apologize.
‘Let’s talk about why.’ She pushes her glasses back on top of her head.
‘It’s stupid.’
‘It’s not stupid if it makes you feel afraid. Tell me what you were thinking about when it was time to leave the car.’
Deep breath.
‘I started thinking about your stairs.’ There are twenty-eight steps to Dr Reeves’s office. They wind, like a staircase in a fairy tale. Up and up and up into the lofty heights of heaven. They’re bordered by two solid white walls and traced by a black cast-iron handrail.
She nods. She knows where this is going. We talk a lot about ascending. I have this thing about stairs.
‘What about the stairs?’
‘I don’t want to say it.’
‘Norah, this is just you and me talking.’ She relaxes, leans back in the seat like this is the school cafeteria and we’re about to start discussing the star quarterback’s abs. ‘You can tell me.’
Her voice is low, kind of hypnotic, teasing the answer from my throat.
‘I was hanging around on The Hub, that social media site I was telling you about.’ She nods, and I bite down hard on my bottom lip. ‘And all these people started pinning notes to their profiles about this tragedy in Seto.’ She knows I’m talking about the earthquake in Japan. I can tell because for a split second, grief clouds her eyes. She’s seen the reports, read the first-hand accounts, mourned over the thousands of pictures that have been published.
‘So I started reading . . .’
Her mouth turns down into a frown. ‘I thought we talked about not doing that.’
‘We did. And I was working on it.’
I was. Truly. Weeks ago we talked about staying away from things I couldn’t handle until I learnt how to process better. The news is easy to avoid – just keep the TV off and don’t pick up any newspapers. But then I see words on my social media like death and destruction, and I have to know. I can’t help looking. Like how a moth still craves a light bulb, even though it burns. It’s a compulsion.
‘There was this story about this woman, Yui, who worked on the ground floor of this office. She said that everyone on the first and second floors managed to get out, but everyone on floors three to five was trapped when the stairs collapsed and the elevators stopped working.’ I’m twisting my fingers into white knots, sweating as I try to imagine what would have been going through the heads of those poor people.