a pack of drunk guys looking for hassle, but never this thick miasma of nonspecific fear polluting the air, corrupting everything into a threat—every shadow could be hiding an attacker, every walker could be waiting for his moment to lunge, every driver could be an instant from flooring it straight over my body, how would I know and what would I do? I got about thirty meters from my gate before adrenaline was juddering me like an electric current, I was panting for breath, and I turned tail and gimped as fast as I could back to my apartment, which although it hardly counted as safety did at least have manageable boundaries that I could keep an eye on. I didn’t try again. Instead I walked up and down my living room, for hours on end, shoulders tight, hands dug deep into the pockets of my dressing gown. I can still feel the terrible rhythm of it, step and drag, step and drag, every pace driving it home all over again, but I couldn’t stop; somehow I believed that as long as I was up and moving, no one would break in, I wouldn’t have a seizure, at least nothing would get worse. Sometimes I kept walking until gray light filtered around the edges of the curtains and outside the birds started chirping.
When I did force myself to go to bed, I was, predictably, having a hard time sleeping. While I was in hospital my parents had thoughtfully had a monitored alarm installed, with a panic button and all (I could picture my mother looking around at the damage, knuckles pressed to her mouth, groping for some way to go back in time and stop it happening), and while I saw their point and knew it was probably a good idea, part of me wished they hadn’t. The panic button was a rectangular thing about the size of a matchbox, in a brisk medical shade of red, and it was set near my bed but low down, just out of reach. I spent hours frozen in bed, holding my breath and straining to catch the follow-up to some minute click or scrape, heard? imagined? about to explode into hoarse shouts and crashes? should I dive for the button now and risk crying wolf and not being taken seriously when the danger was real, or should I hold off for ten more excruciating seconds, ten more, ten more, and risk being too late, scrabbling frantically to cross those unbridgeable few inches as the blows crunched into me? The button developed a life of its own, swollen with symbolism, a single chance at salvation pulsing redly in the corner and if I blew it too soon or left it too late then I was lost. I developed a habit of sleeping balanced precariously on the edge of the bed, with my arm hanging over so my fingers would be as close as possible to the button. Once or twice I fell out and woke up on the floor, yelling and flailing.
Texts from friends, from my cousins, from work connections. Hey dude how you doing, barbecue at my place Saturday week are you on for it? . . . Hi, not to hassle you but you might want to pick up when my mum rings, otherwise she tells your parents that she thinks you’re unconscious on your floor—Susanna, with a little eye-roll emoji thrown in. Memes and gifs and bits of internet chaff from Leon, presumably meant to give me a laugh. Hi Toby, this is Irina, I heard what happened and just hoping you are feeling OK now and we will see you soon . . . I mostly didn’t answer, and gradually the texts got sparser, which left me unreasonably miffed and self-pitying. Richard rang; when I didn’t pick up, he left a message telling me—awkwardly, delicately, with real warmth—that everything at work was absolutely fine, the show was going beautifully, a major collector had bought Chantelle’s sofa assemblage, and that I shouldn’t worry about anything, just concentrate on getting better and come back to work whenever I felt ready. Texts from Sean, from Dec, will we call round? how about tomorrow? at the weekend? I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t feel like I had anything at all to contribute to a conversation, and I couldn’t stand the thought of them leaving in a cloud of inarticulate pity, waiting till they were well away from my door before they