Chapter Thirty
I wake up to find Tyler’s concerned face peering down at me. There’s something cold and hard under my back. Where am I? I drift away, lulled to sleep by the soothing motion of the floor moving beneath me. Am I on a ship? No. That makes no sense at all.
There’s something covering my nose and mouth and I try to rip it off as I simultaneously attempt to sit up. A heavy pair of hands pushes me back down before trying to peel my fingers off the thing on my face. I try to fight, but they’re stronger than me.
‘Bethany? Bethany? You’re okay,’ a stranger’s voice says. Well, that’s a red flag, isn’t it? ‘Bethany? Please hold still. You’re in an ambulance. Who’s the prime minister?’
‘Keir Starmer,’ I reply. There’s a pause. And then I panic. What if he isn’t prime minister here?
‘What month is it?’
‘August.’
‘What’s your address?’
‘Flat 2C, 110 Nightingale Road.’
There’s a pause in the questions. I think that’s the wrong answer.
My address but not this Bethany’s. She lived in Lambeth, or was it Southwark?
Even through the haze of whatever drugs they’ve given me I know I need to be more careful.
I’m treading a fine line between ‘just passed out for some benign reason’ and ‘maybe she has a brain tumour’.
Notwithstanding the possibility of a psychotic break.
I squeeze my eyes shut. What if they try to put me in an asylum somewhere? What happens then?
‘Do you know what happened, Bethany?’ another stranger asks me, but at least they sound calm and in control and nice. Like they might actually try to help me and not lock me away for my own protection.
‘I fainted,’ I reply.
‘We think you had a panic attack. But a bad one. Your friend thought you were having a heart attack.’
I want to tell the voice that Tyler is not my friend, but that feels somewhat irrelevant and kind of churlish if I’m honest.
I wake up in a small room that smells of disinfectant and lemon and something not quite right, like a warning deep down on a primal level.
I must be in hospital. I try to move my head to look around me but nothing works, my body unresponsive to my brain.
Panic bubbles in my stomach until I force myself to take a deep breath and calm down.
I was in an ambulance. I had a panic attack.
Okay. Breathe in. Breathe out. It’s all okay. I’m in hospital. I just had a panic attack. They must be keeping me in for observation. Isn’t that what always happens on TV?
So why can’t I move my head?
The panic bubble bursts and I can feel adrenaline rush my system, crashing over me in waves as the panic builds. An alarm in my ear raises in pitch.
I open my eyes and a worried face swims into focus. But then a prick of darkness at the corner of my vision blooms like an ink drop in water and the black envelops me, dragging me down. I’m too weak to swim against it.
Eventually I force myself back to the surface.
This time the lights in the room are dim, casting a macabre shadow across the ceiling like a nightmarish puppet show.
Slowly, careful not to cause myself to panic again, I rotate my head.
This time my body responds and I find myself staring at a pale blue paper curtain.
I turn the other way and locate a bedside cabinet.
There’s a plastic glass of water and it looks like the most inviting thing I’ve ever seen. Why am I so thirsty?
‘You’re awake,’ a voice says from just beyond the bottom of the bed.
I bite down some kind of witty retort – the witty possibly being subjective – and instead say yes. Or at least that’s what I try to do. Instead my voice comes out in a high-pitched screech, like a newborn kitten. Ooh, that doesn’t sound good.
‘Let’s get you a drink, shall we, lovely?’
I nod, already picturing the ice-cold water sliding down my burning throat.
After I’ve demolished the entire glass, the doctor comes to talk to me.
He’s kind, about the same age as my father and with that same air of practical superiority, which should be off-putting but in the hospital setting serves to put me at ease.
He’s exactly the type of person you want as your doctor. Almost as if he was born for the role.
Dr Harrington explains what happened, that I had a panic attack and then couldn’t breathe and eventually I passed out. And then I had another one when I woke up the first time but he seems to think that’s understandable given the circumstances I found myself in.
‘Do you know what might have triggered it?’ he asks, his voice soft and gentle.
For a moment I contemplate telling him the truth. But then I shove that idea far far down into my subconscious and instead spin a tale of work stress and boyfriend trouble and a general sense that the world is all just a bit too much at the moment.
He smiles, showing me the top row of a perfectly straight pair of teeth. Dr Harrington obviously has a very good dentist. ‘Has anything like this happened before?’
I shake my head. Although perhaps it has to this Bethany? Perhaps this Bethany is prone to panic attacks but she knows how to manage them. How would I even know?
‘Okay. Well, I think we should run a few more tests, just to be sure there isn’t an underlying condition that’s exacerbating the symptoms.’
The tests – mainly an ECG, the sensors cold on my skin – are run and then Dr Harrington is back at the side of my bed. But this time his smile looks fake, like he’s putting it on to put me at ease. Immediately I feel my heart rate spiking. There’s something wrong with me.
‘Arrhythmia,’ he tells me, again with that same soft tone of voice, but he doesn’t try to sugar-coat the diagnosis.
I have a heart condition. It’s minor. Manageable. There is very good treatment available and I can live a full and healthy life.
‘Be grateful we found out about it now,’ Dr Harrington tells me.
I don’t reply, but I give him a slightly confused look.
‘Well, you see,’ he begins to elaborate, ‘if it had gone undetected, and then you’d put your body under even more stress, like a marathon or something—’
I make a noise at the back of my throat that makes it very clear I have never even so much as contemplated running a marathon – and never will.
‘Well,’ he continues, ‘you could have triggered a proper heart attack. A serious one with long-term consequences. Even fatal ones.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes.’ He nods a few times. ‘In a way you’ve been very lucky.’
I’m not sure I feel lucky. But then I start to wonder. Do we all have this. All of the Bethanys?
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘Why?’ Dr Harrington repeats as if trying to understand the question I’m asking.
‘Yes. As in what caused it. This arrhythmia?’
‘Oh. Well.’ He rakes his hand through his hair. ‘It’s a genetic condition.’
‘So I’ve always had it?’
‘Yes. You would have been born with it, but quite often this type of condition goes undiagnosed for years, decades. Until something happens and you have an ECG and then we find it.’
So we do all have it.
That night I write a note to myself. To this Bethany. Detailing the condition and the medication and the details of our – mine? Her? – doctor. I make a mental note to tell all the other Bethanys whose lives I move through.
Perhaps I’m not destined to just wade through their lives leaving chaos in my wake. Perhaps at least I can make sure they know about the arrhythmia. Make sure they all go to the doctor in their own worlds. Make sure none of us end up with those fatal consequences.
Is that what I’m here to do? Save myself in a thousand different universes?