“Get in,” Otter told me roughly, speaking above the Kid’s high-pitched chants of please please please.
I did, knee knocking against the side roughly. I slid down the side, already reaching for the Kid.
Otter handed him over, and
I could feel the sweat through the layers, soaked through and slick. The Kid wasn’t speaking, his throat closing, eyes wild and bulging. He was clawing at his own throat, leaving red streaks against his neck, and I trapped his arms at his sides, sitting against the tub, holding the Kid in front of me, his back to my chest, his legs stretching out, where they jerked and kicked against mine.
His head twisted and turned against my shoulder, mouth open and teeth bared as he tried to suck in air. I leaned my forehead against him and whispered in his ear the art of breathing, something we’d been taught a long time ago, telling him that we were fine, we were safe, we were together, and we weren’t going to make him leave, he could never leave us, of course he couldn’t. He was here, we were here, and I needed him to breathe. I needed him to take in a breath and hold it, then let it out and hold again. He could do it, I told him, because I believed in him. I believed in him more than I did in anyone else. I knew what he was capable of, what he could be, and he’d just stumbled, just gotten a little lost. But we’d found him again, and he needed to breathe and breathe and breathe.
Otter was on his knees beside the bathtub, a big hand wrapped firmly around the Kid’s ankle, holding him still, saying everything without speaking a single word. His thumb brushed up and down against the knob of the Kid’s ankle where his jeans had ridden up.
It went on, as these did with him. People who don’t have panic attacks can never understand just how bad they can be. The mind works against the body, and even though you know you can breathe, you’re convinced you can’t, and there’s nothing you can do about it until it passes. You’re trapped in your own head until it lets you go. That’s what the Kid told me. He said it couldn’t be explained, that no matter how smart he was, once it got its claws in him, he was at its mercy until it finally released him.
There’d been bad ones before. After Mrs. Paquinn. Dom’s birthday party. The wedding invitation. But I didn’t think there’d ever been one like this.
It felt like it went on for hours.
But I kept whispering in his ear, and Otter kept his hold on him, and eventually there came a great, gasping breath and the Kid tensed full body against me before he collapsed and began to sob bitterly against my chest.
“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’m—”
“I know,” I managed to say. “I know.”
HE SLEPT deeply in the ruins of his room. He’d laughed a little hysterically at the sight, clothes strewn everywhere, drawers hanging haphazardly, the hole in the wall. Otter had pushed his mattress back up onto the bed, pulling the comforter back and letting him crawl into bed, freshly showered and dressed in sweats. He’d turned away from us almost immediately toward the wall, pulling the comforter up to his shoulder and burying his face into the pillow.
“We’ll clean this up tomorrow,” I said, but he didn’t answer.
HE WAS angry. For a long time. He was selfish and rude and essentially a fucking asshole who I wanted to punch in the face. He said things he didn’t mean. He told us to go to hell, that he never wanted to see us again. That he hated us. He hated us so goddamn much. He didn’t mean it, he said after. He never did. He was sorry, sorry, sorry.
He refused to go to rehab. He said that wasn’t for him. He could do it on his own.
I reminded him he wasn’t on his own.
He glared at me for that but nodded slowly.
Later, he whispered in my ear that if I just believed in him, he knew he could do it.
Detox was something I would never wish on anyone. The less said about that, the better. He didn’t go cold turkey—we’d been warned against that—but he wasn’t given the amount he’d taken before, wasn’t given anything but the Klonopin, and then it was only half doses. But there were night sweats and vomiting and more time spent in the bathtub. The panic attacks were swift and vicious, almost coming without warning and lasting what felt like hours. His eyes would be wide and blank, skin slick and trembling, and he’d be gasping for air, face turning red, then purple, and there was nothing we could do but hold on until it passed. There were times I wished his lack of oxygen would cause him to pass out. He never did.
He was supposed to be taking some summer courses. We’d emailed his advisor about a medical emergency. She’d responded immediately, letting me know there were situations that we needed to discuss about Tyson’s standing at Dartmouth. Otter was there during the days, and I was there at night, given that I’d already agreed to teach some summer classes and couldn’t get out of it. We switched back and forth, and it was draining and tiring, and my colleagues asked me if I was okay, my students eyed me warily, but I pushed through it because I had to. We had to. There was no other option. And we’d already decided that if it didn’t work, if he was getting worse, we’d force him to go where he needed to go.
But it too passed.
He came out on the other side weak and shaking, eyes sunken and skin tinged yellow. He forced some soup down on a Saturday, hands trembling, but when he looked up at me, his gaze was clear, and he grumbled that he wasn’t going to drown in the soup bowl and that I could leave him alone for a little bit. God, why did I have to be so annoying?
I nodded, running my hand through his hair, and had gone out into the hallway and let Otter gather me up in his arms as I broke just a little.
He did go to an addiction specialist. Sometimes we sat in. Other times, we couldn’t. But we’d be in the waiting room, either one of us or both of us every single time. Without fail.
And we kept our promise. He didn’t do a goddamn thing without running it by us first.
He hated us for it, I think.
But I didn’t give two fucks about that.
“We didn’t get this far to crap out now,” I reminded him after he’d snarled at me for asking where he was going when he’d headed for the front door, backpack slung over his shoulder. “We’ve been through too much shit for you to do anything else like this again.”
He stared at me for the longest time before he muttered he was going to meet his study group at the library. He sent me a selfie later on showing an arched eyebrow and people sitting at a table with books spread out in front of them.