My seeking was about to get me much more than I bargained for.
First, spiders. North Carolina garden spiders are harmless, but look like they belong in one of Tolkien’s caves. They are several inches long with fat black and yellow bodies. One of them dropped down to my shoulder. I tumbled over, flicking it away, and splitting the quiet open with my screams.
“You okay?” Chris called out, his footsteps thudding against the boards above me.
“Fine,” I huffed. I lay there on my back to regain my composure. I was halfway through the tunnel. To my left, I eyed the large concrete pillars that supported the building. Closer, a field of wiry beach grasses had taken up residence, soaking up the sunlight and rain from between the slats of the deck, making a sparse living. Right next to me, a clump of dried weeds had been pulled up from the dirt. To my right, another dried clump. I grabbed them in my hands, and a dark picture formed in my head of someone, desperate to hold something, ripping the grasses out of the ground. Could the redhead have crawled or been dragged under here to die?
Above me, I eyed the uniform slats and could see Chris’ shadow hovering there. Panic gripped me at once. No warning. No heads up. My mind skirted back to the black night of my attack, and I was there again. Knife pressed against throat. A dark shadow on top of me. My breathing went from hurried to shallow, gasping.
I heard voices, but they were muffled, like I’d just fallen into the water. Simultaneously, memories of my night at sea flooded back to me. The coldness of the water, the darkness, the taste of salt in my mouth.
My stomach turned. Was I going to be sick? Aches ripped over my ribcage. It felt like a knife was slipping through my heart. I was about to die. I lay there, frozen, listening to the sound of my heart pounding, expecting each beat to be the last one. Twenty-nine years old and having a heart attack. Electric shocks of pain jolted across my chest. I cried out. Loud thuds erupted.
Between bouts of nausea, pain, and dizziness, I couldn’t keep tabs on what was happening to me. How much time passed, I had no idea. The next thing I know, I was being dragged, and then the sunlight hit my face, bright and glaring.
“Delilah?” a voice kept repeating. “Everything’s okay now.” Fingers grasped on to my wrist. Chuck and his partner Jake, the same EMTs who had been at the scenes of both of my near-death experiences in Tipee, hovered over me. Chuck was checking my pulse. I was lying on a stretcher.
“She was grasping at her heart,” Chris reported.
“Let’s give her some aspirins,” Chuck told Jake, who went to retrieve the pills.
“I’m okay,” I muttered. Physically, I was. All my symptoms were slowly easing back to normal. My head, however, was racked with embarrassment, confusion, and anger. “What the hell happened?” I breathed out, more to myself.
“Let’s get you on the EKG,” Chuck decided.
“Your quick recovery indicates a panic attack,” Chris answered. I downed the pills Jake gave me.
To Chuck, I said, “I’m really fine. Chris is right. It was just a little panic attack. We don’t need to do-”
“Delilah, can you tell me what the most crucial organ of the body is?” Chuck asked, adjusting the straps that held me to the stretcher as if afraid I might bolt for the woods. I’d considered it.
I huffed. “The heart.”
“That’s right. The heart,” Chuck went on, “and if someone you know was experiencing chest pains, would you advise them to ignore it?”
“No,” I breathed out as Jake set an oxygen mask on my face.
“Good answer,” Chuck smiled. “Let’s go.”
“Fine, but can we please just try and keep this quiet?” I asked futilely.
Jake laughed. “We’ll be as quiet as church mice.” The two loaded me up in the back of the ambulance, which had already gathered a nice crowd of the Peacock’s employees and guests. Wake and Lucius Kayne stood on the back deck, Kayne angry, as usual. “What the hell was she doing under the house?” he demanded. Wake shrugged.
“Want me to call anyone?” Chris asked, leaning into the back of the ambulance.
“No!” I spat back. “Don’t call anyone.”
Jake shut Chuck and I into the back, and now hidden from the growing crowd, I relaxed, slightly. Yellow started playing. I breathed out heavily, but didn’t move.
“Cool ring tone,” Chuck noted, readying the EKG. Chuck’s calm demeanor told me that he was going through the motions, but didn’t think there was anything wrong. I didn’t even hear the sirens. Having been through this before, I pulled my t-shirt off, and tugged the sheet up over myself. “Do you want to answer it?”
“Not really.” The music stopped.
Chuck chuckled. He strapped the cords of the machine around my chest, and moments later it was outputting. “Heart rate’s good. Everything looks normal.”
My relief was tainted. It almost would have been better for there to be a problem. At least then I could excuse what happened, like having a doctor’s note to get me out of gym class. Though everything about the attack scared the poop out of me, my symptoms’ sudden reversal told me that it was all in my head. I’d imagined a redheaded woman. I’d imagined a heart attack. What was next?
The only hope I held on to as we made the hour-long journey to the hospital was that somehow the incident would be kept quiet. I must have momentarily forgotten what town I lived in.
The dispatcher who took the emergency call, Missy Malone, belonged to the Helping Hands Prayer Circle. She recognized my name, as I am often on the prayer list, and in an effort to instigate a prayer chain, she called every member of the group, starting, of course, with Grandma Betty and Mamma Rose. They called my parents, Clark, my aunts, my cousins and even had the presence of mind to call Henry.
Also a member of the Helping Hands, Beverly Teague received a phone call and by the time the information reached her, I’d had a massive heart attack, stroke and epileptic seizures. A retired nurse, Beverly knew not to overreact and made a few phone calls of her own to find out what was really going on. She, of course, called Sam.
But, Sam didn’t need a call from Beverly to know that I was on my way to the hospital. Sam didn’t need to seek out answers. Somehow, he already knew.
Chapter Forty-One
Colossal Squid
Not to be confused with the giant squid – a completely different enormous squid – the colossal squid is the largest known invertebrate stretching to about fifty feet long. At twelve plus inches, its eyes are the largest ever seen. Along with size, something else separates the colossal squid from its giant cousin. Where the giant squid’s tentacles are lined with suckers and teeth, the colossal squid also comes equipped with sharp hooks. As if suction cup tentacles attaching to victims and biting them wasn’t enough, the colossal squid can rip into them, too. They suck. They bite. They shred.
My exploits had overleaped the giant category and moved into the colossal.
My hospital visit became reunion-like the moment they wheeled me in to the emergency room. Nurses who had attended me on my previous visits came by to say hello, and the doctor on call was Dr. Merck, the same physician who had treated me for both of my last traumas. And, within fifteen minutes of my arrival, most of my family followed. I could hear their buttery Carolina voices from down the hallway, pushing to get information out of the nurses at the main desk.
“Please, keep them away,” I muttered to Dr. Merck.
He laughed. “I will, for the time being anyway,” he returned. Dr. Merck ran tests and asked questions – all of which was better than dealing with my family – and I spat out everything, if only to delay the inevitable. It helped, of course, that he already knew about my recent brushes with death. Surviving a night at sea with a bleeding head wound and breaking my elbow during a police stand-off had earned me street cred around the hospital, but I wondered if it would be enough to overlook today’s visit – a complete farce in comparison to my previous injuries and anyone else’s in the waiting room.
&nbs
p; In the midst of testing, Sam arrived. He bypassed the waiting room filled to the brim with family and the nurses’ station and came straight to my room.
“Sir, you’re going to have to wait outside,” Dr. Merck said as soon as Sam came around the corner.
“It’s okay, Doc,” I cut in.
“You okay?” he asked me, and then turning to Dr. Merck, “Is she okay?”
“Fine,” Dr. Merck and I answered together, though I felt like my brain had been ripped to shreds. Dr. Merck went on, “I’m going to check on the blood work. Be back.” I sat up in bed, pushing the blankets off. Sam sat next to me, and my head dropped onto his shoulder.
Relief that he was with me and shame that I’d brought us back here again folded together. Fat, hot tears dripped from my eyes. Sam’s arm came around my waist while the other hand reached in his pocket. He handed me a handkerchief. My anxious brain filled up with ways to tell him how sorry I was. I had much to be sorry for, and of all people, Sam deserved the bulk of my apologies.
Still, as I was firming up what I needed to say, Sam beat me to it.
“I’m sorry, Delilah,” he whispered. “You’ve needed me, and I haven’t been here-”
“No,” I replied firmly. “That’s not what you’re supposed to say.”
He smirked. “What am I supposed to say?”
“I told you so. You’re a colossal idiot. I’m a colossal idiot for being with you. You’re the worst girlfriend ever… any of those would be appropriate choices.”
Sam smiled. “That’s what you want?”
“It’s what I deserve,” I decided. “And you should probably mention how much I’ve embarrassed you. This’ll be the whipped cream and cherry on top of the already impressive shame cake I’ve baked.”
“I don’t think that,” he said, “any of it. Besides, no reason for me to be hard on you. You take care of that all by yourself.”
“I’ve done the opposite of everything you asked.”
“But, it’s my fault,” he breathed out. “Not being upfront with you about my trips to Fayetteville put a wedge between us. It got your defenses up. We’re the same, you know. We both know how good we’ve got it, and we’re both terrified of losing it.”
“Maybe because we’ve already lost it once,” I agreed softly. He kissed my forehead, and pulled me closer. Sam was right, but I didn’t realize he shared that fear with me.
“What happened?” he prodded gently.
I breathed out a quick, but complete version of my activities over the last two days, and what set off the panic that landed me in the hospital. Sam just listened, and held me. The only judgement dished out was my own. “My crazy’s going to ruin everything.”
“Everything’s going to be okay.”
I breathed out heavily, resting in him and remembering how he’d always made me feel safe. I wiped my eyes on his hanky. “That day, our day on the beach, a voice inside my head kept whispering, this is it. Sam’s the one. I went home dreaming up plans.”
“What plans?” he urged with a grin.
I blushed, but shrugged. “Oh, you know. Plans of the white dress variety. We’d buy a house and have fat, tan beach babies with your blonde hair and blue eyes and my well, not sure what I’d contribute, but anyway they’d be beautiful and kind and not afraid of anything. We’d do yard work, and pick out wallpaper together. We’d wake up every morning and go surfing and we’d end up being the oldest surfers on the island. Teenagers would make fun of us, but secretly think we were awesome.”
I wiped my tears and tried to smile. “And the only thing that’s changed in fourteen years has been the wallpaper. I overheard what you said to Beverly, that you love me, but it’s hard to move forward if you have to keep looking back. I get it. If you’d had me at sixteen, then we’d have all those things already and life would be, well, beachy-cool. You have me now, but you got me broken-“
“We’ll still have all those things,” he assured me, “and we’ll know never to take it for granted. I don’t care how I have you, Delilah, just that I do. I’d choose you no matter what, whether you’re in the hospital or in jail or in over your head. If I had the choice between a normal boring life with someone else and five minutes with you in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy, I’d still choose you.”
I laughed, wiping my mini-faucets. “With my family, I’m sure it’ll feel like that sometimes. Probably within the next few minutes.”
Sam brushed my cheek with his fingers. “We’ll get through it, all of it. We have to for the sake of our fat, tan beach babies.”
The door swung open and Dr. Merck returned, metal clipboard in hand.
“The good news is that everything’s fine with your heart,” Dr. Merck began. “The symptoms you experienced appear to be psychosomatic.”
“Psychosomatic,” I breathed out.
“I’m diagnosing you with chest wall pain, but I believe you have a panic disorder, Miss Duffy. Maybe post traumatic stress, too,” he added, as if for good measure, “and what’s happened to you has brought it all to the forefront.”
I buried my face in my hands. “I feel so weak and ridiculous.”
“Shouldn’t,” Dr. Merck returned. “Your brain may have triggered it, but the symptoms were real: chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness-”
“Hallucinations?” I asked.
Dr. Merck gave me a confused look and his eyebrows shot up behind his wire-rims. “Did you experience hallucinations?”
“No, not today,” I returned, “but, I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Hmm, how many times?”
“Just once.”
“Then, I don’t think it was a hallucination,” Dr. Merck returned.
“So, what do I do now?”
“Carry on with your normal life,” Dr. Merck said. “Oftentimes, people with this condition will attempt to alleviate the symptoms by avoiding triggers. Avoidance perpetuates avoidance. This is how people become agoraphobic or develop phobias, like your aquaphobia. After your negative experience with the water, you avoided it which, in turn, perpetuated the fear-”
“Wait a minute. Are you saying that when my father forced me into the water after my near-drowning and made me learn how to swim,” I argued lightly, “that he was actually doing the right thing? I always thought he made it worse.”
Dr. Merck shrugged. “In theory, he did the right thing, but perhaps could have done it more gently. Baby steps are better than full-on immersion. You’re going to need to retrain your brain. Here’s the card of a well-respected therapist who can help. She’s wonderful, and she has office hours in Tipee one day a week.”
I glanced at the card. Dr. Deanna Dey. Let me pick your brain. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I winced.
Dr. Merck smiled. “She’s quite good. Has a warm sense of humor.”
“In the meantime, what should we do if she experiences this again?” Sam asked, leaning forward.
“If the symptoms are severe, like they were today, you should do exactly what you did,” Dr. Merck returned. “I don’t want you to ignore things like chest pains or shortness of breath. However, if you experience warning signs, like quickened heart rate or shaking, examine your surroundings. What is causing you to grow anxious? Ask yourself if there is any real threat and, if not, assure yourself that everything’s okay. Instead of focusing on the anxious thoughts, refocus your attention. Reaffirm yourself with positive words. Take deep, cleansing breaths, and talk yourself into calming down. And if the situation is too difficult, remove yourself from it.”
My brain was swimming. “Okay,” I muttered.
Dr. Merck smiled. “It’s a lot to understand, but that’s where therapy will really be your ally, therapy and a good support system. On the bright side, Miss Duffy, panic disorder is more common in people with high intelligence-”
“Great,” I scoffed. “Thinking too much has made me crazy.”
Dr. Merck grinned, and then added, “Might want to cut back on your caffeine intake and minim
ize stressful situations.”
“How? Did you see the waiting room?” I challenged. Dr. Merck laughed and left, promising the nurse would be in with the discharge paperwork.
The reunion with my family was brief and brutal. First came a round of hugs followed quickly by a round of interrogations.
“You may not have had a heart attack, but you sure gave the rest of us one,” my mother fumed. “The only time your dad and I get to see you is when you’re at the hospital. What the heck were you doing crawling under a hotel in the first place?”
“Um, I-I um thought I lost my earring,” I returned. “I’m perfectly fine now. No reason to worry, and I’m sorry I put all of you through that. I guess I didn’t realize I was claustrophobic.”
“As happy as we all are that it was a false alarm, Delilah, don’t you think you coulda held out on makin’ such a fuss?” Aunt Charlotte asked. “Did you bop your head while you were down there or somethin’?”
“No. And I didn’t mean to make a fuss-”
“Feels a bit like we’ve been called here for a case of the hiccups,” Clark chuckled. “Are you trying to earn some frequent flyer miles at the hospital?”
“Doc said she did the right thing,” Sam cut in, “and her symptoms were just as real as a heart attack.”
“Well, Clara’ll be happy to find out that you owe the hospital even more money,” Charlotte pointed out.
“Surprised she’s not here to encourage the hospital to add more charges,” I replied snidely. Both Clara and Candy were absent from the reunion.
“Eh, if you’ve seen one Delilah-in-distress call, you’ve pretty much seen ‘em all,” Charlotte laughed. She was certainly making up for her sisters’ absences. “Besides, it ain’t like this was a real trauma – just drama.”
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