You have to get off the bed and close the shutters, I instructed my frozen limbs, and even the voice in my head sounded half hysterical with fear. But I couldn’t move. Every joint felt fused together as though I’d been turned into a statue right there in my own bedroom. My eyes went fearfully to the open windows, the nearest one just a metre from where I lay. My obsession with lightning stories on the internet had uncovered numerous accounts of people being struck while inside their homes through open doorways or windows. There’d also been tales of people who’d been struck by lightning more than once. There were theories that these victims had somehow become lightning magnets, which had been crazy enough to make me laugh when I read it. But now, in the middle of the night, with the storm raging right outside my window, it didn’t seem nearly as funny. Had the lightning come back to finish what it had started?
With the next flash, I clawed at the sheet, drawing it up to my neck as though the thousand-thread-count fabric could protect me from a second strike. The storm wasn’t moving on, and neither was the panic attack.
I’m not sure what would have happened if the lull between the next rumble of thunder hadn’t been punctured by a different sound and a light that lit up the area around my bed in a far less threatening way. It was surprisingly hard to persuade myself to let go of the sheet and reach for my phone. My hand felt dead, as though the fingers that were fumbling for the mobile belonged to someone else. But they managed to pluck the device from the bedside cabinet and, after several clumsy stabs at the screen, they answered the call.
As luck would have it, I accidentally turned on the speaker, which was just as well as holding the device steady enough to talk into it would have been beyond me.
‘Hello? Ellie?’
It had been over a week since I’d heard his voice, but the relief I felt as it filled the bedroom was so great I immediately began to cry.
‘Rhys.’ His name was accompanied by a ferocious chattering of my teeth, so violent you’d be forgiven for thinking I was freezing to death instead of sweating more than any sauna could achieve.
‘Are you okay?’ From the concern in his voice, I think he’d already worked out that I wasn’t.
‘No. The storm. It woke me. And I can’t move. Or breathe properly.’
I don’t know if he’d taken a first-aid course in his past, or if he was just so incredibly good in a crisis that his instincts were reliable enough to work out what was happening to me.
‘Have you fallen? Are you injured?’
I shook my head fiercely in reply, before realising I needed to somehow summon my vocal cords into action.
‘No, but my heart is going so fast I think it’s going to stop.’
‘It won’t,’ he said, so reassuringly I almost believed him.
‘It feels like I’m going to die,’ I said, and even though I knew it was overly dramatic, it felt true in that moment.
‘I won’t let you,’ Rhys reassured me, and for the first time I felt the jackhammering within my chest begin to slow down.
‘It’s just a panic attack. It’ll pass in a minute or so. Just breathe slowly and deeply. In... and out.’ I did my best to follow the pace of his instructions. ‘Keep thinking about every breath and then find something in the room to focus on.’
Still breathing like a beginner, as though inhaling and exhaling was an alien concept, I glanced across the bedroom and saw the white jeans I’d worn that day.
‘Okay. Now focus all your senses on whatever it is you’re looking at. Think about how it feels when you touch it. Does it make a sound when it’s moved? Does it smell?’
‘I hope not. It’s the clothes I was wearing today.’
His laugh was the best medicine I could have hoped for.
‘There you go. You made a joke. You’re going to be fine.’
And I realised he was right. My heart rate was slowing down and the weird numbness in my hands and feet had almost gone. I’d been on a precipice, about to tumble into a bottomless abyss, and amazingly he’d talked me back from the edge.
‘How do you feel now?’
‘Foolish.’ It was the most honest answer I could give him.
‘Don’t be. Not even for a second. Foolish would have been not having a reaction to something that tried its best to kill us a little while ago.’
I really liked that ‘us’.
‘How did you know to phone me? How did you know I’d be panicking?’
I heard a long exhalation, as though he wasn’t altogether satisfied with the answer he was about to give.
‘To be honest, I don’t know. The storm woke me too, and I lay here for a few minutes, telling myself I was being irrational, but something kept compelling me to call you, to check you were okay. I just hoped I wasn’t going to get an earful of abuse for waking you up in the middle of the night.’