As Rex Alexander paced around the executive suite of his new office, the leather soles of his brown Christian Louboutins weaved out a series of irregular loops against the flat gray carpeting. Each erratic circle carried him from the vintage wood buffet against one wall to the black leather couch against the other. Each oblong pass took him between the mahogany desk and the large plate-glass window that overlooked Michigan Avenue, the greenery of Grant Park and, beyond that, the silent beauty of Lake Michigan.
But Rex paid no attention whatsoever to the world around him. His wide eyes, the thin sheen of sweat on his forehead and nose, and the jittery movements of his hands all betrayed his emotional struggle as he rushed about the office and gathered together different supplies—pens and pencils, a pad of paper, folders stuffed with printed documents, his cell phone—and put them into the open briefcase on his desk. It took considerable effort; more than once, his trembling hands dropped the items as he tried to pick them up, carry them, and slide them into the black leather case.
After several minutes and with his tasks completed, Rex closed the messy briefcase, then walked back over to the buffet and looked at his reflection in the walnut-framed mirror above it. He hissed with frustration at the appearance of the knot in his tie, yanked at it with his fingers until the material hung loose and uneven around his neck, then tried to re-tie it. He let out small grunts of frustration with each flip of the tie, then finally groaned out loud and put his hands in the air before he pressed his palms against his damp forehead.
"Rex."
Sophia Craft stepped into the office behind him and put a hand on one of his shoulders. Her palm felt cool and delicate against his white cotton shirt, yet with one strong and sure gesture, she turned him around and began to adjust his tie for him. She stared at him with obvious concern.
"Oh, Rex," she sighed as she studied his strained features. "Why now?"
"It's not like I put this on my calendar, is it?" he snapped back. "I don't have any control over this, you know. Hence the name, 'panic attack.'"
Her look of sympathy didn't change. "I know," she replied in gentle tones as she continued to fix his tie.
"Damn it," he cursed through his teeth. He ran one hand through his hair and looked away, but remained in place as she straightened his wardrobe. "I'm getting worse, you know. Before, this only happened in court. Now it's before court. A whole hour before. I guess pretty soon, I'll just wake up and start freaking out in bed."
"Just calm down," she advised. "Relax, take deep breaths…"
She finished with his tie and pressed her hand against his heaving chest. Rex tried to listen to her, to obey the gentle pressure against his ribcage and to slow his breathing, but one glance at his watch notched his tension up again.
"I can't," he panted. "I just… I can't calm down."
"Did you take your Lorazepam?"
Rex gave a firm shake of his head. "No. I couldn't. If I take 'em, I'll walk into court just fine, but then I'll start dozing off mid-session. I need to go in straight. No drugs."
"Well, you can't exactly work like this—" she began.
"You think I don't know that already?!" he screeched at her, his voice breaking as his nerves strained his vocal cords.
Sophia flinched, and Rex winced and put a hand on her arm in a silent apology as he moved past her. He gathered up his briefcase, slipped into his gray suit jacket, then headed for the door of his office.
"Remember your meditation techniques," she said. She followed him to the door of the office, then paused and put one hand on the doorframe. "Center yourself!" she called after him as he walked off down the hallway.
In the near-empty passageway of the courthouse, Sophia's words to him ran through his mind and slipped through his numb lips as he echoed her statement.
"'Center yourself,' she says," he muttered. "All that yoga crap, all that New Age crystal stuff, and 'Center yourself' is the best that I've got to go on. Great." He stopped and held out his arms. "There," he said in a louder voice. "I'm centered in the hallway. How 'bout that?"
From behind him, the voice of Bruce Sweet made him jerk forward in surprise and turn around.
"There he is, talkin' to himself." Bruce gave him a wink, and the two men began walking side by side towards the courtroom. "Looks like Rex is losing it again."
Rex pointed at him. "Don't start with me right now, Bruce. Or I'll lose it all over you."
"You already did that at Christmas, remember? Peppermint schnapps."
"You shouldn't have dared me to chug a carton of eggnog."
"Yea, well, hindsight. Twenty-twenty, and all that." Bruce pursed his lips. "I had to run my coat through the dry cleaners four times before the smell went away, you know. Thanks a lot."
Rex hunched his shoulders, and his entire body shivered. With a hum of concern, Bruce reached out and put one arm in front of Rex to stop the man's almost manic pace.
"Rex, are you seriously going to walk into Judge Lapier's court like this? She'll ream you. And by that, I don't mean—"
"Yea, yea, yea." He waved Bruce back a step. "Just keep your perverted judge fantasies to yourself this morning, okay? I'm a little… stressed right now."
"You don't say. This is 'a little'?"
It became Rex's turn to purse his lips. "I haven't passed out yet," he pointed out.
"Eh. Good point."
Bruce put one arm over Rex's shoulder and steered him over to the window, and the two men looked outside at the city's busy morning activities. The window overlooked Washington Street, which teemed with the usual rush hour traffic, a slow but steady run of cars and buses on the three-lane thoroughfare. Rex forced himself to take deep breaths, which helped him to regain some small measure of control.
"Let me try to help," Bruce offered.
"Great. There goes what was left of my mental health."
His friend gave him a playful thump on the back of the shoulders, then dropped his arm. "Tell me what's bothering you the most about this right now."
Rex snorted. "Oh. You mean, aside from the fact that Judge Lapier won't let me lawyer by proxy, and stand back and let the client do it, like every other Judge? So for the first time in two years, I'm having to walk into a courtroom and defend a client, even though every time I do, I've ended up on the floor? You mean that?"
Bruce shook his head. "Beyond that. What is it about being in court, specifically, that's getting to you?"
"Oh, I don't know." Rex put on an air of mock casualness. "Maybe it's because all it'll take is one slip-up, and Judge Lapier will poach my balls and have them for breakfast. Or maybe because I'm going up against the Frandler brothers, who decimated me in court the last time we met. Or it could be that every time I sit down in that chair, I sweat so much, the bailiff thinks I wet myself."
Bruce smiled. "So don't sit down."
"Oh, you're a riot."
"Come on. Remember what your psychiatrist said."
Rex let out a low groan. "Oh, do we have to bring him up? I think I'm tasting eggnog again."
Bruce took a quick step to the side, winked and gave Rex a wry grin, then moved back.
"Do what he suggested," Bruce told him. "Just find one thing that really gets to you, the one thing that sets you off more than anything else, and deal with that. Tackle one thing at a everything else ride."
"One thing," Rex mused. "One thing." After a moment, he flapped one arm in the air and puffed out a breath. "Fine. Here's one thing. Eyes."
"Eyes?"
"Yea, eyes. Everyone's eyes. Whenever I start to lose it and I look around, I just see everyone staring at me. Like they know what's coming, but also like they want it to happen. Like they want me to crack up in front of them. Again. And I hate that."
"Okay!" Bruce replied in an enthusiastic tone. "Good! Now you have somewhere to start. You just avoid eye contact. Don't look directly into someone's eyes."
"That's impossible," Rex countered. "Never mind the cross-examination process. One wrong turn to the left or the right, and the next thing I know, I'm looking into someone's face again. I can't help it. And then I realize that I'm doing it again, realize that I'm failing at what I'm doing, and my anxiety level shoots through the roof."
"And I get to pick you up in the emergency room. Again."
Bruce's phone vibrated in his pocket, and he reached in, checked the screen, then shrugged and looked at Rex again. Rex didn't even have to ask. The slight glow of excitement in Bruce's blue eyes told him all he needed to know. He'd seen that look in his friend's eyes too many times over the years to have to bother asking who had called.
"Sorry, man. My ten o'clock is early and wants coffee before we head to court."
"Mmm hmm."
Rex nodded, but he knew damned well that Bruce meant that one of his clients, a female (and probably one with attributes that ran more towards the physical than the mental), wanted a little Bruce in their morning cup of black coffee.
"Gotta go," Bruce crowed. The jovial tone in his voice rubbed Rex the wrong way, but Bruce took no notice of the renewed tension in his friend's face. "Take care of yourself, okay? Keep it under control."
"Yea. Sure."
Rex waited until Bruce made it around the corner before he crossed his arms and sneered at the empty hall.
"'Center yourself.' 'Keep it under control.' Thanks, everyone. Great advice."
His usual restlessness quickly settled in, and Rex began to walk the opposite way down the hall. As he approached the courtroom, he began to chew at his thumbnail in agitation, and continued to gnaw steadily at the tip of his thumb as he studied the few people that occupied the hallway. Two elderly women made their way slowly along the corridor in his direction. Several feet behind them, a blind woman swung and tapped her cane against the smooth concrete floor. A paramedic sat outside one of the courtrooms, his cell phone pressed to his ear, his gaze on the floor and a look of concentration on his face.
Rex suddenly stopped his pacing, lowered his hand and smiled to himself as an idea came to him.
Judge Evelyn Lapier promptly entered the courtroom as the bailiff called the court into session, then sat down and looked across the courtroom at Rex. She frowned, and her gray-blue eyes took on a sharp glare of disapproval.
Rex Alexander didn't notice. He sat with a gentle smile on his face and several layers of gauze wrapped around his head, one hand on the desk in front of him and the other looped through the strap of the blind woman's cane. The woman sat in the first row directly behind him. Beside Rex, his client sat comfortably slumped into the wooden chair, also wearing a slight smile on his face.
"Mr. Alexander," Judge Lapier began, "under certain circumstances, I am partial to moving a case and handling it on a different day. Temporary blindness would qualify as one of those excuses."
"No, Your Honor. We can proceed."
"You seemed fine when I saw you in the parking garage earlier," she pressed. "Was there an incident of some sort that occured in the past two hours, or is this another one of your courtroom antics?"
"Your Honor, I can assure you," he replied with all the confidence and swagger of his old days, "this has nothing to do with my client, and this won't interfere with my handling of the case."
Judge Lapier drew in a slow breath, shuffled a few papers around, then nodded to herself with pursed lips.
"All right, then, Mr. Alexander. You may proceed."
Rex broke out in a huge grin and began his opening statement.