Chapter 36
Korren
I’m much better by afternoon, so I pull on my down jacket and a hat I’ve borrowed from Dex and venture into the snowstorm.
A couple inches have already accumulated, and my footsteps squeak as they punch down the snow, the sound loud in the muffled silence.
I start into town on foot. The streets are quiet, the falling snow smoothing out the footprints and car tracks so it feels like I’m the first person who’s ever walked these streets.
At the far end of town, the noticeboard is coated with drifted snow. I wipe it off and squint at the postings, snow stinging my cheeks.
I still don’t know why I reacted so badly this morning, except that I’m obviously not getting over things as well as I’d thought.
I need to break things off with Dex now.
Before I get so tangled up in his life that I can’t survive the fallout.
There aren’t many rentals listed, just the same expensive vacation houses I saw last time and a single new page with a scribbled address that I think is way up the hill at the back of town.
I’ll definitely need the car for this.
I write the address on the back of my hand and trudge back toward home, snow whirling before me and clinging to my hair. The storm has bled all the color from the forest behind Chief Rhodes’ house and turned the trees to ghosts.
The keys are already in my pocket, so I don’t bother making a detour to our cabin. Instead I unlock Dex’s car and slide into the driver’s seat. I’m not thinking of much until I put the key into the ignition.
Then it slams into me. I’m back in the ambulance, and everything is flashing lights and screaming, and the world is closing in around me.
“Stop that,” I growl at myself. My voice wavers.
I put a trembling hand on the steering wheel, trying to drag myself back, but my heart is thudding so frantically in my chest that I feel like I’m being attacked.
I try to gulp in deep breaths, but my lungs won’t inflate properly.
I can’t fucking do this.
My body isn’t functioning. Darkness is closing over my vision, and my palms are slick with sweat.
I’m having a panic attack. I know that now. But knowing doesn’t help me move past it. It doesn’t change the fact that I’ve gone right back to that moment when every belief I had in myself shattered and I discovered that I can’t fucking handle a real crisis.
I wrench the key out of the ignition and shove the car door open.
Then I half-climb, half-fall off the seat.
Somehow I’m on my knees in the snow, and since no one from Chief Rhodes’ house can see me behind the car, I let myself collapse onto my back.
There I lie, head spinning, heart still beating much too fast in my chest.
I keep expecting Dex to find me like this, weak and trembling, incapable of carrying out one of the basic parts of adult life.
But he doesn’t.
Eventually the mesmerizing whirl of flakes above me, the stillness of the frosted trees, drags me back to myself. The panic attack has subsided to a threat lodged deep beneath my ribs, a tightness that says I’m nowhere near putting that behind me.
It probably doesn’t matter too much, since I’ve deliberately moved to a place where car ownership is rare, but it feels like a big step backward. My conviction that I was getting better has been shattered.
At least I don’t feel like this means my life is ending, I remind myself grimly as I drag myself to my feet, snow caked to my hair. Baby steps.