by Joanna Bell
"Wait," I mumbled, lifting Kayla off my lap. "Wait, Blaze..."
Kayla gave me a look. "What? Blaze? Who's that?"
If I hadn't been so tanked I would have called Kayla out on her completely-not-her-business questions. But the whiskey still hadn't peaked in my system and my thoughts were coming fast and loose. Kayla grabbed my collar and shook me.
"Jack! Who is Blaze?! God, that is so rude. My name is Kayla –"
I stood up, thoroughly irritated by the hectoring tone in her voice. "Leave me alone."
"What? Leave you alone? Jack, you just had your tongue down my throat too, you know! You just –"
"What's going on out here?"
Kayla and I both looked up. DeeDee was standing in front of us, looking like a disappointed mom. "You've both had way too much. Why don't you let me call a couple of taxis to take you home?"
"NO!" Kayla and I bellowed the word at exactly the same time. DeeDee frowned and then couldn't help grinning.
"You two are hilarious. But I promise you, you're both going to regret this in the morning. I'm going to call the taxis."
She turned to head back into the Saloon and the words, tumbling into one another, just burst out of me. "DeeDee! I'm going to lose Sweetgrass Ranch!"
DeeDee stopped dead and turned around to look at me. Kayla did the same.
"What?" She asked. "What did you say, Jack?"
There was something about the sympathy in her tone, the genuine human concern, that seemed to trigger me to completely spill the beans. "The Ranch! They're taking it away from me! I'm losing it!"
"Wait," DeeDee said, holding up a hand to calm me down before I could start waving my arms around and really ranting and raving. "Jack, come sit down. Come on, sit here."
The ladies sat on either side of me, as solicitous as mother hens, and DeeDee asked me who was going to take the ranch.
"The IRS! It's got two million dollars in back taxes on it and I – I didn't even know. Blackjack didn't say shit before he died. And now – well, I don't have two million dollars."
Kayla – who appeared to have decided that she would temporarily stop pawing at me – and DeeDee were wide-eyed, shocked at what they were hearing.
"Two million?" DeeDee whispered. "Jack, how does a person even get to owe that kind of money?"
I put my head in my hands, grateful but still very drunk. "I don't know. Own a lot of property and just up and decide not to pay taxes for a decade? Because that seems to be what Blackjack did."
The three of us sat there together, the girls with their arms around me as I swayed side to side. More whiskey, that's what I needed. Reality was coming back, and I couldn't have that. I got to my feet and took an unsteady step towards the Saloon door.
"I don't think so, cowboy," DeeDee called after me, concerned. "You're done for the night, Jack. Trust me, you'll thank me in the morning."
"Well couldn't we, like, raise the money?" Kayla suddenly piped up. "Like on the internet? One of those fundraising campaigns? Jumpstarter or whatever it's called?"
"Kickstarter," DeeDee corrected her. "And hell, we can try, but two million is a lot of money. If it was fifty-thousand, well, that would be easier."
"But everyone loves the McMurtrys," Kayla said. "Everyone in Little Falls would donate, I know they would! We could have a town meeting or something, let everyone know."
Drunk or not, I wasn't at all sure I liked the idea of organizing what would essentially be a begging meeting. But DeeDee spoke up before I could, with a different reason for why it wouldn't work. "How many people are there in Little Falls, Kayla? Twenty-five hundred, at most? If every single one of those people, including the little kids, gave a hundred dollars, that would still only be – what? An eighth of what Jack needs? And who's going to donate money when it's obvious it won't be enough anyway?"
Kayla slumped against DeeDee. "OK. It was just an idea."
Two taxis were summoned to the Little Falls Saloon. When Kayla tried to wedge herself into mine, DeeDee gently took her arm and guided her away. "Come on, Kayla, let Jack get some sleep. He's got a lot on his mind."
"Yeah but I could – DeeDee I could help him, you know, I could help him take if off his –"
The door slammed shut behind me before I could hear the rest of what Kayla was saying – I had a pretty good idea what it was, anyway – and the driver turned onto Main Street, heading in the direction of Sweetgrass Ranch.
I leaned against the door as my head began to spin.
"What was that?" The cab driver asked at one point. I hadn't even realized I was talking.
"What am I going to do?" I mumbled to myself over and over. "What am I going to do?"
A pale, unforgiving dawn broke a few short hours later and I trudged down to the barn with a splitting headache to feed the Moiled cattle. Livestock don't wait for any man, even if he does have a hangover so bad he's pretty sure he's going to die before noon.
I did my chores robotically, in a daze of suffering. When it came time to go back to the house and eat breakfast I found that an awful clarity had settled over me, replacing the panic and uncertainty of the previous few days. I owed two million dollars. I did not have two million dollars. I was going to lose Sweetgrass Ranch. So what was the plan? I knew two things. One, I didn't want bailiffs or police or IRS agents or whoever knocking on my door, calling me, harassing me. So I was going to have to communicate with the IRS. I resolved to do just that. And two, I wanted, if possible, to salvage a small piece of the Ranch for myself. There has been talk of subdividing it before – talk I had always shut down as soon as it came up – but now it was accept a little piece (and I didn't even really know if that was going to happen) or lose it all. Maybe I could hold onto enough to keep Daisy, too, and her calf from that year?
I couldn't face eating so I made myself a cup of instant coffee and sat down at the kitchen table, resting my elbows on a surface scarred by years of plates, cutlery and the attentions of unruly children. I closed my eyes and pretended that it was the way it used to be – that when I opened them again Bill, Jake, Connor and Emily would be sitting around the table bickering and eating toast. Blackjack would be reading the paper, complaining loudly about some politician or another, and Grandma Dottie would be at the stove, stirring oatmeal and turning around every now and again to make sure no one was throwing food or kicking each other under the table. Maybe my dad would be there, too, dirty from the first round of chores, winking at me over the rim of his coffee mug.
It was enough to make a grown man cry. I didn't cry, though. I didn't feel much of anything except numb. I latched onto the idea of keeping a portion of the property – not the house, of course, I knew that would have to be sold – like a drowning man latches onto a life preserver. It wouldn't be the same. The livestock would have to go. Even the Moileds. But it wouldn't be nothing.
Chapter Eight
Blaze
I seemed to settle back in at work with no problems other than being a little tired the first few days. The McMurtry case was transferred to another team and Pender and I were assigned a new one. A business in North Carolina that seemed, even on first glance, to involve an owner living a suspiciously luxurious lifestyle for someone whose tax forms said he was earning the bare minimum. Thank God for blatant crooks.
I named my puppy Lulu and she spent eight days in the veterinarian's office in total, costing me just over five thousand dollars. An hour before spotting her at the side of the road you could have asked me what I thought of people – people who weren't rich – spending thousands of dollars on their pet's medical care. I would have told you I thought they were good-hearted, but insane. I no longer felt that way, and the transformation seemed to be instant and painless. I would have spent ten thousand dollars on her if that's what she needed.
Jessica reveled in my newfound status as a doting dog-mom, never missing an opportunity to point out that I appeared to be becoming one of the people I used to make fun of. But I felt no angst, no regret. Lulu was a
furry ball of pure love, and even before I took her home from the vet's she seemed to understand that I was her person, that it was me who had rescued her from a lonely death. She soon developed a habit of crawling into my lap, turning around once or twice before collapsing with a happy sigh and then falling asleep. It was the cutest thing I'd ever seen.
I didn't think about Jack McMurtry very much. With Lulu and the new case at work there were just too many things going on. I seemed to fall easily back into my routine – albeit a routine that had now been adjusted to include a rambunctious puppy and her insatiable need for playtime and walks at the local park.
It was about three weeks after my return from Montana that I found myself sitting in my office one afternoon and for no reason that occurred to me, suddenly thinking about what it had felt like to be in that flood. The feeling of gasping for breath and getting water instead of air, the silvery surge of adrenaline – of panic – in my veins. I reached up quickly and unbuttoned the top button of my blouse as my heart rate sped up.
I tried to think myself out of it. You're just remembering how scary it was. That's all. But my heart began to beat faster and faster and it was suddenly difficult to breath, as if an invisible hand was squeezing my throat. I shoved my chair back and stood up, gasping for air. Was I having a heart attack? It was at that very moment that the door opened and my boss walked in.
"Blaze!" She screeched, running towards me as I fell towards my desk. "Blaze, what's wrong?"
"I don't –" I gasped, "I don't know. I can't breathe, Melissa. I can't breathe!"
"Are you having a panic attack?"
"I don't know! I was just sitting here, and I thought about the flood in Montana, about what happened, and then suddenly my heart started beating so fast. It's still beating too fast!"
Melissa helped me back into my chair and took out her phone. "I'm going to call 9-1-1, just in case."
I held my hand up as the awful feeling began to fade out. "No. Wait. I think it's going away."
Melissa put her phone down on my desk and grabbed a chair, pulling it right up in front of me and sitting down.
"Are you sure? Has that ever happened before?"
I shook my head and held one of my hands out in front of me. It was trembling. "No. No, nothing like that has ever happened before. Oh my God. Do you think that's what it was? A panic attack?"
"I don't know, Blaze. And you should probably go see a doctor anyway – now, I mean. You can leave early, it's no problem. But that's certainly what it looks like. When I get them it just feels like something really awful is going to happen. Right at that moment, like I'm trapped and I can't escape. I get the racing heart, I sweat like a pig, it's probably the least fun thing I've ever been through – and I've given birth to two children without drugs. You said you were thinking about being caught in the flood?"
"Yeah," I replied. "But I've thought about that before and this didn't happen. I –" I stopped abruptly, realizing with embarrassment that if I kept talking I was going to cry. At work. In front of my boss. The one who seemed to think I was Superwoman.
Melissa patted my hand. "It's always people like us who get panic attacks, Blaze. It's totally normal – I think I probably know more people who get them than those that don't. But go see your doctor, just to be safe. You'd be surprised by how comforting a diagnosis is – at least you don't think you're literally going to die every time it happens."
I nodded at my boss and swallowed, hard. "OK. Yeah, OK. I'll go to my doctor's office right now."
"Good. Call me if you need anything, Blaze. And listen, don't just pile the pressure on by thinking you're letting anyone here down, alright? I thought you should have taken a few more days off after it happened, but I also know that's not your style. Just don't go creating stress where there is none, OK? Go take care of yourself."
I scuttled out of the office, worried it was going to happen again, and with Melissa's words – 'every time it happens' – ringing in my ears. Every time? So this was going to keep happening? That didn't sound right, it didn't make any sense. A person has one panic attack, completely out of the blue – and then it just... keeps happening? No, that couldn't be. I'd just had an extra-intense memory, that's all it was. I was usually pretty good at not letting my thoughts get the better of me, I must have been distracted.
As I drove to the medical clinic I resolved to stop getting distracted like that, to nip any thoughts of the flood, or of Jack McMurtry or Little Falls, in the bud.
They ran a bunch of tests on me at the clinic, hooked me up to various machines, did three blood draws and had a psychiatric intern question me over the incident at work. After all of it the doctor told me it was almost certainly a panic attack and took out his prescription pad.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
Dr. Haines looked at me. "I'm writing you a prescription for Xanax, Blaze. A lot of my patients have –"
"Xanax?!" I blurted, dismayed. Xanax was for – it wasn't for people like me, people in control of their lives. Was it?
"Or I can refer you to a therapist, if you prefer that. You don't have to do any of these things, but I find that letting panic attacks go untreated usually leads to them getting more frequent and severe over time."
"So I'm going to keep having them?" I asked. "Because I had one, I'm definitely going to have more?"
The doctor gave me a quizzical look, as if there was something obvious that I was missing. "I can't say for sure, Ms. Wilson, but these things don't tend to happen once and never again. You would only take the Xanax on days when you were feeling particularly anxious, or when you feel an attack coming on. I've found it can be quite helpful for patients with your temperament."
"My temperament?" I replied, recalling Melissa's statement about 'people like us.' "Is there a specific kind of temperament that gets panic attacks?"
Dr. Haines demurred. "I wouldn't put it quite that way. It's more that being a sufferer of panic attacks tends to bother people with your mindset more than it does others, that's all. It's not a judgment, Blaze, I know you're an incredibly successful young woman. Panic attacks are very common, nothing to be ashamed of."
As the doctor spoke, I could feel my hackles rising higher and higher – along with the concurrent need to keep it hidden. Why was Dr. Haines telling me panic attacks were nothing to be ashamed of? Did he think I was ashamed of having one? Why would he say that if he didn't?
"What mindset?" I asked, being careful to keep my tone of voice calm.
"Driven. High-energy. Type-A. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you – I'd say most of the people in this city are the same type, myself included, so I hope you're not taking any of this the wrong way."
"Not at all," I smiled.
I got home a couple of hours later with a white paper bag from the pharmacy clutched tightly in my hand. Lulu greeted me at the door, jumping up and down and running in circles with glee. It was nice to come home to that. She needed to be walked. I went into the kitchen and put the white paper bag on the counter, debating whether or not to take the little vial of pills with me to the dog park or not. No, that was ridiculous, I wasn't going to have another one so soon after the first one.
The dog park was less crowded that afternoon, before the end of working hours, so I decided to let Lulu off-leash in the fenced area. As soon as she was free she made a bee-line for the only other dog nearby – a small, white, fluffy thing who immediately joined in a spirited game of chase. The woman with the white dog walked over to me and we chatted about our pets.
That's all we were doing – talking about our dogs. How old they were, their names, that sort of thing. But within a couple of minutes I could feel it happening again – the hot, creeping sensation crawling up the back of my neck.
"Are you OK?" The woman asked. "Your face looks a little red."
Damnit! Why hadn't I brought the medication? I tried to take a deep breath but that feeling of not being able to get enough air was back with a vengeance. "I'm fine," I
squeaked. "I'm just – I have allergies. I should probably get Lulu home, too."
I managed to get Lulu back on the leash and start walking back to my condo. But the feeling did not go away. If anything, it became worse. At one point I began to feel as if my legs might collapse underneath me. As a last resort – because I definitely didn't want to talk to anybody about what was happening to me – I called Jessica.
"Hey Blaze," she greeted me cheerily. "Why are you calling me at this time of –"
"Jess?" I whispered, unable to stop my voice from shaking. "Jess? I'm at the park with Lulu. I think I'm having a panic attack. I feel like my legs aren't working."
Jessica has always been good in a crisis. One of those people who immediately takes charge, starts delegating tasks and giving the people around her a sense that things are being handled. As soon as she heard me tell her I was having a panic attack she asked me where I was.
"The dog park by the 7-11, just south of my building. Do you know the –"
"Yep, I know where you mean. Do you want me to come pick you up?"
I almost burst into tears at my friend's kindness. And as I thought about whether or not I could ask her to leave work to come get me, the feeling began to abate again.
"No," I breathed. "No, I think it's fine, it feels like it's going away again."
"Does it? Blaze, are you OK? Since when do you get panic attacks?"
"Since today," I said unhappily. "It happened at work earlier and Melissa told me to go to the doctor. So I did. Then I came home – with Xanax – and took Lulu to the park and it happened again. I don't think I can deal with this if it's going to happen multiple times a day, Jess. I really don't think I –" I broke off before my voice cracked with emotion. Not that Jess wasn't able to hear how upset I was. There was a pause on the other end of the line and then she came back.
"OK, Blaze. I'm off work in a couple of hours. Are you sure you can get home alright?"