In the movies, the weather corresponds to the main characters’ emotions, highlighting their struggle—it rains when people are sad; sun shines when they are happy.
Tonight was nothing like that. The weather was the opposite of what Nadia lived through and whatIlived through watching her frenzy.
The moment I took my phone out in the middle of dinner with Chrissy and sawAmeliaon the screen, my body went into combat mode.
Mel never called unless something bad was happening. I just knew that everything Nadia was holding in had found a way out.
“Thomas, please, please come over,”she said.“We can’t calm her down; she’s hysterical. Please, can you come?”
What could be heard in the background was like nothing I had ever heard before. Nadia wasn’t sobbing. She wasn’t crying. She wasbegging:begging for it to stop; begginghimto stop, to leave her alone; then begging himnotto go, not to give up.
I jumped to my feet, spilling a glass of water all over Chrissy’s dress, threw a fifty on the table to cover the bill and marched outside.
“I need to go,”was all I said.
Once out the door, I sprinted to my car. The tires squealed, the engine revved and my heart tried to climb out of my chest through my throat. The drive to Nick’s house took half the time it should have. Ten minutes, and I hit the brakes, making a long line in the white gravel outside of the cottage.
Nadia’s and Nick’s voices filled the quiet night. She cried and begged. Nick tried to snap her out of the panic attack. I expected to see a scene similar to when Nadia found out Adrian tried to kill himself the first time. It was the worst thing I had witnessed. I couldn’t imagine seeing her in a worse state until I burst inside the house.
Nick kneeled on the floor, holding Nadia’s arms to stop her from scratching her neck. She rocked back and forth, yelled, whispered and cried on repeat. My mind was blank. I had no fucking idea what to do, but my body was on autopilot, acting before my brain formed a plan.
“Move!” I shoved Nick out of the way, falling to my knees, cupping Nadia’s face. “I need ice.”
Amelia ran into the kitchen. I pulled Nadia away from the wall, turned her around and pressed her back to my chest. Mel handed me a bag of ice cubes and backed away, as if she was afraid that she would make things worse.
Things couldn’t get any worse. Nadia was lost in her head, frantically trying to find a way out of a labyrinth with no exit.
I placed an ice cube in each of her palms, closed her fingers, and drew her closer, implementing the grounding techniques that worked before. On the outside, I was focused. My brain caught up and knew what the next step was, but on the inside, I was a mess. A fucking wreck, because there was no guarantee anything would work.
Then, Nadia’s breathing hitched. She stopped fighting. She gave in, letting me guide her out of the nightmare.
I sucked in another cloud of smoke. My heart rate was still on the too-fast side, but it slowed down a lot since Amelia’s phone call threw my mind into overdrive. Time did nothing to diminish the effect I had on Nadia. Fuck, the effect she had on me was still as powerful as the day I kissed her in the back seat of a taxi.
Nicholas slid the patio door open and came closer to sit beside me on the fallen bough, a glass of whiskey in hand.
“How do you know what to do?” he asked, staring at the ground. “How do you calm her down? I couldn’t even get her to look at me.”
I squeezed the bridge of my nose, shaking my head. “I have no idea how. I think she lets me in because she knows I’ll take the fear away.”
She was like that around me from the start. She trusted me to bear the weight of her torment and keep the demons at bay. ShebelievedI would do everything in my power to help, and it drew me to her because no one else believed there was a decent bone in my body.
Nadia treated me as her salvation. She gave me a reason to aim higher, to do better and meet her expectations. She was the same for me—a chance for salvation. A chance for redemption.
“What do I do now?” Nick dug his fingers into the back of his neck. “Should I find a mental health facility? Do you think it would help if she stayed with professionals for a while?”
“You want to lock her up in a mental institution?” I scoffed, pinching the ash onto the ground. “She’s not crazy.”
“I’m not saying she’s crazy. I just… I don’t know how to help her.”
I threw the cigarette butt into an ashtray and rose to my feet. “Give her time. Listen when she wants to talk and keep your mouth shut when all she needs is silence.”
Nick nodded; his face blanched with shame.
“I’ll go and check up on her,” I said.
The main problem with mental health was that someone who never experienced trauma or depression couldn’t possibly understand what it felt like to drown while still breathing.
Nadia laid on the bed, curled in a ball under a white blanket. Her eyes were wide open, and she hugged a pillow to her chest so hard that if it were a pet, it would be dead.