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Dean.
Thoughts and words scrambled in my brain like reporters running around after a breaking story. No one knew what to do but everyone knew they had something to do.
Dean?
I could see his face in the crowd, staring at me. He was here. I grabbed hold of the nearest support—a tall man—and blinked, shaking my head trying to see more clearly.
Dean!
“Excuse me?” The man I was using as a support looked at me warily.
I let go of the man and walked toward the direction where I had seen Dean.
But he wasn't there anymore. Had I really seen him? It had been a long night, Dean had been on my mind—was always on my mind, and I'd just left a sensory deprivation room. I stared at the spot I'd seen him, or thought I'd seen him; I was willing his face to appear only so I would know if I’d been hallucinating or if it had really been him. Nothing. Only random masked faces walked back and forth, and none of them with Dean’s musculature.
I fell into my apartment and onto my bed. I didn't bother changing. It felt too good to face plant on the bed.
Not wishing to suffocate in my sleep, I turned my head to the side. The slow, blinking light of my laptop on the nightstand reminded me that I had forgotten to turn off the computer. “What a waste of battery,” I muttered to myself, reaching for my laptop.
I opened the laptop to shut it down when an email alert bubbled up. Stupid Bethany, never letting me sleep. I did everything I was supposed to do and yet she still emails me in the middle of the night—
The words died in my head. Why do I even bother thinking anyone nice emails me?
There was a picture attached to the email. I was smiling, alone, and watching something in th
e distance. It was definitely me and it was definitely from tonight.
My stomach fell out of my butt.
I couldn't process the fact that Dean had figured out a way to bypass the block Zoe had put on his email. I was too busy freaking out.
It was hard to breathe. My lungs were shrinking. It was like I was in outer space and my spacesuit had been punctured. Air was leaking out and cold, nothingness was seeping in. I clutched my bed sheets like they were a life preserver. I knew what this was. It was a panic attack. Anxiety and fear overwhelmed me. As my body took in less oxygen, my fear grew.
I let out a rasping breath, gulping for air like a drowning man. I tried to tell myself it wasn't real.
I was okay.
It wasn't real.
I was okay. Nothing was wrong with me. I wasn't dying. I was just freaking out. The more I focused on it, the more panicked I became. I fell back on my bed and stared at the ceiling. It was getting even harder to breath and I knew I was going to pass out soon.
Rationally, I knew that if I passed out I wouldn't die. I would wake up and everything would be okay. I wasn't thinking rationally, though.
Right now I couldn't breathe.
I felt like I was dying.
I sat up and coughed loudly and forcefully.
When I was living with Dean, before his brain broke, I'd had a panic attack and stopped breathing. He'd given me the Heimlich maneuver in an attempt to restart my breathing. It worked.
I miss Dean. I mean, I miss the pre-insanity Dean. Lately, I've been wondering if he has schizophrenia. I read that it can develop later in life. It would explain a lot about his weird behavior. If he does have schizophrenia, then the way I handled things had been all wrong. I should have gotten him help or had him committed, not run away and filed a restraining order. Dean doesn't have any family. Dean doesn't have any friends. I was all he had and I had abandoned him, maybe when he needed me most. I was so angry that he cheated on me and beat me that I hadn’t stopped to consider that something might be horribly wrong with Dean.
Ugh, this feeling—of what, guilt?-was not helping the situation.
Anyway, back to the coughing. I couldn't give myself the Heimlich because I'm pretty sure if I fell onto a chair back, all I would succeed in doing is giving myself internal bleeding. Coughing though . . . if I coughed long enough and hard enough, I might trick my body into breathing properly. So I here I was, coughing so hard I thought I’d induce vomiting.
I almost passed out, but I didn’t. I made it through. I fell backward on my bed and let red and white polka dots dance across my vision. And then, because I'm a sadist, I began to think again about the email, over and over. It couldn't be true.
