Elizabeth
Wednesday, 12th December, 2018
3:31 AM
The shadows in Elizabeth's room hung with the looming rigidity of starched sheets strung from a washing line on an airless day. Elizabeth rolled over again, this time onto her back. No more than a minute could have passed, yet it felt like each second ached through the minutiae of a lifetime. Without the comfort of the cold glare of street lamps outside or the phosphorescent glow of her alarm clock at home, the only light came from the mute glimmer that seeped through the privacy slats that striped the window set two-thirds of the way up the door. The thin yellow rays fell in hazy bars cut with shadows that crept across the carpet, distorted their way onto the end of her bed and stopped just below the knee. She hugged her arms atop the quilt and stared up at the ceiling. Swirls of plaster eddied into oblivion, disrupted only by the occasional jagged peak; stalactites of paint like the ones she used to snap off when she'd been assigned a top bunk in her junior year at Houghton Hall. The faint patter of rain tickled the window, and from the distance there came a subtle squeak followed by a clacking sound, like a shutter wafting in the breeze. The clock echoed out too as it glared down at her from the strip of wall above the door. Each clonk...clonk....clonk... unrolled into a short forever and reverberated off the inside of her skull.
'Thanks for lunch, by the way.' Will's voice circled through her mind, at once clear, and then dying away like the swirls of plaster.
Its fade gave rise to her own. 'Not exactly nice and normal.'
'No... But that's not us.' Will's voice wisped away again.
This time Henry's took over. 'There's a lot riding on your relationship with Will.'
'We're finally in a good place, and if I do this, if I run, everything will change—'
Elizabeth peeled back the quilt and tossed it towards the wall that pushed up against the single bed. She curled her body up to sitting and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. Her head swam from the movement—it felt like her brain had been dunked in a vat of warmed grape jello and it was drifting in inertia—whilst her ribs groaned and tightened like flexing fingers. She hunched at the edge of the bed, and waited for everything to settle.
When she felt about eighty-eight per cent sure that standing up wouldn't see her vision succumb to starbursts of black hazed with orange coronae nor her legs give way beneath her like dune sand, she eased up from the mattress and stumbled towards the door, pausing only to grab the cardigan that she'd dumped in a bundle on the seat of the spindle-back chair in the corner.
The door opened and closed with no more than a scuff and a soft click as the bottom edge dragged across the carpet and she guided it back into the frame, but in the light-starved hush each sound felt a hundred times louder, as though the gasp of a single breath would ripple out and be heard for kilometres around. Even the tacking of her footsteps against the tract of linoleum expanded to fill the corridor as she padded through the shadows and towards the grungy yellow glow of the stairwell at the end.
Downstairs, her fingers groped across the wall of the patients' lounge until they found the cold kiss of the light switch. Whilst the fluorescent strips overhead blinked into life, she shuffled over to the kitchenette crammed into one corner. It was more of a countertop really, no more than three units long, with a crumb-laden toaster, a white plastic kettle (possibly a travel kettle) and a manual 700 watt microwave which took about half an hour to render a bowl of soup even lukewarm. She flipped on the faucet—the gush of water drowned out the patter of the rain against the window and the churning silence of her own thoughts—and then filled the kettle to the one cup mark.
Whilst the kettle clunked and spat and hissed like at any moment it might either die or explode, she tugged open one of the cupboards below the units and stooped down. A cardboard box of chamomile teabags hid at the back, tucked away behind a plastic tub filled with sachets of instant coffee—the same bland yet bitter ones provided by hotels. She reached one of the teabags out and dropped it into a cup lifted from the mug tree next to the toaster.
Two minutes fourteen seconds later—or so said the clock which hung above the stone blue sofa that slouched against the wall—the kettle switch flipped up and the bubbling settled to a low roil. She poured out the water until the cup was full, just shy of the brim. The teabag floated to the surface whilst the steam billowed. She picked up a stray teaspoon from the counter, and then lifted the mug and kept her gaze half on the goldening surface, half on the blur of the path ahead as she padded back to her room.
She only hoped that sleep would follow.
***
2:51 PM
Ash grey clouds hung in canopies like teased out wads of cotton wool over the car park of the clinic. The branches of the black walnut tree writhed in the loose breeze, and they stirred up a jitter at the pit of Elizabeth's stomach as she perched on the arm of the couch in the therapy room and stared out through the window towards the steel blue hatchback that bobbed and sailed along the track. The sound of gravel churning beneath the tyres grew from a whisper to a roar, and the jitter in her stomach crescendoed in sync. It didn't quieten, though, when the car whined to a stop in one of the bays parallel to the window, the engine puttered into silence, and a few seconds later, Will climbed out; instead, it spread as a tingle into the tips of her fingers, then prickled and bled into numb.
She curled her fingers around the cuffs of her sweatshirt and tucked her fists beneath her elbows. The pressure of her arms across her chest was just enough to remind her of the bruises that lay beneath, like the tug of a memory not quite recalled. When Will slammed the car door shut and scrunched towards the entrance, she tore her gaze away from him and looked to Dr Sherman, who sat in the armchair opposite. "That's him. That's Will."
"How are you feeling?"
"Fine." Elizabeth gave a quick nod.
It wasn't a lie, not really. She would be fine, she and Will would be fine, she would get through the session all whilst being fine, then tomorrow she would be fine to go home.
Minutes, maybe hours later, there came a rap at the door.
Elizabeth rose from her perch and twisted around. Her hands fell to her sides, and with her fingers still curled around the ends of her sleeves, the heavyweight cotton cushioned her palms as her nails bit half-crescents into them.
A pause.
Amy's figure blocked the long rectangular window set into the door. A moment later, at a word from Dr Sherman—what exactly she said, Elizabeth couldn't be sure; the voice came as though through water—the door whooshed open. Amy stepped aside, her arm outstretched and propping the door wide. She might have offered Elizabeth a taut smile, but Elizabeth couldn't be sure of that either. The young woman was a blur of dark hair, neon specs and denim.
All she could see was Will. Alive. Awake. And standing there.
His khakis hung looser than before, his green-grey jacket at least a size too big; though, having seen him return from long stints in Syrian refugee camps, she'd been prepared for worse. And anything was better than how he'd looked on the ICU, where gaunt would have been a miracle.
He stepped inside with a murmur of thanks to Amy, and stopped just far enough into the room that Amy could pull the door shut behind him. He kept his chin turned to his shoulder, as if he were keeping one eye on the door as it closed, though Elizabeth got the distinct feeling that he was using it as a prop to delay having to look at her. But that was good too, right? Avoidance. Deflection. A power struggle. That was them. Who needed nice and normal?
The door clunked into the frame. Will continued to watch it out the corner of his eye for a second that strung out into an hour. The jitter had crept into Elizabeth's chest too, or perhaps that was all the caffeine from the five or so cups of coffee she'd downed since seven o'clock that morning, and her fingers curled tighter into the cuffs that cushioned her sweat-slicked palms.
When Will turned and met her eye, blue echoing off blue, her breath stilled and stuck high in her chest. The silence in the room was so thick that it reflected sound. Even the clonk, clonk, clonk of the clock above the door was lost.
Both of them froze. It felt like they were locked in a standoff on opposite sides of a chasm, both of them waiting for the other to make the first move and show his or her hand. He who speaks first, loses.
But: She who dares, wins. Right?
Elizabeth jerked her head towards the steel blue hatchback parked on the other side of the window. "Should you really be driving?"
Will frowned and drew his chin back, sending her a look of faux bemusement as he countered, "Shouldn't you be in a straitjacket?"
A second hung between them. Exquisite in its silence.
Then the corners of his lips quirked into a smile.
And the chasm between them collapsed.
Elizabeth rushed over and threw her arms around him. She closed her eyes as she clung to him, her fingers scrabbling for a hold on the back of his jacket, whilst his arms wrapped around her in a tight embrace. Her ribs ached as she pressed on her bruises, but she didn't care. She needed to feel his warmth, to breathe him in, to know that this was real, that he was there, safe and alive, not a dream that would evaporate the moment she awoke. The last time she'd hugged anyone was over four weeks ago, when Henry had said goodbye, and only in that moment now did it hit her how much she craved that touch. It felt like she'd been starved, and now, given the opportunity to replenish, she couldn't get enough.
But that wasn't them...
She pushed him away and shoved his shoulder. "Don't you ever do that to me again."
He frowned. "I didn't do anything to you."
"You didn't wake up." Her voice cracked.
He strolled past her and towards the couch. He unroped his black and white checked scarf from around his neck, his back to her as he spoke. "I'm not going to apologise for my neuronal activity being temporarily suppressed—"
"Your neuronal activity's always been a bit suppressed, if you ask me," she muttered.
He raised his voice and drowned out hers. "And believe it or not, willpower isn't a medically recognised treatment for comas—" He shot her a pointed look over his shoulder. "—and nor, might I add, is shouting at the patient."
Elizabeth's lips pursed and her brow pinched. A blush threatened her cheeks, but she fought it off. With her hands on her hips, she narrowed her eyes on Will. "Henry told you?"
"No." He tossed the scarf down onto the couch. "But it doesn't take an ex-CIA analyst to guess that shouting at me would be your go-to response." He leant across the coffee table, his hand outstretched, whilst he gave Dr Sherman a smile that went way beyond sincere and landed somewhere around 'unsettling'. "Hi, I'm Will. You must be Lizzie's shrink."
Elizabeth flapped him aside. "Ignore him."
She padded over to the couch and sank down onto the cushions at the near end. She sat sideways with one leg crossed in front of her, the other dangling over the edge with the ball of her foot pressed to the carpet, so that she faced Will as he lowered himself onto the opposite end. She lifted her coffee mug from the glass top. But then it hit her—
She reached forward and slapped his arm.
"Ow." He recoiled.
"What happened to your Secret Service agents?"
His had been the only car to pull up in the car park; the plainclothes officers Russell had assigned him were meant to follow him everywhere.
"You mean those goons you had lurking around my car and spying on my house?" He shucked off his jacket behind him, and then twisted around and slung it over the arm of the sofa, along with the scarf. "You might want to tell them to expand their plainclothes repertoire beyond plaid shirts and jeans; they stick out like lumberjacks at a banking conference."
"They're not spying on you."
He leant into the corner of the couch, his arm rested along the back. His shoulders flinched in a shrug. "Not anymore, they're not."
She paused. The pinch in her brow and the narrowing of her eyes returned. "You didn't."
"I'm not having people follow me around everywhere I go just to appease your paranoia." He wafted a hand at her, head to toe and back again, as though she were surrounded in a fog of the stuff.
"It's not paranoia if it's true, Will. There are people out there who will hurt you."
"The only reason anyone's interested in me is so that they can get to you. Apparently little brother of the secretary of state doesn't quite make the cut on the hit list, or at least not according to the FBI who accused me of facilitating some wacko's desire to poison the president's golden child."
She shook her head to herself and raised her mug to her lips. "Here we go."
"And isn't that a little rich coming from you? You expect everyone else to be cloistered away and stalked by the Secret Service, meanwhile you're out getting yourself shot."
Elizabeth's throat clenched around the swallow of coffee; it elicited a sharp wince. She lowered her mug to rest against the knee bent in front of her; its weight and heat pressed through her jeans, uncomfortable against the bone. "You're not meant to know about that."
"Oh, well, I guess it didn't happen then." He leant forward and snatched the mug from her. "Just like you didn't exhaust yourself to the point of a breakdown by obsessing over looking after me, only to wind up wanting to top yourself."
He held her gaze over the brim as he took a long sip.
A prickle of heat crawled up her neck. There was something goading about his stare, as though he were daring her to deny it. But how could she? The most she managed was a murmur. "I wasn't 'obsessing'."
He continued to eye her. Perhaps he thought it wasn't worth his breath arguing her on the definition of 'obsessing'.
When he lowered the mug, she held out her hand and fluttered her fingers towards her palm, beckoning for it back. She cradled its warmth to her chest. A shield as much as a comfort. In the silence, her fingers plucked and flexed against the ceramic. Then, when a sharp edge infiltrated the look in Will's eyes, like the spurs on crystals of ice, her fingers stilled and her grip on the mug tightened and she braced herself for whatever might come next.
With his gaze still locked on hers, he jerked his head to the side, towards where Dr Sherman sat in one of the armchairs and silence. "I had a chat with Dr Sherman here, and she tells me that apparently you're all better and you're ready to go home... But the truth of it is—" The ghost of a smile lifted the corners of his lips, stinging with its cynicism. "—you haven't really changed at all."
Elizabeth scoffed, though a quiver of unease caused her to shift in her seat. "Oh, and you would know, having spent all of—what?—three minutes? with me."
"Having spent the best part of fifty years with you." A clench tightened his jaw; it darkened his whole expression. "I know you, Lizzie Adams—"
"McCord."
"—and I know that you're just the same as you were on the day we were poisoned, and that's how I know that, despite whatever you've led everyone here to believe, if the same thing were to happen again next week, there's not a single thing you'd do different." He gestured at her, a swift up and down. "None of this is to do with you feeling guilty over what happened; this is all just a symptom of your obsession with putting other people first."
Irritation simmered up like a deep buried itch that yearned for the surface. Not at him, but at what he said. And not because it dashed aside all the progress she'd made in the past few weeks, all the hours she'd spent talking her mouth and soul dry in session after session, all the flurries of panic and unwanted memories she'd put herself through, but because she couldn't tell him it wasn't true. Even if something happened unrelated to her, a freak accident that left him comatose, she couldn't say she wouldn't do everything in her power to help him, even if it meant exhausting herself.
But that's what people do: Take care of the ones they love.
Her voice shot up and strained from the effort. "You were in a coma, Will. You were going to die or spend the rest of your life like that. Did you seriously expect me not to care?"
His voice rose to match. And whatever simmered inside her wasn't half of what simmered in his eyes. "There's a difference between you caring about me and you putting my life above your own... And I'm not prepared to put up with it anymore."
"What?" Her brow furrowed.
"You need to stop treating me like your responsibility."
"I don't treat you like a responsibility. You're my brother, and I love you."
He was meant to say that she was his sister and he loved her too. But that wasn't them either. Instead, he kept his distance, physically and otherwise, leant back in the corner of the couch, his gaze a frosted laser beam on her. "How'd you think it would have made me feel to come round from a coma not only to find out that you'd done something to yourself in the meantime, but to learn that the something you did was because you couldn't handle the thought of losing me?"
It struck a nerve she didn't even know she had, like an echo without an originating sound. Neither one of them wanted to be the last Adams standing; she strove to protect him, whilst he endangered himself with his reckless regard to life. It felt like they were fighting on the same side of opposite wars. But to abandon him like that? She wouldn't—couldn't—do it. No matter how bad she felt, she knew that to be true, even if she didn't know how she knew. It was something that just was. As intangible as the thing people called love.
She slid her hand across the rough-polished leather of the couch. "Will...I'm fine."
But he didn't so much as acknowledge the gesture. "Until the next time that something happens to me. Then what?"
She had no response. Not one that he'd want to hear, not one that she wanted to admit, not one that would see her returning home tomorrow.
He broke their gaze and pretended to examine the buttons on the front of his shirt instead. He did that sometimes, when he had something to say that he knew she wouldn't like. "Look, Lizzie, maybe I could just about tolerate your lifelong fear of losing me when it meant you were interfering with my life, but I'm not going to keep enabling you if it means that you end up like this."
"Enabling me?" She drew her hand back from where it rested between them.
"Go home if you want, do whatever you like—" He flapped his hand towards the window, and his shoulders jerked in a shrug that said he couldn't care less. "—but I'm not going to be a part of it."
It didn't make any sense, or at least, the only sense it made wasn't something she was prepared to accept. "You're not serious. Will, come on—"
This time he met her eye. The look was so cold it made the hairs of her arms prickle beneath her sweater. "If me being around you leads to you having a breakdown, then I'm not going to stick around and watch you destroy yourself."
"I'm not destroying myself."
"Risking your job, your family, your health?"
Her mouth hung open. One second, two seconds, three... Then— "I'm your sister, Will... You can't just cut me out."
"I can, and I will, unless you stop putting me first." He twisted around and picked up his scarf and jacket. He slung them over one arm and pushed himself up from the sofa.
Elizabeth's mind flailed as much as it did when she found herself swept into panic; it felt like they'd gone from zero to one hundred in less than a second, and she had no idea how or why or even what vehicle they were in. He couldn't be serious. He couldn't honestly think he could cut her out just like that. Surely he couldn't want to...
She looked up at him. Her gaze hardened. Her fingers wrapped around the coffee mug so tight that her knuckles blanched. Had she been wearing her rings, they would have pinched the bone. "You're just saying this to hurt me."
A bitter smile stained his lips, as though he found some kind of macabre humour in that. He shook his head to himself. "Lizzie...why on earth would I want to hurt you?"
"Because you can't stand the fact that I was right about the treatment, about the salmon..." Her eyes narrowed, as though honing in on a glimmer of the truth. "You can't stand it that I was the one who found the study that saved you." She thrust one hand at him. "God forbid the narcissist should be humbled or have to say thank you."
Silence reverberated through the room. Sinusoidal waves bouncing from wall to wall.
Will continued to stare down at her, a hint of that smile still lingering, though twice as bitter as before. "If we were back there right now, you'd eat all of the pasta...wouldn't you?"
"Of course." The response slipped from her tongue. Her eyes bugged at him. "That's what any normal person would do."
He raised his eyebrows a fraction. The look questioned her definition of 'normal'.
She bit down on the inside of her cheek and resisted the urge to point out that that only showed how much of a narcissist he truly was. Any normal person would be willing to sacrifice himself for someone he loved.
She swept a hand towards him. "If you had the choice between Annie being hurt or you being hurt, hands down, you'd pick you."
"But if Annie were hurt, I'd look after myself so that I could look after her."
"What? And I didn't?"
"Henry told me you were barely eating or sleeping."
She looked away. Her gaze settled on the floor beneath the coffee table, the carpet watery with the yellow light that diffused through the glass. The ends of her hair quivered as she shook her head—Henry had obviously been talking way too much. "It's not my fault if I felt nauseous."
"And refusing to sleep?" The arch in his eyebrow infiltrated his tone.
She shot him a look. As if he knew. "I didn't refuse to sleep. I couldn't sleep because I was worrying about you." She turned away again, another shake of the head. Her voice softened to little more than a murmur. "And if I did sleep I'd just wake up in a panic, or have nightmares..."
"So why didn't you ask for help? Why didn't you tell Henry you were struggling rather than waiting until you'd 'given up hope', as he so euphemistically put it?"
Her jaw clenched, her gaze steeled on him, and the words spewed out faster than a stream of thought. "Because if I'd told Henry anything, then he would've insisted that I go straight back to therapy and there's no way he would have let me stay there and look after you."
Silence followed. It flowed thick through the room.
Somewhere deep inside the coils of Elizabeth's mind, a panic alarm rang: Wrong answer. Wrong answer. Wrong answer.
But it was too late; she couldn't take it back now.
Will's brow knitted, and he drew his chin in. He gave her a kind of faux puzzled look. "So, you knew that you had a problem, but rather than dealing with it, you thought you'd camp out on an ICU?"
Yes, the silence said.
Elizabeth didn't say a word.
"Is that what any normal, healthy person would do?"
He waited for a response that would never come.
The silence said what Elizabeth couldn't bring herself to.
Before, she had told herself that she hadn't reached out because she was protecting herself, because she feared that she'd lose herself in unwanted feelings and memories if she talked. Like dipping her toe in a river, only for the current to drag her out to sea.
It wasn't a lie.
But nor was it the whole truth.
There were plenty of moments at the beginning when she'd known that something was wrong; moments before the thoughts became so insinuating that she no longer had the words to explain just how bad she felt; moments that she could have seized upon and thus changed the way things would unfold. She could have confided in Henry, reached out to Dr Sherman, processed the trauma and her feelings of grief and guilt, found a way to sleep, rebuilt her strength, visited Will like any normal relative would. She still could have found the German study, and when she did, she would have been strong enough to insist that he had the treatment rather than giving up, and then she would have been there at home when the nurses called her to say that he had woken up.
But she hadn't.
Because the whole truth? Not reaching out had never been solely about protecting herself; it had been because something inside her had driven her to put Will first.
And that something was still there. Hidden deep down, like a single black thread woven into what Henry might call her soul. And it told her that perhaps, despite knowing she needed to prioritise herself, if the same thing happened again, she couldn't. Not when it came to Will.
Will placed his hand on her shoulder. He might have squeezed; she didn't know. The touch barely registered through the eiderdown duvet of numb. "You're my sister, Lizzie, and despite what you might think, I love you. But I'm not prepared to keep doing this unless you start putting yourself first. Because if you don't...you're not the only one who'll end up getting hurt."
He leant in and pressed a kiss to the top of her head, lingering there for no more than a moment. A simple gesture. Nice and normal—for anyone else. But for them, it said goodbye. For them, it said he was letting her go. For them, it said that they definitely weren't 'them' anymore.
***
"How are you feeling?" Dr Sherman waited until the roar of gravel had died out before she spoke.
The silence had felt appropriate somehow. It held the weight of the hush found at a wake.
Elizabeth opened her mouth. Nothing came. The numbness had seeped deep down into her mind. It had buried her thoughts. She got the sense that they were churning beneath the surface, but she couldn't see them, hear them, summon them. Perhaps that was best for now.
Dr Sherman didn't prompt her. She sat in the armchair opposite, leant back against the leather cushion, with her elbows touched to the armrests and her hands folded neatly atop the notebook in her lap.
Elizabeth stewed in the silence for a while. Even the clonk, clonk, clonk of the clock above the door had been muffled by the hush. She let her gaze drift down to the mug of coffee still cradled in both hands. It might have been lukewarm.
How did she feel? Like I'd rather I'd had a flashback or panic attack, like I'd rather he blamed me for what happened, like I wish I could say that he was wrong.
After a while, the corners of her lips twinged into a bitter smile, and she looked up. "So...I guess this means I won't be going home after all."
Thank God she hadn't promised Stevie she'd be home for her birthday, and thank God Henry and the kids didn't know she had been within touching distance of being signed off. She didn't need to disappoint anyone else right now.
The ends of Dr Sherman's hair ruffled against the collar of her shirt as she gave a slight shake of the head. "I'm still happy to sign you off."
Elizabeth's brow crumpled into a frown. "You are?
A nod.
The frown deepened. "But...why?"
Dr Sherman gave her a smile that looked as though it was meant to be reassuring. "Your brother made some valid points, albeit in a slightly more confrontational manner than I'd prefer, but that doesn't take away from the progress you've made so far, nor does it change my opinion that you're ready to go home and back to work."
"But...what he said..." He had made it seem like she was a ticking time bomb. In all likelihood, when it came to him, she was.
"The way that you reacted to your brother's illness is something I think it's important for us to explore, but I'm happy for us to do that in your outpatient sessions." Her shoulders lifted towards the swaying silver hoops of her earrings. "Hopefully your brother won't end up in the same situation again, but I'm not going to suggest that you ought to stay here indefinitely in the off-chance that he does, and I think that in any other circumstance you would reach out, and that's what I've been looking for."
Elizabeth paused. She had been prepared to be told she had to stay at the clinic, and now to be told that she could go home after all... She should be thrilled, she should feel that lift in her heart, she should be smiling to herself as she packed her bag and thought about the moment when she was reunited with Henry and the kids, the moment when she was wrapped in their arms. But instead it left her feeling lost. The walls of the clinic felt like a comfort now, like she was adrift and they were the only solid thing that she could hold on to. An embrace of a different sort.
Dr Sherman studied her. It looked as though she'd also been expecting Elizabeth to be ecstatic, and was equally surprised to find that she was not. She tried to hide it beneath a non-judgmental expression though. "Or you can always stay, if you like, and we can work on it here. It's up to you."
Elizabeth shook her head. Home or clinic? Home or clinic? Home or clinic? It felt like a signpost spinning around, and she was waiting for it to stop. It kept on going though, until it felt like it might whip up a vortex and suck her in. "I honestly don't know what I want."
***
11:29 PM
The plumes of grass whipped at the skin of Elizabeth's calves as she ran across the field. Each ragged breath burned high in her chest, an inferno in which her heart drummed, whilst a metallic tang laced her gum-thick saliva and clogged her throat. Still she ran. Overhead, the stars of the Milky Way seethed and churned, a lasso that roped her in and dragged her on. Beneath her feet, hidden fragments of rock jabbed at her bare soles. Still she ran. The black walnut tree loomed ahead. It welcomed her with open arms. And into those arms she ran.
Time skipped, and she was thrust to the cusp.
Her fingernails scrabbled in the rough grooves of the bark, her fingertips rubbed raw as she fought for a hold.
The chasm below called to her. An insinuating song escaped its yawning jaws. Its shadows reached up and beckoned her into their grasp.
She looked behind her.
She slipped.
She fell.
Down, down, down.
Consumed by the shadows.
***
Elizabeth's eyes slammed open. Yet still she fell. Down, down, down. Through the shadows of the room, until her body hit the bed with a lurch. She scrambled up to sitting, and gasped for breaths that wouldn't come. It felt like she was choking on air. Her throat closing on nothingness. Her heart pounded, yet each beat was hollow. She was going to die. She was going to die. She was going to—
Breathe. It's just panic. Breathe.
In. Two. Three. Four. Hold. Out. Two. Three. Four.
She counted the breaths over and over again.
It's just panic. It will pass. It's just panic. It can't hurt you.
She flailed for an anchor. Something to cling to. Something that would stop her from slipping. The scent of Henry woven into the National War College tee that nestled into the gap between the mattress and the wall; if he had been there, he would have held her with his chest pressed to her back, and counted the breaths for her until she settled into a rhythm to match his own. The thrum of rain as it hammered against the windows, ice-laced needles that jabbed into the glass; a sound that soothed by virtue of reminding her that she was safe inside the room. The pallid glow that snuck through the privacy slats in the door's window; with the press of shadows and with the air so cold that it stung the skin beneath her sweat-soaked tee, the light could almost pass for warmth.
When the feeling subsided, like waves growing shallower with each passing ripple, Elizabeth swung her legs over the side of the bed and stooped there, her fingers wrapped around the edge of the mattress, the balls of her feet pressed to the floor. The images from the dream hung at the fringes of her vision, as palpable as the shadows in the room; it felt as though at any moment they might swoop back in and carry her away with them.
She pushed herself up from the bed—the mattress springs creaked in protest—and she staggered a tipsy path towards the door. The chunky-knit cardigan lay across the seat of the spindle-back chair in the corner; she grabbed it up and tugged it on, and then eased open the door just enough that she could slink out into the corridor.
The cold in the air hung at the nadir between the radiators switching off in the evening and reigniting in the morning, and it held an unfathomable depth, as though warmth was something confined to the past, never to be felt again. She crept towards the stairwell, and as she did, the chill in the linoleum seeped into her toes until the prickle of pins and needles dwindled into numb and it felt like her feet were no longer her own. The rain thundered against the row of windows; it turned the corridor into a tunnel of sound so loud that it drowned out the patter of her thoughts. The dream continued to lurk, though. Not the black of night beyond the windows, but a chasm; not a smooth tract of linoleum floor, but the stubble of the paddock's grass; not cracks in the paint of the whitewashed walls, but branches of the black walnut tree fracturing the sky. She wanted to blame Will, but to do so would only prove him right. She couldn't let him go.
Downstairs, she fumbled for the light switch on the wall of the patients' lounge. The fluorescent strips that lined the ceiling whined and flickered into life. She padded over to the kitchenette, lifted the kettle from its base, flipped on the faucet and filled up the kettle to the two cup mark. Whilst the kettle sputtered and crunkled and spat, she unhooked the largest mug from the tree, and then yanked open the cupboard, stooped down and grabbed the plastic tub from near the back. She prised off the lid. The slender tubes of instant coffee gleamed in the water-thin light. She plucked two of the sachets from the container and tore off both of their tops at once, and then tipped them into the mug. When the kettle had finished threatening to explode, she filled the mug three-quarters of the way full. The remaining quarter she made up with cool water straight from the tap.
The teaspoon clinked off the side of the mug as she swirled it around and around, the sound sharp against the rumble of the rain in the background. She tossed the spoon into the sink with a clatter, and took a sip. The coffee was foul—(Almost as bad as the 'coffee' she'd endured on that trip to China—thank God Blake had smuggled in some freshly ground dark roast arabica coffee beans and a travel cafetière.)—but she forced a gulp down anyway and tried to fight off the grimace that juddered through her jaw. She padded over to the stone blue couch and slumped down onto the fabric cushions.
In front of her, the shelf below the oak-effect coffee table was crammed to bursting with dog-eared books—The Remains of the Day...Why Life Speeds Up as You Get Older...The Craft of Thought...—whilst magazines were strewn in a disjointed peacock's train across the top. All the magazines were months if not years old, torn-edged, and missing substantial chunks, so that they looked as thin the models featured in the articles that some member of staff had been instructed to tear out. It was censorship. She wasn't entirely sure who it served, or if she approved. After all, it wasn't like you could take a redaction marker to people in the street, nor could you stop someone from splurging on those articles the minute they stepped outside the clinic doors. It was something for her to think about though, whilst she cleansed the dream from her mind with swig after swig of coffee, and it was a way for her to whittle down the hours until the time came for her to go home.
She only hoped that, in the meantime, sleep would leave her alone.