Nick
Nick
The doctors confirm that there’s nothing wrong with Beth’s heart.
‘But…’ he begins.
‘Just a severe panic attack. I’ve recommended she speaks to her GP about getting some help for her anxiety,’ the consultant says, before moving swiftly on.
Nick can’t be sure if he imagined it or not, but it sounded as though the consultant clucked his tongue. Did he think Beth was just another spoiled celebrity?
It didn’t make sense. He’d had panic attacks himself in the past. But he’d always known they were just that. He’d never thought to call an ambulance.
But then again, Vaughan had died of a heart attack. She must have been terrified, believed the same thing was happening to her.
He thinks of his frantic drive to the hospital earlier. The thought of losing her was like a meteor striking his world, smashing it to pieces. He’d never entertained this. He’d lost so much at university that the devastation had nearly killed him, but he hadn’t lost her. She was his North Star – cheesy as it was – and she was a constant and she was never not going to be there.
But suddenly, he thought she might not be. He thought she might be gone from his life forever.
People say it takes a momentous event to put your life into perspective. But he suffered a momentous event before and all it did was throw him off-course. This time, thank God, he is older and wiser.
What if your fears and dreams existed in the same place?
What if your fears were actually your dreams?
Perhaps it’s time for him to finally face them both.
*
They bring her out to the reception area. He’s shocked at the sight of her: pale and disorientated, her hands shaking as she reaches out for him, slumping against his chest.
She can’t stop crying.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘I was so confused. I’m so sorry. I thought I was dying.’
Hearing her like this makes him want to cry.
‘You’re going to be OK, Beth,’ he says, wrapping his arms around her. ‘Listen to me. You’re going to be OK. I’ll make sure of that.’
She doesn’t want to drive home straight away and so they sit side-by-side on a bench outside the hospital. It’s nearly 2 a.m. but ambulances continue to draw up outside. Nick holds her as he watches the heroes unloading their patients with grim determination.
‘You really had me going there,’ he says, but he can tell that even this gentle teasing is a step too far. He’s never seen her like this. Almost broken.
‘I’m so ashamed,’ she says, as he shakes his head from side to side at her. ‘Look how many sick people there are. Really sick people. And I wasted their time. I feel terrible.’
‘It wasn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong, Beth.’
‘There was a fire on the underground, we were evacuated, then someone asked me for a selfie and I don’t know what happened… I had this pain in my chest like nothing I’d ever felt before, and then I couldn’t breathe. I honestly thought I was dying.’
He takes her hand, squeezes it. Tears are falling silently down her cheeks and he blots one away with his thumb.
‘There wasn’t a fire on the tube. I saw it on the news while I was waiting in reception for you to come out. It was just some overheated computer equipment or something. No one was hurt. The station reopened shortly afterwards.’
Her face crumples.
‘I thought… it was happening again. I was terrified…’
He takes a deep breath.
‘You’ve always been so strong,’ he says. ‘Maybe you didn’t… process it? I don’t know. It was a lot. I know I ran away. But I couldn’t understand how you could just stay, and carry on.’
She takes a deep breath, leans her head against his shoulder in a way that feels so familiar it makes him ache.
‘That was the point of the show,’ she says, her voice quiet. ‘My way of finally dealing with it all. But perhaps I’m not strong enough… perhaps I was being naive.’
He doesn’t reply.
‘Rosa sent me some flowers,’ she says. ‘She had them sent to the theatre. Why would she have done that?’
‘I’m sure she just wanted to be nice,’ he says, but he’s not convinced and neither is Beth.
‘Tell me the truth,’ she says. ‘About you and Rosa.’
He looks at her, wishing he could make her believe him.
‘Oh Beth. I promise you, there’s nothing to tell.’
‘She was never nice to me. She never liked me. It was weird. Why would she get in touch again after all these years?’
He sighs.
‘Who knows? We all cope with things differently.’
‘The show isn’t really about the fire,’ she says, and she lifts her head up, turning to face him square-on. ‘It’s about the aftermath. About what it did to me, why I made all the decisions I made afterwards.’
He swallows.
‘Your way of processing it, finally,’ he says, softly.
She nods.
‘My work has been my escape. But then I tried to bring the trauma to my work. It was stupid.’
‘No,’ he says, squeezing her hands. ‘No, not stupid. Necessary and painful, but not stupid.’
He closes his eyes. There’s so much he wants to say to her that his brain is a buzz of noise and confusion and he can’t clear it enough to say the right thing.
‘You know… this is a good thing, don’t you?’
She lets out a short inhalation of breath.
‘What?’
‘This… your panic attack. Really, it’s a good thing. It’s your mind and body’s way of letting you know that they need some help.’
‘The only way out is through,’ she says.
‘Yeah. I guess so.’
‘I read that in one of the grief books after Vaughan died.’
He squeezes her hand again.
‘I honestly thought I was dying,’ she says, again. But this time there’s a hint of humour in her voice, at how surreal it is.
He remembers Maggie once telling him that the worst thing about loving someone was knowing that one day, one of you will have to go to the other’s funeral.
And in that moment, quite unexpectedly and completely inappropriately, he had thought of Beth, a cold shiver going down his spine at the idea of having to bury her one day.
‘No, you weren’t dying. You can’t. You can’t go without me,’ he says. ‘I want you to know that. I won’t let you.’
They will just have to die together. But not yet. Not for a long time.