Cataclysm

2. Chai

"What time is it?" I ask Vanna, in a rush.

"It's 6:30. I had Jase bring you back a panini. Are you hungry?"

I shake my head a bit before standing up.

"I need to leave in half an hour. I need to shower. I'm sweaty and gross."

She joins me at my tiny kitchen counter, and I watch as her eyes fall on the amber colored pill bottle I'd neglected to put away. I quickly grab it and envelop it in my hands.

"Are you gonna tell me what happened? If that's yours that's one thing. If it isn't, then we're gonna have to have a much longer talk."

"It's mine."

"Was... was that an anxiety attack?"

I nod.

"I see someone for them... for—well, for a load of shit, really." I breathe. "This one is for the bad ones that just pop of out thin air. It's short-acting."

"You're on more?"

Her tone is curious, not judgmental.

"I'm on loads of shit," I laugh sardonically. "One for anxiety, one for depression, a beta blocker for my shitty-ass heart, and then I'm on birth control and I don't even have the excuse of needing it to y'know, not have a fucking kid, but instead because my hormones are shit. I'm a human Walgreens."

She frowns.

"Don't say that."

"Why? It's true," I scoff. I watch as my phone screen lights up with a reminder for my meeting this evening. "I've gotta take a shower. I have a meeting at some fucking coffee shop I don't even know the location of in an hour."

Which was causing even more anxiety. It was a daily struggle to not just give up and rot in my fucking bed. Simple, stupid shit even sent me into panic mode. Keeping appointments—literally just going to them. Making them. Grocery shopping. Anything I wasn't used to doing routinely that had a slight risk of me making a dumbass of myself, which was literally anything.

Like what I was about to do.

Pre-medicated and pre-therapy me wouldn't have dared to even think about taking the job I was about to take.

But here we are.

Putting the final nail in the coffin.

"A meeting? With who?"

"It's about the TA position for Dr. Mo."

I keep my answer evasive.

"I'll drive you. Where is it?"

I'm halfway to my bedroom.

"Oliver's?" I answer. "I'll find it."

"I know where that's at. I don't mind to take you."

"It's fine, Vanna, I can—"

She shows up in my doorway.

"You still have Xanax in your system," she says. "I will drive you."

I roll my eyes while my back is facing her.

"It's never killed me before."

"Doesn't mean it wouldn't now."

She holds firm.

"I wouldn't get that lucky," I mumble under my breath, and before she can ask me what I said, I let her have her way. "Fine."

I shower silently and thoughtlessly—something that was common after taking my Xanax. I hypothesized it wasn't an after-effect or the drug, but rather my brain just being too completely and utterly drained to do shit.