“What was that?” I asked as I blinked my eyes open.
“You fainted,” she said without much compassion. Her voice had always sounded like that, but it was only now that I could suddenly see how little she cared for me.
I needed to get out of there. Quick. Something wasn’t right. My head wasn’t right.
Maureen eyed me curiously as if she was expecting something to happen.
But it didn’t. I simply got to my feet and with a last look at her perfect body, I turned around and left Maureen right there where she stood, shirtless and gorgeous.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I muttered as I stumbled out the door, seemingly fleeing from her.
On my way out I grabbed Ben by his shirt.
“What’s wrong with you?” he noticed my strange mood immediately and followed without hesitation.
“Trust me, if I knew, I would tell you.” I led the way to the car, trying to think straight.
“Do I have to leave, too?”
“Were you enjoying yourself?”
“Not really.”
“There’s your answer, then.”
The warm night air felt good on my face and by the time I got into the passenger seat, I almost felt normal.
“Why exactly are we leaving?” Ben asked as he steered the car out of the driveway.
“Not feeling well,” I suggested for lack of a better answer.
“Maureen had a special surprise in store for you?” Ben chuckled.
If only he knew—
“She’s hot.”
“She is.” I watched the traffic lights go by. What was wrong with me? Couldn’t I just go for it when a hot girl threw herself at me the way any other guy would?
“You guys were fast,” Ben laughed but then he saw the look on my face. “You ran away from her,” he concluded correctly. “Why?”
My brother and I had always had a very open relationship. We were able to talk about anything. I was the rational one and he was the emotional one. Together we were quite a balanced team. Right now, I wished he wouldn’t be asking, though.
“The timing wasn’t right,” I said and hoped he would let it go.
“For what?”
“If a woman throws her clothes at you, don’t you want to at least feel some kind of emotion?” I remembered the lust, the possessiveness. Something had been odd about the whole situation. Like it hadn’t been me in there.
“I guess so.” Ben’s eyes were focusing on the road while mine were gazing into the scene in Maureen’s room. “Everyone’s different.”
“You don’t even have a girlfriend,” I poked him with my index finger.
“And I don’t need one. Not if she isn’t pure of heart and beautiful.”
He sounded like Granny.
“You’re such a romantic.”
“And you’re a loser.”
We both laughed, and I was feeling better immediately. Ben knew what to say. Even if it never came in the words one would expect. My brother had a way of understanding how I felt.
“Don’t tell anyone,” I asked him as we got out of the car a couple of minutes later.
“Tell anyone what?” Ben winked and threw the keys at me.
Together we headed inside and were greeted by a surprised Jenna.
“Hi, Mom,” Ben pecked her on the cheek. “Lame party. I think I’ll go back to hiding in my room.”
He chuckled as he walked up the stairs.
“Lame?” Jenna asked, obviously wanting details.
“It was okay,” I tried to make it sound reasonable. “Not many people we knew. And I’m tired.”
I gave her a hug and retired upstairs, suddenly exhausted and ready for a good night's sleep. I didn’t even bother to take a shower and went right to bed.
It came out of nowhere. A sweep of emotions. Love, pain, trust, doubt. It was all in a pattern, hard to describe, but somehow like when you finally understand someone who you’ve been trying to figure out for a long, long time. Everything clicked into place. There was beauty, purity, bravery, the ability to suffer, sacrifice. It was all there, enveloping me with perfection. I wanted to reach out to that cloud of emotions, embrace it. I wanted to kiss it. I wanted to kiss it? What was going on?
My hands grabbed my forearms for support. I felt like my head wasn't working. The one organ I had always been able to rely on, my brain, was finally deceiving me. I was hallucinating. Only, I wasn’t seeing anything. I was feeling—her. But who was she? And how did I know it was a girl I was feeling?
For a moment I had trouble breathing. There was a sequence of emotions rushing through me. Joy, concern, pain, love, broken-heartedness, grief. There was a beautiful purity which was floating like a silver thread through the sequence. A naivety, almost. My heart was screaming under the strain of the emotional load, and my hands were clutching my chest now as if trying to hold myself together or hold the emotions close to me. I wanted to console her, hold her. But she wasn’t here, she was a cloud of emotions washing over me and their intensity was piercing right into my heart. When I felt like I was going to burst, everything went black.
The fading darkness of the room gave an indication that I had been out for a while. As I rolled to the side and checked the time, I was surprised to see it was already early morning. What had just happened?
As I recapped in my mind how I had been overrun by a tidal wave of emotions—which had most certainly not been my own—I was suddenly wide awake. There had been this beautiful pattern. That girl—however I knew that’s what it was. The wave was gone. She was gone. All the beauty was gone. It was a hollow memory in my heart—not head—and it left me aching.
2
Puzzle
My bedroom felt empty. It wasn’t because of the plain furniture I had chosen a couple of years ago. At that time they had represented me well. Right now, everything had changed. I was still me, yet there was a new side of me surging up, and it made me feel as if I was losing my mind.
With a sigh, I rolled out of bed and dropped to the floor to do some push-ups, just to feel that I still had control over my body. It was almost effortless. My physical strength seemed to be intact. After I had counted thirty, I rested my head on the floor and waited.
Nothing happened. The tidal wave didn’t return. The only thing reminding me of my vision—I wasn’t sure if vision was the right word, there hadn’t been a visual image, just a lot of uninvited emotion—was that pattern burnt into my heart. Before tonight, I had been self-sufficient, independent. Now, it was as if I had suddenly become incomplete. I was a piece in a puzzle, missing all the other pieces, left alone, not knowing where to start looking for them.
It was obvious to me that I had connected those emotions to a girl. Not Maureen, probably. Wouldn’t I have felt all of it when I had been with her before? Speaking of Maureen… After running away from her last night, I had some explaining to do. What was I going to tell her? ‘I had a vision and now I don’t love you?’ Probably not. Maybe the girl matching the pattern was Maureen after all and I simply hadn’t had enough time to figure it out.
I lifted my body and continued until I counted fifty. It was almost as easy as the first thirty—too easy. It was unclear whether I owed my sudden stamina to the adrenaline surging through my veins.
When after seventy, I eventually felt my strength wear off, I straightened up and flexed my arms. They felt weirdly empty, as if there should be someone between them.
The feeling didn’t wear off after a long shower and continued after a short, restless sleep. When I got out of bed the next morning, the sun hadn’t risen yet. The gray twilight of dawn greeted me as I went for a run. Antonio, my chocolate Labrador, was happy to get an early jog and followed me along the line of trees behind the house.
I had hoped to wake up and find last night had been a dream, but reality kicked in hard when, with every minute I was moving forward, the aching for that pattern, that person, that girl, grew stronger. What had happened to me? Was it a nervous break
down? There were all kinds of ways the human body reacted to stress. Was this one of them? My feet hit the ground violently as I pushed myself forward in an attempt to outrun the sudden state of being at the mercy of my own emotions to such a degree. Wasn’t I the rational one in the family? The thinker?
“You’re up early,’’ Ben startled me as he fell into step beside me, coming seemingly out of nowhere.
“I could say the same about you.”
My brother and I used to run together every day when we had been in high school. Now that we were in college, my schedule differed from his so much, that doing a workout together had become a rare bonding experience for us.
“I’ve got classes at eight,” he said with a grin, breath steady as if he was on a casual walk. “You look seriously destroyed,” he noticed.
“Pottery?” I mocked, trying to divert his attention from my state of confusion.
“Aesthetics and Design.” The grin stayed on his face, but his eyes showed a little concern. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
Why did he have to be so observant today of all days?
“Just tired,” I lied and sped up a little. He kept pace and we ran side by side for a while.
“Time to head back,” I turned into the drive.
“Couple more laps for me.”
“Can you take Antonio?”
“Sure thing.” Ben clapped his hand on the side of his leg and the dog joined him as he continued down the line of trees. “Get some coffee,” he called over his shoulder before he turned behind the hedges.
I took his suggestion the second I had showered and dressed. A cup of coffee to go and I was in my car, ready to ditch the first class. I dialed Maureen’s number as I rolled out into the sparse traffic.
“I’ve been missing you,” she answered without delay.
“Hi.” There was this strange feeling in my chest, drawing me toward her and driving me away from her at the same time. Curiosity for whether or not she was the one puzzle piece I was missing, and at the same time concern for what to tell her, how to explain what had happened. “Is there any chance you are free this morning?” I tried to approach this straightforward. A rational approach to the whole situation was probably the best idea. Verify if she was the one or not. Then deal with the consequences. Wasn’t that what my dad had always said? Face your challenges head-on.
“What happened last night?” she asked instead of answering my question.
“Can we meet on campus?” I asked instead of answering hers. “I am on my way there right now.” She could say no. It would be understandable if she was reluctant to talk after my exit last night.
“Sure.” There was a mild accusation in her tone. “Meet me at the library building in fifteen.”
“Okay.” I hung up.
Maureen’s slender hand waved at me as I hurried toward the building a couple of minutes later. It wasn’t the friendly type of wave, the one which made me feel welcome and looked forward to. It reminded me more of someone wielding a sword, ready to strike the moment I came within reach.
Eager to figure out what was going on with me, and if Maureen, to whatever extent, had anything to do with my vision, I jogged toward her, ducking under the branches of the last tree separating us.
“So, that’s what you look like after you bail and remorsefully crawl back to me,” she smiled sweetly, all visible trace of anger gone.
It took me a moment to remember that, despite the major shift my reality had made last night, her reality was still the same. She was clueless when it came to how everything had changed for me. Would it be smart to tell her how much exactly? For a moment I considered, then I looked back into my heart, the new feeling raging for my attention. Was it Maureen I had seen in my vision? Her emotions? As I was searching her face for something indicating there was at least a slight resemblance, her eyes stared back at me, wide and expectant. It was in vain, there was nothing. Nothing that could ever come close to what I had experienced last night. Had I earlier this morning wondered if I loved this woman—and already doubted it—now I was certain. Anyone who didn’t match the pattern burnt into my heart wasn’t going to stand a chance.
“Adam?” Maureen tore me from my momentary petrification. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “I am—I guess.”
“You don’t look okay,” she summarized.
There it was. I had to break up with her and I had to do it now. I scanned her from top to bottom, taking in her perfect figure and the waterfall of black hair. She was attractive, no doubt about that, but there was nothing else there. Her face, despite her smile, couldn’t capture my attention even remotely to the degree it had before. She was a pretty shell, but the emotions I was yearning for, the ones filling my chest since last night were just too strong to ignore. They didn’t belong to her.
“Let’s sit down, shall we?” I suggested.
Without a word, Maureen led the way into the library and settled down on one of the leather chairs in the entrance hall. I followed wordlessly, glad to have a couple more seconds to make up my mind about how to spill the news. In theory, it should be easy. She wasn’t the one, no further explanations needed. But then, we’d had great times together. I owed her an explanation. Something comprehensible. As she looked at me with big eyes blinking, I knew she knew what was coming.
“I am sorry I bailed on you last night,” I started before it could become any more uncomfortable.
She grinned and fluttered her eyelids. “And I had such a nice surprise planned for you.” Her hand grabbed mine and she slid her finger down between my index-finger and middle-finger.
“I am glad it didn’t come to that,” I got the idea of what she was referring to and pulled back my hand, but she didn’t let go.
“You have no idea what you missed out on,” she pulled me toward her. “We can go there tonight...”
With a crease on my forehead, I leaned away from her. I was glad I couldn’t read her thoughts, but a heat-wave of desire rolling off of her was almost as bad.
“Maureen, I can’t do this anymore.”
She straightened up, her hand never letting go of mine. Her clutch had almost become an iron grasp, as if she was holding on to me in fear of losing something bigger than our relationship. I almost chuckled when I called it that in my mind. How could I have ever seen it as that? A relationship. After last night, I could actually feel my heart beating inside my chest. Not the physical beat, the pounding when it was pumping the necessary blood supply through my body, but the heart as the place my emotions originated from. The rational Adam was losing control over the new force of nature springing beneath my ribs.
“You are breaking up with me?” she asked, more to confirm what was becoming more obvious by the second.
“I’m sorry.” I got to my feet, winding out of her hand, which was still enclosing my fingers.
“No need to be sorry.” Maureen batted her eyes and flashed a brilliant smile, one of which would have made the blood in my veins boil twenty-four hours ago. Now, there was nothing but revulsion for the superficiality in her gestures. “I knew this was coming.” She muttered the last words as if she was speaking to herself.
“I can’t be here,” I whispered without knowing what I meant. All I knew was that nothing mattered anymore. Nothing, but that brave, beautiful person I had felt.
As I headed off, just to get away from the uncomfortable tension, I stumbled into a group of students who were on their way in.
“Sorry,” I muttered without looking up.
“You okay?”
I looked into a pair of concerned, green eyes, set in a familiar face. Library Girl.
“Fine,” I forced a smile and waited to see if something would happen, a click in my head maybe, but nothing did. She returned my smile and continued into the library with the group I had trampled in my attempt to flee Maureen.
On the way to the cafeteria, waves of emotions kept hitting me. There was anger, worry, excitement, curiosity, they were
coming from everywhere, and the higher the density of students, the rougher the ocean of feelings became until I couldn't handle it any longer. It must be panic attacks, my head tried to reason and explain as I entered the men's room and splashed cold water in my face. But I had a hunch there was more to it than just the pressure of succeeding in Med School.
A few deep breaths helped me steady myself enough so I could pull out my phone and call Dr. Evans. It was time to tackle this issue systematically. Vision or no vision, girl or no girl, I had to find a way to handle this…whatever this was.
“Good morning, Mr. Gallager,” the receptionist answered without delay. “Is it time for your annual checkup again?” She immediately put me through to the family physician, one of the privileges of being a Gallager.
When I explained to him how I had been worried something might be wrong with me, I left out the details about the emotional vision and the flashes of feelings which seemed to come battering down on me almost everywhere I went. It was less than an hour later when he saw me.
“Thanks again for squeezing me in between appointments.” I shook Dr. Evans’ hand and sat on a soft leather chair as he gestured for me to settle down.
“For the Gallager family,” he smiled, “anytime.”
He took a seat on the other side of the wide desk and put his fingertips together, waiting for me to talk.
Focusing hard on the pens between us, I decided it was time to face the possibility my strange state might be connected to a health issue. When I remained silent for a minute or two, wondering if it had been a good idea to come here, the middle-aged doctor gave me a curious look.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Gallager?”
The next morning, I returned to Dr. Evan’s office wearing a twenty-four-hour heart monitor. After a long conversation—naturally leaving out sensitive details—he had sent me to the lab to get a sample of my blood and given me instructions to do everything I would normally be doing that day. He also wanted me to take notes of events and activities, as to map irregularities in my heart’s reactions to certain triggers. It seemed like a good idea. At least I would know if my heart was alright. Weren't panic attacks supposed to influence your pulse?
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