Pull Me Close: The Panic Series

by Sidney Halston

  Seeing the trendiest club in all of South Beach empty without any music and strobe lights is eerie. I look around for a moment before he tips his chin toward the other side of the enormous first floor of the club. Assuming it’s his signal to follow him, I hesitantly will my legs to move.

  At another set of doors, he once again punches something into a keypad. As he swings the door open, I see three people walking toward us. “We were just heading—Hey, I know you. You’re that chick from the other night. Katie, right?”

  “Yes. Well, Katherine, but yes.” I clear my throat. “Hi, Matt,” I say from behind Nico and wave shyly.

  Matt reaches for my hand, startling me, and pulls me around Nico. “Katie, these are our friends Georgette, or Geo for short, and David. Guys, this is Katherine, Nicky’s friend.” He says that last part looking right at Nico and then winks cheekily.

  Wearing a black suit, a white shirt, and a beautiful lilac tie, David extends his hand, but instead of taking it, I quickly wave and smile awkwardly. He shrugs and pulls his hand back.

  Geo, on the other hand, pulls me to her by my upper arms, almost causing me to fall forward, and gives me a kiss on each cheek. Flabbergasted, petrified, and unsure, I just stand there like a statue, but if she notices she doesn’t react. Instead, she starts talking to me as if we’re old friends in a thick French accent I can barely understand.

  “Darling, you are coming to eat with us, no?” She lets me go and steps back and claps her hands in delight. Geo is the epitome of chic—she’s dressed in tight black pants that stop at her ankles, high nude heels, and a canary-yellow blouse made out of thin material. Next to her, I feel like a slob, and I want to scream at myself for not at least putting on a little bit of makeup. But there’s nothing I can do about it now, and she doesn’t seem to care one way or another because she continues talking. “Nick, darling, you didn’t tell us you were seeing someone. And so pretty.”

  Before Nico can respond, she looks back at me and runs her fingers through my hair. “I’m a hairstylist, you know. If you ever want a new style, you tell Nicky, he tells me, and I fly right over. So much hair!”

  With flaming red cheeks I avert my eyes because I don’t know how to react. It’s a lot to take in. She’s a lot to take in.

  “I’ll meet you guys at the restaurant. Give me a few minutes. Let’s go, Katherine,” Nico says, and begins walking. Apparently he’s done with the conversation.

  “It was nice seeing you again, Matt. By the way, thank you for, uh…” I glance at Geo and David, who are both eyeing me, and turn my face quickly back to Matt. “For, uh, all your help the other day. You were very kind.”

  “No sweat. You ever want to come back for a drink or something, let me know. On the house.”

  That’s probably never going to happen, but it’s nice of him to offer. “Thank you, Matt. And Geo, David, it was very nice to meet you both.” Smiling, I quickly turn to follow Nico before Geo tries to touch me again.

  I’m trailing behind Nico and he doesn’t talk or look at me as he walks briskly down the long zigzagging hall. There are countless pictures of famous musicians and celebrities who’ve visited Panic hanging on the walls.

  Surprisingly, I don’t feel nearly as anxious as I did a few weeks back, although the fact that I’m not sure how to get back to my car and I don’t know the code to open all these doors raises my anxiety level significantly. It makes me feel trapped.

  I’m so deep inside my head—willing myself to breathe slowly, to understand that my fears are irrational, to picture myself on that stupid little beach—that I don’t notice we are standing in front of those dreaded elevators.

  “Oh God,” I whisper. “Do you have stairs? Can we talk here? I mean, I’m—”

  “Afraid of elevators. Yeah, you told me at your apartment. Plus, I noticed when you fainted at the sight of it last time. Come on.” He points to a door off to the side. “Emergency stairs. The only thing is, we never use them, and the lights don’t work.”

  “They don’t?” The panic begins again. What the hell? It’s like a cosmic joke. All my triggers are surrounding me in one shitty afternoon. I’m locked in a place I can’t leave, and I have two choices: an elevator or a dark stairwell. I don’t know if I want to cry, laugh, or faint.

  He takes a step toward me, which surprises me, and holds out a hand. “Here. Give me your hand.”

  I reach out with one of mine and allow him to take it.

  “It’s fine. Just one set of stairs,” he says.

  I nod and follow him into the stairwell. Well, it’s more like I allow him to drag me behind him. Surprisingly, he’s patient as I slowly follow behind him, squeezing his hand as if it’s a lifeline. “I won’t let you fall.”

  “I know.” And I do. If there is one thing I know, it’s that this man—the same man who is completely repulsed by me—won’t let me fall. I know this in the depths of my soul; I don’t know how I know it, but I just do. When I hear the sound of his hip hitting the metal bar on the door, causing the heavy door to swing open and light from outside to flood in, I finally breathe.

  He releases my hand and walks into a room with a couch, a humongous television set, and an even bigger bar. “Sit.” He motions to the couch. I sit down, crossing my legs and sitting up straight. He pulls a chair from the table, sets it right in front of me, and sits. “Talk.”

  My hands are still shaking and I’m seeing spots in my peripheral vision. I didn’t have a panic attack, thank God. I’m actually proud of myself. Nevertheless, my anxiety levels are high. Looking down at my lap, playing with a loose string from my cut-offs, I try to summon up words I’ve never said out loud. Dr. Cole has said them to me. But I’ve never had reason to say them to anyone.

  “I don’t have all day. You’ve got five minutes,” he says tersely.

  I look up and see him staring pointedly at my shaky hands. I shove my hands under my butt. “I don’t do drugs,” I say for the millionth time. “I’ve never done a single illegal drug in my entire life.”

  He sits back and crosses his legs, ankle to knee.

  “Wow, this is hard,” I say with a humorless laugh. “Like I said, I have PTSD. I thought I suffered from a major anxiety disorder, but it turns out I misdiagnosed myself, and what I have is PTSD.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I guess I just liked that you left me that note, but then you came back and saw me trying to walk to the stairs, and I know what was going through your mind. I don’t want that to be how you think of me. Not that you’re thinking about me or anything but…” I shake my head.

  “I know what you mean, Katherine.”

  “Look, it’s just…I had something very stressful happen to me, and as a result I’m really scared most of the time. I’m scared of, well, everything, it seems. And what happened to me at Panic, what you saw, was me having a panic attack. Yes, I did take a pill; the other half was in my purse, which you found. But I wasn’t abusing drugs. It’s something I take to calm my nerves, and it was prescribed to me by a doctor. And even then I don’t take it often. What made me act that way was not the pill, it was me. The stress of being here was what got to me.”

  He leans forward, his bulging forearms on his lap. “So, PTSD and panic attacks?”

  “Yeah.” With another self-deprecating laugh, I say, “I’ve never said that to anyone before.” Except my shrink, but I don’t feel the need to share that last part.

  He sits back again and doesn’t speak for far too long.

  Finally, to fill the silence, I say, “Because I get these panic attacks, I’ve avoided leaving my house. I hadn’t set foot outside my apartment in a long time. It’s just…you were nice enough to help me when I was in a very vulnerable state, and I didn’t want you to think I was a junkie.”

  For some reason, he still doesn’t quite seem convinced.

  “Okay, well, you weren’t that nice, actually,” I rush on. “Nonetheless, you didn’t hurt me, and you coul
d’ve. You could’ve left me in a hospital, which scares me to death, or in an alley, which also scares me to death. There’s a lot of things that could’ve happened, but none of those things happened because, well…you helped me.”

  He still doesn’t say anything. I think he’s assessing me, but the twitch in his jaw isn’t setting me at ease.

  “It’s an affliction, my condition. I don’t want to be this way. I’m in therapy, I’m trying to get better.”

  “Why would you come to a crowded nightclub if that’s true?” He still doesn’t believe me.

  “I came because it was my sister’s engagement party. And it wasn’t easy. I tried really hard to psych myself into believing I would be fine, and since I don’t get panic attacks that often anymore—mostly because I don’t do things that make me panicky—I stupidly thought I’d be okay. As the time to leave got closer, I started to freak out and popped a pill right before I left, which made me a little bit calmer, enough to get in a cab and continue to delude myself I was going to be okay. That lasted about ten minutes, the time it took me to get into the club and find my sister and her friends. For the next fifteen minutes, I tried to ignore the signs that would have saved me the embarrassment of passing out. And as you and your giant bouncer know, that didn’t work out so well for me.”

  “And your sister was okay with you going to a club knowing this?”

  “She doesn’t know. No one knows.”

  “No offense, Katherine, but you’re a mess. If they don’t see you got problems they’re fuckin’ blind.”

  Wow, that’s harsh. I swallow down the lump at the back of my throat and stand. Slapping me in the face would’ve hurt less. I don’t know what I expected. I hadn’t really thought it out, I guess. “Well, anyway, that was all. I just needed to say that. And again, thank you for your help. I’ll get out of your hair now.” His chair is close to me and I have to sidestep him to leave.

  I want to cry. Every time I’m around this man, I leave feeling mortified. But I’m proud of myself for coming here and for telling him, so I’m not going to cry and ruin this moment, which was so monumental for me. I don’t need his approval—or anyone else’s, for that matter—to feel good about myself. Plus, I’ve shown him too much already; I don’t want to add tears to that.

  He reaches for my arm, but I pull away.

  “Wait. That didn’t come out right,” he says, his voice rough.

  “No. It’s fine. You’re right. I’m a fucking mess. I just…it’s hard to hear it when someone else says it. But whatever you think about me is not going to change the fact that I was able to come here today and do what I sought to do.”

  I try to hold my head up high as I hustle out of the room and am confronted by the dark stairwell. At this point I’m not sure what’s worse: the darkness or the humiliation. I close my eyes and push the door open.

  “Katherine, wait.”

  I continue to move forward and feel around for the railing. Then, slowly, I take a careful step down. I hesitate when I feel a strong hand grasp mine, his big fingers entwined with my small sweaty ones. Slowly he leads me downstairs and opens the door. Once we’re out of the stairwell, though, he doesn’t let go. He continues to hold my hand through the maze that leads back to the main floor of Panic.

  “I’m sorry I said that,” he says at last. “What I meant was that your condition is kind of obvious. How could they possibly miss it?”

  “I avoid them. Besides, you didn’t know, so it wasn’t that obvious, actually.”

  “But I immediately knew there was something wrong.” He looks down at me. “So, what? You just don’t see them?”

  “Something like that.”

  Finally we reach the front door of the club.

  He leans against the doorframe at the front of the club. He is wearing jeans and a T-shirt and looks younger then he’s looked the last few times I saw him. “It must’ve taken a lot of courage to get here today, didn’t it, Katherine?”

  It warms my heart he actually understands that. “It did.”

  “Aren’t you lonely?”

  For some reason I feel compelled to answer his intrusive question truthfully. “Sometimes. I don’t have any friends.”

  “Maybe if you get better, you can come by and have a drink.”

  I give him a noncommittal nod.

  “Will you be okay driving home?”

  “Yep.”

  “So, really, it’s not drugs?” he asks once again.

  “It’s really not,” I say. Obviously that doubt is still there.

  “Since you’re being so honest with me, I should be honest with you. I don’t want to think the worst about you.”

  Which means he isn’t convinced. But there’s nothing more I can do. Today I’ve done more than I have in a long time. I’m proud of myself, regardless of what Nico thinks of me, and I find I have a big smile on my face. “Then don’t.”

  Five

  Chest Pain

  Nico

  “Why was Katie there?” Matt asks as soon as my ass hits the chair at the restaurant. “I filled them in on Katie and what happened at Panic,” he tells me, tipping his chin toward Geo and David.

  “Why didn’t you bring her?” Geo chimes in.

  Signaling to the waitress, David says, “Would you let the man order a drink before you start the inquisition?”

  The waitress comes by, and I ask for a scotch on the rocks and look over the menu. “You’ve been here a dozen times, you always order the same shit.” Matt takes the menu from my hand and waves his hand for me to talk.

  “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  “Why was she there? She’s kind of jumpy, but now that I’ve seen her again, she doesn’t look like a junkie.”

  Putting the tumbler down, David says, “Tell me she’s not like that other one. Where do you pick up these women?”

  “She didn’t look like a druggie,” Geo adds.

  “I’m not sure if it’s appropriate for me to tell you this. It’s her business to tell.”

  The three of them look at me like I’ve lost my mind. We are very good friends, and we don’t hide much from one another. I relent. “Okay, fine,” I say. “She says she has PTSD and it gives her panic attacks.”

  “That’s why she’s a user?” Geo asks.

  “No, woman, she’s not a user,” I reply, then look at Matt. “She wasn’t using that night. She was having some sort of anxiety attack, or so she says.”

  “You sound weirdly happy about that, brother,” David says, reaching for a dinner roll.

  I shrug. “No, not happy. Just…surprised, I guess.”

  Geo points at me and waggles her finger smugly. “No. I know that face. It’s a smile. It makes you happy she’s not a user.”

  “What kind of asshole wishes for someone to be a drug addict?”

  Matt leans forward and looks me in the eye. “What kind of asshole wishes for someone to have some sort of mental disorder?”

  Okay, he has a point. She’s still a mess. But one is something she actively chooses to do and the other one is a medical condition. Well, I know that drug addiction is a real disorder, and my sister has told me a number of times addicts can’t help it. The rational part of me understands that, but the other part of me can’t get past Naomi fucking my friend and stealing my money. “I’m not happy she has anxiety,” I say, but they continue to look at me knowingly. I drop my head to my palms, elbows on the table. “Okay, fine. Maybe I’m a little relieved.”

  “So how bad is this anxiety thing?” David asks.

  “Not really sure. But it seems bad. She doesn’t leave her house.”

  Geo looks at me warily. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “She never leaves, or if she does, she doesn’t do it often.” I reach across the table, grab Matt’s drink, and down it as he scowls at me. “Never. And I think she’s also afraid of being touched because she puts her hands out a lot. Like a shield. And she’s afraid of elevators.” Their eyes are bugging out.
“Oh, and of the dark too, I think.”

  “Oh my God. I touched her! A lot!” Geo looks mortified, and David chuckles and rubs his palm down her bare arm.

  Ignoring Geo’s little breakdown, Matt says, “Nick, that’s not bad—that’s fucking awful. Why would she come to a crowded club?”

  This is why we’re twins—that was my exact question. “Because it was her sister’s engagement party or some shit, and she took something to calm her but it didn’t work. Anyway, she came all the way here because she didn’t want me to think she was a user.”

  “Pretty brave,” David puts in.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Looking concerned, Geo asks, “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” Geo asks, her voice higher-pitched than usual. “She’s beautiful. You should’ve asked her out.”

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “You don’t believe her, do you?” Matt asks.

  I spin my fork around on the table. “I don’t know. I mean, PTSD? She’s not in the military as far as I know. It’s probably bullshit.”

  “Why is it bullshit? Because Naomi was a liar doesn’t mean every woman is,” David says.

  “You have to call her, Nick,” Geo chimes in.

  “I don’t know,” I say hesitantly. “She was nice. Most women…they just want shit from me. She’s very…” As I try to think of the right word, I take a sip of my own drink. “Real. She’s very real.”

  “I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not,” Matt says, snatching my drink and finishing it off. “Well, she’s hot, I’ll give you that. Maybe you can fuck the anxiety out of her and she can fuck the bad mood out of you.”

  Geo and David snort out a loud laugh.

  “You’re an asshole, you know that?” I signal for the waitress to bring us another round. “I’ve had enough crazy women to last a lifetime. I’m not interested in another one.”