Chapter 14
Josh
Seven days after our break at the beach, I wake again in the early hours.
The bed sheets are wet with sweat. My left arm is fizzing with pins and needles. My heart is hammering harder than it ever has before. I can hear my pulse rushing between my ears.
I pull myself into a sitting position. Swing my legs off the mattress, perch on the edge of it. Try to steady my breathing.
It doesn’t work. I feel it building inside me, a low, cold whistle of panic.
Fuck. Is this it?
I leave the bedroom, head into the hall. Grip on to the dado rail with my fingertips like an old man in his nineties. Ironically enough.
The flat is silent and warm. Claustrophobically stuffy. It is a cloudy night, no moonlight.
You have nothing to worry about.
You’ve made it this far.
The deaths are just coincidence.
Every test under the sun shows how healthy you are.
Nothing works. Shockwaves of pain begin to spread through my chest, along with an unbelievable pressure, as though I’ve woken up beneath the rubble of a twenty-storey building.
I know I should call 999. But my overriding instinct is to speak to Rachel. She’s away overnight with work, but I just have to tell her I love her, one last time.
But then my breathing tightens again. I gasp with the pain, and the panic.
I have to do something.
I want to live. I don’t want to die alone, here in this flat without Rachel.
I don’t want to leave her.
I think of my dad, what he would have said. What my mum would say.
Do what you can, Josh. Whatever it takes.
That’s what they’d tell me. I am sure of it.
I can’t catch my breath. The air feels too thin to drink, as though the flat has been drained of oxygen.
If I didn’t before, I know now that I am dying. I am going the same way as every other man in my paternal bloodline.
I stagger back to the bedroom, tug open the drawer to my nightstand, grab the plastic bag containing the pills. Propelled now only by fear, the primal need to survive, I shake one into the palm of my hand.
For a millisecond I stare at it, stiff and white against my shining, sweat-slick skin.
But then the pain unfolds inside my chest again, so I don’t think any more. There’s no time.
I tip it into my mouth, tilt my head back and swallow.
I have sometimes thought that if relief had a colour, it would be the lavender of the sky at dawn. When you’ve made it through the night, and you weren’t sure you would, there is a certain aching sweetness to the sight of it.
But this morning I can see only dark, violet thunderclouds of regret.
It took less than ten minutes – after my heart rate had returned to normal – for the shame to descend, the guilt of having done something I promised Rachel I wouldn’t.
I ran to the toilet and heaved and heaved, shoved my fingers against the back of my throat until I tasted blood, trying to bring the pill back up.
Fuck. Fuck. Come on. Come on.
But I was dehydrated. There was nothing in my stomach, no way to force the thing from my body.
I make a strong coffee now – possibly not the brightest idea, given that my heart rate’s been on the ceiling for the best part of the night – then return to the living room. I sit bare-chested in my underwear on the sofa, hands wrapped around the cup, trying to think.
My gaze turns to the only wedding picture Rachel and I have up in the flat.
We always sort of disliked our official photographs: formally posed and stiff, gazing, as directed, into each other’s eyes.
Both trying hard not to laugh. It was also the first and only time I’d ever put gel in my hair, which resulted in me looking as though I’d taken a wrong turn out of military service.
But this picture we liked. The sole natural one, capturing a perfect, private moment. We were both laughing so hard that our cheeks were wet, and we were having to hold each other up.
I wish I could remember what had set us off. Rachel can’t, either.
The sight of it is like a trip-switch to my heart.
The worst part is that what I have done was entirely illogical, of course.
Dangerous, even. Swallowing a substance that essentially freeze-frames your body, in the midst of a suspected heart attack.
But, subconsciously, I guess I’d been starting to see that pill as my lifeline.
In the thick smoke of the moment, I just wanted to get to safety.