The End is Where We Begin by Maria Goodin (open ebook .txt) 📕

“I told you, I don’t know!”

But even as I’m shouting at him, I realise I’m lying. I suddenly recall Laura saying to me – years ago now – that I took a perverse pleasure in my own suffering.

“Maybe because… I don’t know… because why should I? Why should I get to breathe when he can’t? When he couldn’t? When he was gasping for air because I’d told him to run!”

“You didn’t kill him, Jay, the asthma killed him.”

I shake my head like he’s lost his mind.

“He hadn’t had an asthma attack in years. And then he gets scared and he runs and—”

“People get scared. And people run. He was on the football team, for Christ’s sake. He played every week and nothing happened. We went paintballing and nothing happened. We trekked for bloody miles in the pissing rain on that stupid school trip to the Lake District and nothing happened. But that night – maybe because of the stress, maybe because he was running – he had an asthma attack and unusually he died. It was a freak event. God, Jay, I remember reading about a case where a teenage girl with mild asthma just died mid-conversation with a friend. She was on the phone, suddenly stopped talking and fucking died. Sometimes these things happen and no one knows—”

“I know! I know that’s why it happened!”

“Who do you think you are? God?! You think you’re really that damn powerful that you are responsible for this happening?”

I walk slowly in a circle, running my hands over my eyes, through my hair. I don’t know what I think anymore. I see Michael lingering patiently nearby. I know he has nothing to add to this. I know he feels like he’s banging his head against a brick wall with me. Let someone else have a try.

“You don’t have to keep making yourself suffer,” says Tom. “I know you think you do, and I know I can’t change your mind about that – only you can change your mind about that – but I’m telling you, not as a friend, but as a medical professional, you need to go to your GP. These panic attacks that you’re having, along with the dreams, the intrusive memories, the self-blame… it could be that you’ve got PTSD.”

I look at him like he’s crazy.

“PTSD?”

“Post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“I know what PTSD is. It’s what fricking war veterans get.”

“It’s what people can get after a traumatic event, especially if they’ve felt extremely threatened, or witnessed a death. And it can start years after the event—”

“I don’t have bloody PTSD! It’s just been really stressful lately. I found out my dad’s not my biological father, my friend nearly miscarried right in front of me—”

“Okay, whatever, I mean, I’m just the psychiatrist. But, either way, you know that what you’re having are panic attacks, yes?”

“Yes, of course,” I sigh.

“And you know you can get help with those?”

I nod, thinking this is what Josh must feel like when I’m nagging him and he just wants me to shut up.

“But, of course, you need to want help,” says Tom. “You need to think you deserve help. And if you really believe that what happened was your fault, then there’s something else you’re going to need.”

“And what’s that?” I ask him with a weary sigh.

He holds his palms out, as if it should be obvious.

“Forgiveness,” he says.

Chapter 24

Intervention

“Where are we even going?” I ask.

Tom, sitting next to me in the driver’s seat, looks in his rear-view mirror at Michael, but neither of them says anything.

“This is kidnapping, you know that?” I grumble.

Tom smiles. “Think of it as an intervention.”

Wherever we’re going, they’ve obviously agreed it’s a good idea, but I have the impression that – as always – Tom is far more confident than Michael.

“Just don’t freak out,” says Michael behind me, sounding somewhat anxious.

“You trust us, don’t you, Jay Boy?” asks Tom, brightly, one hand casually on the steering wheel.

I stare out the window at the motorway traffic passing by.

“Like hell I do.”

I’m becoming a mess, there’s no other way of putting it. I’ve been sleeping so little that I’m starting to know what it feels like to be Michael, up all night in the dark and silence. His insomnia is helpful to me right now. We text into the early hours – meaningful stuff, pointless stuff, funny stuff – until he cuts me off and tells me to lie down and rest, even if that’s all I do. Michael’s work shifts mean he can sometimes nap during the day, whereas I have to be up at six thirty, and nobody should be rewiring some poor sod’s house after three hours’ sleep.

When I do dose off, I’m plagued by nightmares. I run too slowly. I shout but no sound comes out. I stand – fretful and indecisive – at a crossroads. I see fire and blood, hear cries of pain, and feel the weight of responsibility crushing me, squeezing the air out of me, until I wake, struggling for breath. I see threat everywhere, and at a time when I’ve promised to give Josh more freedom, I feel constantly torn and anxious.

I also feel angry. All of the time. Knowing how stressed I am, Rob invites me to spend some extra time with him in the gym, bashing it out. There’s a certain satisfaction in hearing the thud of my boxing gloves against his pads.

“Harder!” he barks at me. “Work it out of you!”

For a short while, when I’m coated in sweat and practically on my knees, there’s no room for thought or feeling. But the relief is temporary, and by the time I’m back home, the pressure’s already starting to rise again.

I don’t know what kind of intervention this is or what can possibly help me, but right now I feel open to just about anything.

We find a parking space some distance from the seafront, in front of a neatly kept bungalow with