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It might be that it’s in the genes. At the start of the summer, I would have scoffed at the idea. Today, it’s a real consideration.
Genes aside, I may be safe from her fate if the doctor’s caution is warranted.
The band around my chest cinches down. I take a breath, but the air doesn’t seem to go all the way in. It isn’t enough. I try again, but the truck spins. I spin. “Stop the car. Right now, st-stop the car!”
Marco says something, I think asks what’s wrong, but I’ve no breath for words. I wave my hands. “Stop!” I yell with all I can muster.
He pulls to the shoulder while I fumble with the seatbelt and throw open the door. I’m dying. I must be dying.
I dart down the slope of the shoulder and up the other side, but a barbed wire fence hems me in. I pace a few feet back toward the pickup, gasping, suffocating. I drop my hands to my knees, seeing the slick grass flattened beneath my feet. I hear my name, a door slam, and then Marco is beside me, telling me to breathe, holding my shoulders, rubbing circles on my back. “Breathe, Annalise. Just breathe.”
“I c-can’t, I…I…”Can’t breathe.
Then, in an instant, I can. Air refills my lungs and the stars recede. The atmosphere brightens. My heart still pounds and my body shakes, but there’s something of relief in the sensation. Like the downside of an adrenaline rush, it’s uncomfortable, but over.
I won’t die out here in the middle of…wherever I am…after all.
Marco waits quietly as I catch my breath. A minute later, he keeps his arm along my waist as he leads me to the truck. I want to sink into his support. I know I shouldn’t.
I separate, not ready to get in. Leaning against the truck’s dusty black side, I pull in as much fresh, oxygen-rich air as I can. Beside me, Marco, too, leans in quiet solidarity, one foot crossed on top of the other,
Figuring what he’s thinking isn’t hard—but he hooked up with a looney tune, so this is the price he pays.
Staring at the prairie grass, he gnaws the inside of his cheek. I appreciate his silence. Words are overrated. Kyle has taught me this.
Finally, “You okay?”
I nodyes, but…
“Maybe we should find an E.R.,” he says, but without any real urgency.
I shake my head. “I-I just needed to catch my breath for a minute, but I’m fine now. I think it might have been…” A certain pair of words hopscotch along the tip of my tongue.
He lifts his eyebrows, or at least the one I can see. “A panic attack?”
I look away. “I’ve never had that happen before.” How humiliating, and in front of a guy like Marco?
“I have.”
His words snap me around.Him?
“I got shot in the gut a few years ago. Got made by a dealer and ambushed in an alley in the middle of the night. Scared the you-know-what out of me, I’ll tell you that. I knew I was about to die.”
I wait, wanting to hear more, more about his fear, more about the crazy life he must lead. Tripp never talks about his undercover work.
“The bullet narrowly missed some pretty essential stuff, but it did nick an artery, plus I lost my spleen. Fought infection for a while, too. About a week after I got out of the hospital, I had my first episode during a late-night fast-food run. I swear I thought I was dying all over again, right there in that parking lot and somebody’d find my lifeless body by morning. I remember just hoping it wouldn’t be some kid with his burger and fries. Marco flashes me a wink.
I study my feet, unable to return so much as a smile. “And they kept happening?”
“They did…but after the second one, I got help. I knew my career was in jeopardy. Found a shrink in another city and went twice a week for months until they stopped.”
I scrape at the ragged skin around my thumbnail. A psychiatrist?
He turns to me fully, serious as a heart attack now. “So, if it becomes an issue, Annalise, get help. Don’t suffer in silence. There’s no shame and life is too short.”
He makes it sound simple—but things have changed for me now and I have this dreadful foreboding that nothing about my life is going to be simple ever again.
CHAPTER 18
