Fix You by Carrie Elks

Author:Carrie Elks [Elks, Carrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carrie Elks
Published: 2014-02-10T05:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

February 9th 2010

Hanna wasn’t sure how she’d ended up sitting in the corner of a dingy bar, pouring the dregs out of a bottle of wine. Her wine glass was well used, marred by lipstick and finger marks, red droplets clinging to the rim. She nodded at the barman to order another, figuring she may as well end this day the way she had begun it.

In a complete state.

She hadn’t even realized the significance of the date until she was on the subway train, rocking on her tiptoes so her fingers could grasp the rail to prevent her flying into a fellow commuter. The man next to her was reading the New York Times, folding it up into quarters so he didn’t disturb anybody else, and it was then that her eyes had flicked over the numbers on the corner of the page.

It had been years since she’d last had a panic attack, but Hanna recognized the symptoms straight away. Her heart raced, her breath became harsh and she felt as if she was about to fall down and convulse on the dusty train floor. It seemed like the worst place in the world to have a seizure. It was all she could do to hang on to a thread of sanity before the train came to its next stop.

She didn’t bother to look to see where she was, just ran out through the sliding doors and up the platform, panicking again when her card didn’t open the barrier the first time. Her hands were shaking hard, the feeling of nausea bubbling away at the pit of her stomach, and she only cleared the exit by a couple of feet before she doubled over and pebbled the floor with the remnants of her breakfast.

The morning rush hour had carried on around her. People walking into the station entrance gave her a wide birth, assuming she was either inebriated from the night before, or was some sort of mad woman, muttering to herself as she leaned against the dirty brick wall of the subway station. She was a small inconvenience—probably forgotten by the time they’d stepped onto their train—a tiny speck in the myriad of eccentrics that populated the great city.

It was times like this that Hanna wished she was still in London. She would have called up Natalie, or Tom, or maybe caught a cab to Claire’s to throw herself into her arms. She would have been plied with sweet tea and hugs until she cried herself out and braced herself to face the day.

Instead, she was alienated in Manhattan, with a cell phone filled with numbers of work colleagues and acquaintances, but no friends that she could confide in, or ask for help. Nobody who would understand exactly why this day was so hard for her.

The time passed faster than she’d thought possible. Breakfast in a diner, and hours spent browsing in a book shop were followed by an early dinner in the corner of a dingy bar in Soho.

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