Jaime: Is she okay again?
Maya: Yeah. She is fine.
Jaime: What happened? Did she have a panic attack or something?
Maya: Just ask Vic, Jaime. I don’t feel like talking about this right now.
Jaime: He won’t talk to me about it either…

Maya’s POV
I put my phone down with a sigh. I had no idea how I wanted to answer this. All I actually wanted was to drop the topic of Naira’s tourettes attack yesterday. Mainly, because I felt like this was partly my fault.
I was a goddamn psychologist and I didn’t even know how to handle someone having an attack. Of course, Tourettes was a neurological disorder, so it was practically out of my discipline. But she had those attacks because of stress, which means they could be stopped when the stress was stopped. And stress is a psychological thing, which means I should’ve been able to stop it.
Why couldn’t I? I had no idea and that was exactly what kept me up all night.
Six years of studying people’s mind and I still didn’t know what to do. I sucked at helping people, which was basically all I ever wanted to be good at. This was why I had this lousy job at that concert venue, and why I wasn’t successful as a psychologist. I always thought people at clinics turned me down because of my appearance, but it was just because I wasn’t good enough.
Suddenly I had the urge to scream, but I knew better than to wake up Naira now after what she had been through yesterday. I moved my hands over my face in the direction of my hair and pulled at it for a while until I felt the skin on my head hurt.
I then took my hands away from my head and looked at the alarm clock next to my bed. It was seven am already, which meant that I had to get ready for work. We had a big band that was going to perform, so we needed to do the preparations very early.
I stared across from me while I was mentally forcing my exhausted legs to move. It was almost impossible, it felt like they were made of stone. I hadn’t slept all night so that was a cause of my extreme fatigue, but I knew there was more to it.
I turned to look at the calendar on the wall, seeing when the last time was I drew a red dot on one of the dates.No one understood why I put those dots on my calendar and I wouldn’t ever tell them. They would just make the wrong conclusions.
The last dot was on December 3rd. That was three days ago. Jeez, I that was a record. I couldn’t find the energy to be happy about it though. Or maybe I just wasn’t satisfied yet. Would I ever be?
I knew deep down, that if I wanted to get through the day, that I had to eat at least something. This was the longest I had ever gotten without eating and I had ran a few miles every day. So a little something couldn’t hurt, right?
I stretched out my painful limps and stumbled towards the mirror. I looked at myself from top to toe. I was still not what I wanted to be. I couldn’t stop now. This was the only thing I did well in my life.
I let out a sigh and pulled the biggest shirt I could find out of my closet. I took out a random jeans and pulled a pair of boots out of a corner of the room. I didn’t look in the mirror, but just marched out of the room while putting my hair up in a bun.
Every movement hurt. I had had joint pain before because of not eating, but it seemed heightened this time. Well, I just needed to get through it, I guess.
I looked around the living room as I came down, but it was empty. Naira was still in bed, like she should be this early. The last thing I wanted to do was waking her up after my lack of usefulness yesterday.
The road to my work was a blur. I kept saying to myself that I wouldn’t pass out, because I never had before, but I kept zoning out anyway. I never was the safest driver, but you really didn’t want to cross me on the road today.
Somehow I was mentally stable enough to say ‘hi’ to my colleagues, but I had no idea if it actually sounded convincing. All I really wanted to do was lay down in my bed, but I didn’t, because I couldn’t. There was a lot I needed to do.
I walked into the cafeteria to make coffee for James, not really seeing where I was walking so I bumped up to a table. I thought no one saw it so I just stumbled over to the coffee machine.
I was halfway filling the cup when I suddenly heard someone say: “Are you okay, Maya?”
He didn’t speak very loud, but I still jumped a little at the sound. Everything was just sensitive right now. Maybe I was dragging this too far? No, I needed to make it through this.
I slowly turned around and forced a smile to Nick, my colleague. “Yeah, I’m fine.” I said and my voice cracked a little.
He grinned at me. “Hungover again?” he asked.
I turned around to take the coffee from the machine. “Yeah.” I said. It was better than telling him the truth. Now, I was thinking about that, I almost never told anyone the truth. I lied to everyone. Even Naira. I suddenly realized how selfish that was.
I walked out of the cafeteria and headed for James’ office. He didn’t look up from his paperwork when I opened the door. I put the steaming paper cup on his desk and wanted to head out, but James spoke up before I could. “You could try to show a little bit more interest in your work.” he just said, still not looking up.
I leaned on the door opening, because I felt like my legs would give in otherwise. Normally, I would start a discussion with my boss. I would try to prove he was wrong in such a way that it was insulting, but that I didn’t say anything wrong so he couldn’t fire me. But now I had hardly energy to obeye. “Yes sir.” I said as loud as I could, but it still came out as only a whisper.
‘Two hours past, still six to go.’ I thought to myself as I left his office and was heading to get the vacuumer. I was trying to encourage myself, but it took so much effort. At this point breathing took too much effort already.
I was halfway the hall, when the room around me started to spin. I blinked my eyelids a few time over my dry eyes and luckily it went away.
I noticed I was standing still, so I started walking again, but that didn’t help at all. It only brought the spinning back. The world just couldn’t seem to stand still. I noticed I was moving towards somewhere, but I couldn’t feel my legs anymore.
My head started to feel incredibly light. Like all what was inside had fallen out. I bumped up to an amplifier. Somehow I had gotten backstage the stage. I felt a shiver go through my body. I was so cold. It was hard to focus on anything else.
I felt a hand on my shoulders and within seconds a face appeared in my vision. It took a while for me to notice that it was Mike. His eyes were big and it seemed like he was inspecting me. He moved his mouth, but all I could here was muted sounds. Like he was on the other side of a window.
And then everything went dark. A comforting painless darkness.

*

Slowly the bright white light pierced through my eyes. It was the only thing I noticed, through my eyelids that were almost closed.
At first everything was peaceful and feelingless, but then a sharp pain went through my head. It didn’t really seemed to go away. I also felt something sting in my right wrist. Like someone had been making a hole in it.
I had a different feeling in my left hand. I felt a warm, strong hand embracing it. Even though my head and my wrist hurt, the foreign hand in mine was the feeling that caught most of my attention.
All these new findings started to connect in my head and I suddenly realized I was in a hospital. The pain in my wrist was from an IV. I couldn’t remember anything after arriving at work, but I must’ve passed out during the day. And the hand… I hoped it was Jaime’s. I hoped he’d be there to support me and I hoped he hadn’t found out what made me pass out. If he only knew, I don’t think he would still want to date me if he did.
I forced myself to open my eyes and my vision slowly changed from a blurry mess of colors to a white hospital room. I followed my left hand with my eyes and saw that it wasn’t Jaime’s hand, but Mike’s. For some reason I wasn’t really disappointed. Mike was always able to cheer me up.
He was scrolling on his phone with his left hand and didn’t seem to notice that I was awake. I carefully squeezed his right hand and his eyes immediately met mine. A smile crept over his face. “Hey, you’re awake.” he said as he put his phone away and moved his chair closer to the bed without letting go of my hand. I was happy he didn’t. It felt like an anchor I was hanging on to.
I opened my mouth to respond, to thank him for being here, to ask him what happened and where my family was, but nothing seemed to come out of my mouth except for a cracking sound. I somehow managed to mouth ‘water’ to him and he stood up for second to take a glass of water from the bed stand, releasing my hand for a while. He gave me my glass and I took it with my right hand, so I could take Mike’s hand in my left one again. Luckily he didn’t complain. I just needed someone right now.
“What happened?” I asked and my voice still sounded a bit dry. I could practically guess what happened, but I still needed to hear it.
Mike took my glass from me and put it next to him on the floor. “I was going to visit you at work, because I meant it when I said that I wanted to make it a tradition.” he said and he grinned a bit. I felt a short chuckle come up when I thought about the time Mike came to my work with a bag of burritos.
His face was a little more serious when he continued. “I couldn’t find you at first, but I eventually bumped up to one of your colleagues. I think her name was Katy. But well, she told me that you were acting really strange and it almost kind of seemed like you were on drugs or something. So I started to worry and I eventually found you next to the stage. It honestly looked like you were a walking corpse. It seemed like you didn’t hear anything I said to you. You’re eyes were all empty and you were incredibly pale. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen. And then you passed out. So, I called an ambulance and they brought you here.” he explained.
I tried to take all of the new information in and slowly it started to connect with memories. I remembered Mike’s blurry face, I remembered bumping up to an amplifier, I remembered making coffee for my boss. “How did you get in here? You’re not family, so why didn’t the doctors send you away?”
He got a red glow over his cheeks. “I might’ve casually bribed a nurse.” he said softly.
And that made me laugh. I guess the IV was giving me energy to do that. “That’s why we are friends.” I said. “But really Mike, thank you for being here. You shouldn’t have.”
He got some sort of glow over his face I didn’t recognize. “It’s okay. That’s what friends do, I guess.” he said and he traced his thumb over my hand. “How do you feel? Do you have pain?”
I slowly shook my head. “No, I’m just a little tired, but I guess that’s what passing out does to you.” I said, but I saw that he still looked worried. “I will be okay, Mike. I woke up way too late this morning so I didn’t have a chance to eat or drink today. Mix that with a lot of stress at work and you get this.” I added and I gestured to the hospital bed with my right hand. I felt bad for lying to him again, but I just couldn’t tell him why I had passed out. What would he think of me if he knew? God, that would be so embarrassing.
“Okay good. I will just have to trust you that you’ll tell me if anything is wrong.” he said. “I called your parents and your brother by the way. I tried to reach Naira, but she is in the middle of class right now.”
“And Jaime? Is he coming?” I asked moving my head up a little. It was out before I knew it. I really hoped he was going to be here. I just needed to see his face and I wanted him to tell me I was going to be fine.
Mike nodded. “Yeah, I called him too. He said he’d be here as soon as he could.” he said.
I leaned back in my pillow again with a satisfied feeling, a smile growing on my face. Me and Mike were silent for a while after that. I kind of needed the silence to process all that had happened. I didn’t want to pass out ever again, but I also knew that I would do it all over again if I could. It would be worth it in the end. I just needed to somehow be proud of myself for once.
The door of my room opened and a certain spiky-haired man carefully walked through the door. “Hey, are you okay?” he asked as he came closer and sat down at the right side of my bed. I felt peaceful now that he was here. “Sorry, that was kind of stupid to ask.” he added.
I grinned and smiled at him. “I’m fine, Jaime. I just passed out. It happens to the best of us.” I said and he shot me a smile back.
A silence of a few seconds followed until Mike broke it. “I think Jaime has it all under control now. So, I’ll just give you guys some privacy.” he mumbled and I felt him let go of my hand.
I saw him walk away without looking behind and I kind of had hoped he would’ve kept holding my hand. Yes, Jaime was here now and I felt better because of him. But I needed Mike now too. I just needed him to comfort me. He had a certain talent for it.
I filled the emptiness of my left hand, by taking Jaime’s hand in my right hand. He took our intertwined hands up to his face and slowly pressed a kiss on my hand. “You will be fine, Maya.” He said. And for that moment, I believed him.

Notes

This is Nicky's chapter, but she's going on an awesome trip, and so decided to let me post it. So, I don't have much to say other than that we are both pretty excited for what's going to happen next. Any guesses as to what it is?

- aweirdkindofyellow