by Amanda Tru
Emma hefted the box into her arms. She hoped the ornaments she’d selected met with the committee’s approval. Maybe if she explained the reasons for her selections, they would understand. But what if they didn’t? What if she hadn’t chosen the right ornaments? What if they just weren’t good enough?
“Get down!” the growl came from behind Emma.
Startled, she jerked around to find who was speaking. “W-What?”
“Get down!” came the order again.
Three men confronted her, the bottom half of their faces covered with kerchiefs.
Emma shook her head in confusion, not understanding the order. What did “get down” mean? Did they want her to set her box down?
Fear strangled her, and she didn’t know what to do. Who were these men? What did they want?
Something flashed in the waning light. The gun lifted into firing position before Emma realized what it was.
Instinctively, Emma reached out her hands in a defensive position toward the gun held by the figure in the center. “I don’t under—”
Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw the figure on the left jerk suddenly. Emma flinched, lowering her head and turning as if to duck out of the way. Immediately, pain exploded in Emma’s temple.
Her hands relinquished their burden, the box slipping gently from her limp fingers. With a whimper, Emma collapsed into darkness with the shattering of ornaments the last sound she heard.
Emma blinked her heavy eyelids open, feeling like she’d been gone a long time. In the space of a soft breath, she went from non-existence to existence. Her blurry vision cleared as she focused on a single bright star hanging lonely in a night sky more black than gray.
Vega. That star is Vega. Emma recognized the star before she could even recall her name. It’s so bright this time of year. I wish I had a telescope to see it better.
Trying to spot any other stars or the rest of the constellation Lyra, Emma lifted her head and groaned in pain. Confused, she reached up to find the lump on her left temple.
What happened?
With her eyes holding steady on the evening star, Emma pulled herself into a sitting position. She got her feet up under her to stand, but dizziness overtook her senses, forcing her to relinquish hold on her celestial friend.
With her head in hands, her head gradually cleared, and she remembered the three masked men. Becoming aware of the excruciating pain in her left temple, she reached up and winced as her fingers contacted a large lump. She must have been hit with something and knocked unconscious. The last she remembered was a quick flash from the masked figure at her left.
Still not feeling able to stand or walk, Emma tried to swivel from her sitting position, looking for her car. If she managed to crawl to it, maybe sitting to drive wouldn’t be so painful. Shifting positions even slightly made the nausea return with the sudden irritation of her side and hip. They burned like fire, bringing tears to her eyes. Through blurred vision, she could see enough to realize that she wasn’t in the same place she’d been when confronted by the men. She sat closer to the bushes on the side of the lot. The men must have dragged her across the concrete and out of the way, leaving her with the abrasions of road rash.
Worse than her disoriented position came the sudden realization of something else different than she remembered. Her Honda Civic no longer sat parked in the same space. In fact, it wasn’t parked in any other spaces either. It was gone.
Emma’s mind swirled in panic. Stolen! They had knocked her unconscious and stolen her car!
Desperately, she crawled over to the scraps of color dotting the ground of her former parking space. She gingerly picked two up, gazing at them in her palm and recognizing that these shards were all that remained of her ornaments. Though she recognized several of her ornaments shattered across the ground, they weren’t enough to be the entire contents of her box. Not that it mattered. The stolen items were as lost to her as the bright specks in her palm that begged hopelessly to be saved. Helpless to come to the rescue, Emma’s mind tormented her with repeating the lines of Humpty Dumpty over and over as her ornaments were relegated to the same tragic fate. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men wouldn’t be putting Emma’s ornaments back together again either.
Emma let the shards drop back to the cement with their brothers and shut her eyes. She focused and repeated instructions to herself, talking herself through dealing with an overwhelming situation. Deep breaths. In and out. Then she began to pray. It wasn’t really a traditional prayer with words. Instead, it was as if she was a student in a classroom raising her hand to be acknowledged by the teacher. In this case, she raised her hand and looked up, saying “Here I am, Lord. I need you.”
In response, she felt the comforting acknowledgment of her savior. Though again without words, she clearly received the response. “I see you.” Since that “I” belonged to the God of the universe, Emma felt the comfort of the simple reaffirmation of who she was in relation to Him. He who holds it all saw her, and she knew He wouldn’t turn away.
The departing light of day took with it some of Emma’s pain and nausea until she finally mustered the courage to open her eyes and find Vega once again. Slowly, she tucked her legs up and under, and like a newborn fawn, she hesitantly tottered to her feet.
Her mind whirled with questions of what she should do. She wanted to go home to lie down. She wanted to sleep and forget what happened. Except her car was gone. What protocol should be followed with stolen cars?
Emma was familiar with following instructions. She followed memorized scripts for almost every situation in her life. She knew she didn’t possess the instinctual social intelligence that most people came by naturally. That is why she had so carefully listened, learned, and developed scripts based on information taught by teachers and her parents for how to deal with situations she may encounter. She didn’t recall anyone ever mentioning what to do when a group of masked men knocked you out and stole your car.
Police. She should probably call the police and report her car stolen. She patted her pockets, searching for her phone. When she couldn’t find it, she turned a full, slow circle scanning the pavement to see if it had hit the ground when she did.
Then she remembered. Her phone was in the pocket of her purse. She had deliberately set it there before exiting her car, not wanting to risk it falling out of her pocket when she carried the box of ornaments into the church. The strap of the purse, which was really more of a cross-body bag, had been slung around her front to perch on her shoulder. The bag itself had been at her hip. Now, both her shoulder and hip felt quite bereft of any weight, and the ornament-littered parking lot offered no eye-witness statement.
Emma closed her eyes briefly and mentally pictured the police station, as if on a map of Crossroads. It was only a few blocks from the church. Even if Emma needed to walk slowly, it should only take about fifteen minutes.
She swallowed with difficulty, wincing at the pain in her head. Then, feeling that she had no other option, she put one foot in front of the other and started walking toward the police station. She stopped several times, waiting for the pain and nausea to subside enough to continue walking.
What bothered her most was the shaking. Emma didn’t feel cold. In fact, with the waves of nausea breaking over her, she felt warm to the point that perspiration formed a sheen on her forehead, and yet she couldn’t make her hands stop shaking. It was the strangest sensation and one that Emma didn’t like at all. Not being able to still the tremors made her feel helpless and out of control.
Once, the wave of heat and nausea came with such dizziness that Emma stopped and folded herself down to the sidewalk before she collapsed. She sat cross-legged on the cement and sat on her hands, trying to get the vibrations to stop. She took deep breaths and focused, reciting all the names of the eighty-eight constellations. She didn’t get past fifteen before conceding that it wasn’t working. She still felt the shaking course through her blood like a rapid, steady drumbeat.
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Emma knew exactly what was happening, and it was frustratingly familiar. In fact, she’d been its victim for as long as she remembered. This was her body’s reaction to adrenaline, and it happened every time. Whether Emma encountered real or imagined anxiety, she always reacted the same way. After something sent adrenaline catapulting through her veins, the side effects of that adrenaline doggedly chased her. She’d start shaking, but instead of it being an immediate reaction, the side effects always seemed on delay.
For someone who thrived on organization and careful control of the world around her, the shaking that followed intense emotion often proved her undoing. And this attack was undoubtedly one of the worst to overtake her as an adult. Though Emma recognized her current reaction, its severity caught her off-guard. These weren’t the slight trembling of a delicate leaf in a gentle breeze. Instead, she felt a severe storm violently jerking every cell in her body.
Feeling panic rise at her inability to control her response, even with coping techniques, Emma frantically searched for something to calm her senses and let everything recede into the background. Despite the pain and overwhelming attack of adrenaline, she fought with every cell in her body to tightly grip that last thread of control.
With her eyes closed, she rocked back and forth, at some point realizing that the high pitched, steady humming sound belonged to her. Abandoning all of the carefully learned and categorized coping mechanisms, she reverted to the method she’d used as a child to soothe her ragged nerves and block out the world.
And it worked.
Gradually, the cold of the cement seeped through her jeans, and the breeze ushering in a dropping temperature penetrated her coat. However, they were gentle sensations and not an overpowering attack. The violence of Emma’s tremors relaxed into the chattering shivers of cold, and the ripples of anxiety reached the edges of a serene pond.
Emma blinked open her eyes. Mildly surprised to find the world waiting as she left it, she took a few seconds to reacclimate, her mind exhausting itself with attempting to retrieve memories of who she was and how she came to be sitting cross-legged on a sidewalk.
Recalling her mission to report her car stolen at the police station, Emma stood. The world swayed and righted itself. Emma didn’t wait to diagnose any further symptoms but stepped forward, her footsteps pattering quickly down the sidewalk, eager to make it to the station before any further nausea or vertigo caught up with her.
With relief, she soon saw the lights of the station shining like beacons from the right side of the city hall building. She pulled open the front door and stopped still.
Numerous people crowded between her and the front desk. At the sight of the people, Emma realized she shouldn’t even be here. Neither should anyone else. Though Crossroads police provided 24-hour service, the department front desk usually kept regular business hours. Emma’s only thought had been to get here, but she now realized the door she’d just walked through should be locked. Instead, it swung open, easily revealing a roomful of people, only a few of whom wore police uniforms.
The edges of her vision lost color and turned shadowy, and Emma felt that she might pass out if she stood in the crowd a minute longer. Forcing herself to step forward, she made her way to the front desk. If there was an actual line, Emma couldn’t figure out where it started and where it ended, and she felt too ill to summon up any lessons on how to handle such a situation.
She was careful not to actually touch anyone as she zigzagged through the crowd until she reached the front.
“My car was stolen,” she announced bluntly to the officer at the desk. Her voice sounded hollow and whispery, and the man beside her kept speaking as if she hadn’t said anything at all.
“My car was stolen!” This time she said it louder and with enough emphasis to successfully interrupt the man who was speaking.
Startled, he turned and looked at her, great offense showing in his tense jaw and narrowed eyes.
“You and everyone else, lady,” the officer responded, not even looking up from the desk. “Get in line. We’ll take your statement when it’s your turn.”
“Her turn is after mine!” someone behind Emma griped.
Someone else agreed. “I saw her come through the door. She just arrived and tried to cut. I’ve been here an hour already.”
“How rude!”
“Get to the back of the line!”
“Who does she think she is? Marching up there like she’s the queen of England!”
“People like you deserve what they get!”
The comments and glares continued, and Emma flinched with every one of them. She kept her eyes to the ground, stumbling her way back through the angry mob to the door. Still unsure where the line ended, she was now terrified of further angering someone by inadvertently cutting in line. Large, floating spots joined the black edges of her vision. Nausea came barreling down on her, and a loud ringing echoed in her ears.
Frantic, she swung around to find somewhere to sit. The only chairs were already occupied by people who sent glares her direction just like everyone else. She tripped to the corner of the room, her feet lagging far behind her command to move forward. Her legs gave out right as she reached it. She collapsed to the floor and drew her knees up to lean her head down. That way, she could keep her head turned to the wall and not need to feel and see the faces twisted into contortions of anger because of her.
She closed her eyes, trying to lower the volume of every sensation assaulting her body. She even put her hands over her ears and hummed softly, but she could never retreat to being alone. Nausea, pain, and dizziness hounded her relentlessly, and she felt the presence of the other people in the room as if they were annoying flies endlessly buzzing and landing on her.
Desperate to not slip into the horrible place where she lost control, she hummed louder, trying to focus on that one comforting sound rather than the hundred other sensations crowding her senses. Then she started rocking back and forth, soothing her nerves as a mother would calm a baby with the movement of a rocking chair.
Gradually, minutes passed, and the intensity of everything lessened. Emma’s breathing regulated, sounds quieted, and control slipped back into her grasp. She stopped humming, and her rocking slowed. She was just about to brave opening her eyes to the harsh fluorescent light of the station when a deep voice abruptly interrupted her calm.
“Can I help you?”
Emma lifted her head and blinked her eyes open at a very tall, muscular man standing before her. Disoriented, she had no idea how much time passed since she sat down.
“I-I’m waiting my turn,” she stuttered in a voice barely above a whisper.
The man turned and gestured to the now-empty room. “I believe it is your turn. At least, you’re the only one left.”
Surprised, Emma couldn’t quite figure out how to respond. The people who packed the room earlier were now missing.
“I need to speak with the officer,” Emma said, searching the room for the uniformed officer who was also currently missing.
“Officer Kirk headed to the back to finish up. I was locking the front door when I saw you here in the corner. Nobody realized anyone was still left.”
“The officer said I needed to wait to make a statement, but now he left and I can’t.” Emma still couldn’t quite comprehend what had happened. All she knew was that the officer was gone, making her too late.
“Come up here to the desk, and I’ll help you with that report,” the man said, walking back over to the desk.
Emma stared at his departing back. She still hadn’t made it to her feet. Who was this man? She didn’t remember seeing him in the room before, and she felt pretty sure she would have. He was big and intimidating, and she didn’t want to talk to him at all.
“But I need a police officer,” Emma insisted.
He stopped and turned to look at her. Emma didn’t know what the look on his face meant, but she didn’t like it.
“What kind of drugs did you take, mis
s?” he asked roughly.
Emma shook her head. “I don’t understand. I didn’t take anything.”
“I am a police officer,” he gritted out. “I think the uniform would be your first clue. I’m Chief Jacobs.”
Emma swallowed, her throat dry. He was right. The man quite obviously wore a uniform complete with a belt holding a gun holstered to his hip. She didn’t know how old or how ugly a police chief was supposed to be, but this man seemed too young and too handsome for the job, which only added to her confusion.
“I’m sorry,” she said, putting her head back into her hands and leaning them once again against her knees. “My head just hurts so bad I can’t think.”
Chief Jacobs strode back and stood directly in front of her. Emma opened her eyes to see his hands placed on his hips and his lips twisted in clear irritation and impatience. The whole picture made her anxiety shoot up, and her thoughts become even more muddled.
“Look, if you tell me what you took, I can get you some help,” his deep voice growled. “If I don’t know what you’re on, there’s nothing I can do.”
“I don’t take drugs!” Emma insisted. She could hear the anxiety rising in her own voice, but it was worse inside. If she didn’t get out of here quickly, then it would overtake her. She needed to get away before that happened and Chief Jacobs witnessed her complete meltdown.
She lurched to her feet with the world spinning as if attached to a carnival tilt-a-whirl. “Let me go home. I don’t need to report my car stolen.” Emma reached up to the aching knot on her head, wishing a simple touch could make it go away. “Ice. Where is the ice? Mom always gave me ice when my head got a bump. I need ice.”
Chief Jacobs’ hand closed around hers. “Bump?”
She couldn’t breathe, moaning as his fingers gently probed her head. The pain intensified, and her legs lost their strength. She felt herself falling. Then strong arms came around her, supporting her full weight before it met the floor.