The Citrus Syndrome

9 ; crowd

Crowd

Wilson

The first hallucination comes while I'm eavesdropping.

I'm outside Marly's office, listening to Cat. She's talking to Taya, quiet enough that I can only catch snatches of the conversation. "Can't come home . . . I know . . . I swear I'll . . . No, don't . . . stay where you . . ."

After a few minutes, she whispers, "I love you. Okay, bye," and that's the end.

Just after she hangs up, the world goes hazy in front of me. I sink down to my knees, then fall to my side. My head cracks against the floor, sending a wave of pain through my brain. My vision dims.

Then all at once, I'm not in the hallway anymore. I'm stuck between two strangers, wedged into a room full of people. My heart rate increases, sweat sliding down my forehead. Calm down, I tell myself. It's not real.

But it feels real. The crowd presses me on all sides, squeezing my lungs into thin tubes that I can hardly breathe out of.

A familiar face appears. In my distorted vision, I can just make out Isabelle's blurred outline. "Belle!" I cry. She looks up, her face alight with recognition. We start to run toward each other, but the crowd closes around us.

I hear screaming -- familiar screaming. Isabelle is being crushed under the weight of hundreds of bodies, trampled into the ground. I shriek, trying to push my way to her, but instead, I'm pushed down to the ground. I feel feet on my back, crushing my ribs. All I am is pain. My entire body is coated in sweat.

I yell along with my wife, screaming for her. The crowd of faceless strangers stomp us down until our jaws hang lifeless from our faces, until our vocal chords are flat and dry. Each time I lift my head, another foot crashes down on it. I thrash, sobbing in pain. They will not stop. The crowd will not have mercy.

Suddenly, another face I recognize appears. She's right in front of me and screaming. "Wilson!" Cat shrieks. Behind us, another blob of the crowd is approaching. I try to warn her, but it's too late.

They march over her body, shoes ripping hair from her head and skin from her body. She screams, trying to cover her face -- but a foot comes down on her hand with a crunch, breaking the bones. She spits blood which lands in front of me. A stranger walks through the blood tracking it over my hair and onto my back.

I want to die. I can't hear Isabelle anymore, I think she's dead. Cat looks like I feel: terrified and suicidal. She's clawing at her throat as if she can tear it open with her fingernails. A stranger crushes her other hand.

I reach for her, grabbing her limp fingers just before another foot crushes my hand. I feel her dead hand in mine, trying to lift my slack jaw. I can no longer see the walls. We are covered in people. They are stacking themselves on top of us, closing us into a dark cave of bodies. Every spot of light is replaced by a black-clad torso.

I can't breathe. I can't see Cat. She screams, but stops suddenly. I think her jaw has been crushed too. And then, the pressure increases. My face is ground into the floor and I can't lift it up.

"Wilson!"

I hear the voice and realize that we're back. This is the hallway again, I can breathe again. My jaw is back in place and my fingers still work. And Cat sits in front of me, shivering and glaring like I am the devil.

"Cat!" I ignore her glowering and throw myself at her. I'm too relieved to care that her body stiffens when I hug her. Oh, thank god we're alive.

After a moment, she hugs me back. Resting her chin on my shoulder, Cat mutters, "I hate you so fucking much."

I can't stop crying. My body still aches from the strangers and the virus. I might throw up if I speak.

"You gave me the fucking virus," she hisses in my ear. She hugs me harder, hard enough that it hurts. And she knows it does. "You dipshit. What were you doing outside the door?"

I want to answer her, or tell her to let go of me, but my voice shakes so much, all that comes out is, "Agh . . ."

She digs her fingernails into my arms, so hard that she draws blood in several places. I cry out in pain, trying to pull away. But she has me in an iron grip. "I can't believe this," she said. "I'm gonna friggin kill myself."

"Don't," I manage to croak out. My voice is coming back. I shudder. "That was horrible."

Finally, Cat releases me. She sighs, throwing herself back against the wall. She looks so pale -- bleeding as well. I wonder if it's from her own nails during the hallucination. "Wilson, what are we going to do?"

I'm glad that she's not mad at me anymore. Angry Cat can be lethal. "I don't know," I tell her.

She looks straight at me. "I'll kill you if you kill me."

My eyes widen. "What? Cat, stop thinking like that. We're not going to commit suicide."

"It wouldn't be suicide," she mutters. "It would be murder." Catherine doesn't say anything for a moment. She curls up in a ball, rocking herself back and forth. "I had no idea it was this bad," she says. "I watched the test subjects, I read all the reports. I wrote the goddamn pamphlet, for christ's sake. But I didn't know . . . Oh, god, Will. I just want to die before this gets any worse."

This isn't the first time Cat has confided in me, but this time, I find myself shocked. It feels like I've stumbled across the key to the vault that holds her innermost thoughts. I just stare at her, waiting for her to continue.

"The hallucinations, they're your worst fears. That last one, that was crowds, right? You're scared of crowds, I'm afraid of suffocation. God, that was horrible."

I venture to ask, "Why are you scared of suffocation?"

To my surprise, she actually answers. "When I was a kid," she starts, "I used to have this dream where I was drowning in people. It scared me so much that I couldn't sleep anymore. So my dad took me to a therapist, and he said that the people represented . . . like, high expectations." She pauses, tucking her head between her knees. She does that, sometimes, when she's feeling faint. "He said I needed to relax and stop pushing myself so hard. It worked for about three weeks, then I was back at it again."

I stare at her. She looks so upset, I want to hug her again, but she'll probably kill me. While she's being open, I decide to dig deeper. "Do you still have that nightmare?"

She nods. "I wake up screaming or sweating or both. I've seen a therapist about it multiple times, but no one can help me." She sighs, bringing her head up from her knees. "What about you? Why are you scared of crowds?"

I recall that day, out on the street with Issy, Ben and Carrie. "Well," I say. "There was this riot in the street a few years ago, when Isabelle and I were out with the kids? And people started trampling each other, pushing us and shoving us around until we all lost each other. It was just the most horrible feeling -- I could hear Ben screaming for me, but I couldn't see him. Somebody pushed me to the ground and the stampede trampled right over me. All I could think about was the same thing happening to Is and the kids."

"Oh," is all Cat says.

Perhaps my story isn't quite as dramatic as her's, but the event traumatized me, my daughter as well. She still comes into our room at night sometimes, saying that she had the dream again. Isabelle and Ben got over it. Carrie and I did not.

"I can feel it crawling around inside me," Cat whispers.

"What?"

"The Citrus Syndrome. My baby's all grown up. Now it's gutting me from the inside."