The Not-Outcast(87)

My brain was working. The cylinders weren’t overfiring.

No booze. My only stimulant was caffeine.

Meditation.

Medication …

I stopped in mid-step.

Medication.

Shit.

I’d forgotten to take my meds this morning. And I was thinking, remembering…

I couldn’t remember the last time I took them.

Backup.

I thought my cylinders weren’t overfiring, but maybe I was wrong.

I’d forgotten my meds, and feeling rising panic, I hurried to my office. Dean was coming out of his office, his coffee raised in greeting to me, but I muttered a quick reply and went around him. I was scrambling by now. My heart was trying to pound its way out of my chest.

I sat down, dug into my purse and pulled out my bottle. We weren’t supposed to travel with them, but shit, sometimes I had to, and I was running down the days and the numbers of pills I was counting out.

I was five extra.

Five days.

Five, that meant I forgot on Sunday.

Where had I been on Saturday? At Cut’s. I slept over, and the morning had been fantastic, and that’s why I forgot. Monday I was at his place again. Tuesday…I watched the game and I’d been out and about. Melanie crashed over that night.

I just forgot. Every day.

Shit, shit, shit.

This wasn’t good.

Last time this happened, I spiraled. You forget one thing this day, another thing the next day. Your mind is moving a little bit faster, clearer, and you go with it, but you’re forgetting and you’re forgetting that you’re even forgetting. So you don’t remember what you’re supposed to be remembering. Made sense, right?

No. It doesn’t.

It makes no sense, because your fucking brain doesn’t stop and add in stress. Add in one thing you forgot from a perfect recipe where you have to follow anything to have a semblance of a normal day for someone else, and you’re exhausted from just trying to be normal that you forget one fucking thing.

The whole pile falls over.

Down.

You’re fucked and you don’t realize you’re fucked until you’re so fucked that it’s currently happening. And you’re beyond fixing anything because meds take time to get in your blood circulation. Everything takes time.

Time. Time. Time.

You don’t have time sometimes when you’re trying so hard to be normal, and—yep, I was spinning. Right now. Right here. In my office, and I had a staff meeting, and they’d know because I was recognizing the speed of my own thoughts.

Racing.

Speeding.

I was no longer driving the bus.

The bus was getting out from under me. I was more on the side of the bus.

I’d be a passenger in the bus, and that was always bad.

There goes the camper that my bus was pulling. The fucking mental struggles I had, all in that camper, all behind me, and I was pulling them along, but pretending we were all copacetic together. There it is. It’s unhitched and it’s passing me and we’re all in a busy city intersection and that shit is going to crash into someone else’s car, and I have no control over any of it, because if I wanted to keep in control, I needed to not forget my fucking pills five days ago!

The room was starting to go around me.

My blood pressure was steaming.

Sweat trickled down my spine.

My hands were clammy.

My chest was getting tight.

Oh great. Hello, panic attack. This was a great time for you to join this sad and pathetic party.

A knock on my door.

“Who is it?” I cringed, not knowing if my voice even sounded normal anymore.

“Hey.” It opened and it was Reba. She was frowning, but to be honest, I was more paying attention to the three people at the coffee machine, and the smell of whatever Boomer was cooking, and—what did she just say?

She was looking at me.

She’d already said it.

Crap.

“I’m sorry. What’d you say?”

I had to concentrate this time. Harder. The hardest. The hardiest of the hard…and I missed it again.

She was frowning, and then a bulb clicked on and she came inside.

Oh, that helped. A little.

But I could hear the voices outside, and the clatter of pots and pans, and was there a larger than usual amount of people here today?

I must’ve asked Reba that, and she was looking at me all concerned. Shit. She knew. I walked inside with an extra bounce in my step, thinking I’d been slaying this dragon, and now I was in full-fledged panic attack mode even before the worst of the worse got to me.

“Cheyenne.”

She was speaking calm, and low, and she totally knew.

“Yeah?”

“Are you off your meds?”

An unhinged laugh came out of me, and before I knew it, I was laughing like a banshee. Head bent over my desk and I couldn’t stop. Full freak-out here I come.

It wasn’t usually this bad, or so soon. The panic hysteria was extra because Cut was coming back today. This morning. He might already be here.

I think he was, actually.

He said something about a meeting downtown, too. Or was that tomorrow?

I should’ve texted him.

Had I already?

Had he not texted me back?

Was he getting sick of me already?