Page 42 of All That Glitters
“Are you okay?”
Her voice was soft, but it broke through the haze in my head.
No. Not at all. “I think so.”
“Okay. What do you need? Do you need me to talk or to be quiet?”
“I don’t know.” I hated that almost more than anything else. I said those words more often than not and if I wasn’t saying them out loud, I was thinking them. My body was healing, but my mind was, for lack of a better descriptor, fractured.
“Are you able to drive a regular car? Like mine?”
Did I lie to her or tell her the truth? Did I show her more of the mess that I was?
In the end, I chose not to respond and I knew she didn’t know what to say any more than I did. She didn’t have the answers and she was right. She didn’t know how to help me. This was above and beyond friendship and I could feel the anger building inside me that I’d even thought she or anyone could.
“It’s really been bad, huh?”
“It’s been… I’ve never felt anything like it. And I don’t even really know what it is. I’ve never been afraid of anything, especially when it came to cars, but now…” And just like that, the nausea started to turn my stomach.
My knuckles turned white in my lap.
My heart was thumping at a pace I didn’t think it could keep up. It was different from the way it pounded in the midst of a race. This was like a warning sign. Add it together with the sweat breaking out on my forehead and the stomach unease…
“I’ve got to get out,” I said with an urgency Helen apparently didn’t feel. “I’m serious, Helen. I need to get out.”
She regarded me for a moment, but finally moved and I crawled out, lying prone on the cool garage floor.
Without hesitation, Helen sat on the ground by my side and stroked my back.
Comfort.
Support.
Exactly what I’d asked her for. In a roundabout way.
I told her I wanted help, that I needed help.
I never said I wanted her to comfort me, to offer me kindness.
But she understood that underneath it all, maybe I’d need that, too. After all, she was my friend.
And there she was, on the ground with me in her expensive suit and heels.
Between feeling grateful, and humbled, the anger that was my constant companion ignited.
I didn’t understand it. I was angry with Hale, always. But I was also now angry with Helen.
She’d seen me at my weakest. Yes, I invited her in, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
The waves of emotions that I’d become accustomed to riding over the months since the wreck caused me endless days of whiplash.
I didn’t want to go back to a therapist. I didn’t want to, couldn’t afford, career-wise, to go back on medication.
But the pressure inside me, the stress, the buildup festering in my blood…
“You can leave.”
“I know.”
