Shadow Though it Be: An Excursus – Chapter 5
By the time early morning dawned, Elisabeth was in such a deep stupor that she did not hear Giles come downstairs and enter the kitchen. She did not wake when he put on the kettle to make himself a cup of tea, or when he moved quietly about the room with his cup, packing books into a satchel.
Giles found his keys and set them by his satchel near the door, then went to look at his sleeping charge. She was curled on her side, every limb precisely placed for maximum protection, the airline pillow guarding her chest. It would be folly to wake her by touching her.
"Elisabeth," Giles said quietly.
No response.
"Elisabeth," he repeated, louder.
She twitched, but did not otherwise stir.
He bent closer to her and spoke her name again.
She dragged her eyes open…saw his face, and cried out. He pulled back sharply, and watched as she twisted and sat up convulsively, hands over her mouth to stifle the strangled noise in her throat.
"Do you remember where you are?" he said anxiously.
Wet eyes shut, hands still covering her mouth, Elisabeth nodded.
"Will you be all right?"
She nodded again, opened her eyes. Swiped at the here-and-gone tears. "Yes. What's up?"
"Nothing very much," Giles said, apology in his voice. "I just thought I'd better let you know that I'm leaving for the shop now. I should be back in the later afternoon. In the meantime, make yourself at home; get some rest…."
She nodded and drew a long ragged breath.
"Right, then," he said. "I'm off now."
But he kept glancing anxiously at her as he went to get his satchel and keys. To reassure him, she sat up all the way and gave him a wave from over the back of the couch. He nodded back, smiling nervously, and disappeared out the door in a blaze of sunlight.
Elisabeth waited till she was sure he was gone, then stumbled out of her nest and down to the bathroom. This time she managed to avoid the mirror; it was better not to know.
She made herself a cup of tea, reheating the water Giles had left in the kettle. But once the cup touched her lips she felt the qualm of nausea she had been trying not to expect, and after a few attempts she gave up and dumped the tea down the sink.
She wandered out of the kitchen and stood surveying the main room. On the table still stood the whiskey bottle and their two glasses from last night. Elisabeth went sleepily to pick up the glasses; she took them into the kitchen and washed them along with the mugs she and Giles had used for tea. Dried and put away the mugs. Took the glasses and replaced them in the liquor cabinet with the bottle of whiskey. Then stood and looked around the room again.
You could tell the sun was shining brightly outside; though the window in the livingroom didn't face east, light was spilling into the room between the half-opened drapes, making the lamplight look dingy and yellow. Between the two sources of light, Elisabeth's head was beginning to spin painfully. More than anything she wanted to lie down again, but the restlessness had begun, and she knew it would do no good to lie down. If only there were something to do around here. The dishes were all clean. The bathroom, as she recalled, was spotless. Damn Giles. He'd even cleared off his desk before leaving for the shop.
Elisabeth wanted to leave: much as she had always adored Giles's apartment onscreen, it had now taken on a nightmarish larger-than-life quality that only disoriented her further. She knew this was a by-product of the ferment going on in her head, but there was no gainsaying the discomfort, and besides lying down, and straightening the house, more than anything Elisabeth wanted to go out walking, and keep walking, and not look back.
Not that even a full-blooded run would help her now.
But perhaps a bath would.
Elisabeth drew a full tub, peeled off her pajamas, and slipped gingerly into the water. She lay back, listening to the echoes, and ruminated fretfully on the quality of consciousness. The eye, she mused to herself, focuses on one point at a time, but the brain reads the points so quickly it seems as if all the points are focused at once. In its normal state consciousness was the same way. Unfortunately, Elisabeth's brain at the moment wasn't linking the points, and her thoughts were shards broken on the echoes of the bathroom. It was frightening no matter how many times one experienced it: Elisabeth hit the water feebly with the palm of her hand, cursing it under her breath.
The bath wasn't working. But at least she was getting clean. She washed her hair, splashed her face. Sat desultorily in the water until it grew tepid. Then she pulled the plug and reached for a towel.
Elisabeth wasn't going anywhere today. Not only did it seem vaguely treacherous to Giles for her to leave his apartment, but she was also now far too disoriented to go out into the world. She put her pajamas back on and went into the livingroom, where she decided to fold her blankets and pile them with the pillows on one side of the couch. She briefly debated turning on the television, decided the noise would only make things worse, and plopped down on the couch, dragging her bag toward her. Definitely past time to take some medication. She dug into the pack, feeling her way toward the bottom. Came up empty. She started looking as she dug. Still no luck. She sighed exasperatedly and dumped out the bag for the second time in as many days.
There was no medication.
It took Elisabeth some befuddled time before she made the connection. Her prescription bottles had her name on them. And everything that identified her was missing. Q.E.D.
Elisabeth swore aloud.
"Now what am I going to do?" she said to the empty apartment. As much as she hated the thought, only one answer was coming to her: she was just going to have to ride this attack out by herself. "Bloody hell," she muttered.
Brilliant. Just brilliant.
She sighed, her throat constricting as if in tears (though of course she was past tears now), and leaned over against the pile of folded blankets and pillows, without bothering to repack her bag.
And that was how Giles found her when he came home.
*
He couldn't have known it, but the door slamming behind him as he came in undid the progress that the last two hours of keeping still had made. Elisabeth winced, and attempted a hard swallow.
"Elisabeth?" he called. She heard him go into the kitchen looking for her, then come out and see her at last, curled rigidly on the couch. "Ah, there you are." He came toward her. "I'm thinking of ordering out Chinese. Do you like Chinese?..." He stopped. "Are you all right?"
She shook her head resignedly.
"What is it?" He moved closer to her, but she put a hand out to forestall him. In addition to everything else, at the moment he looked impossibly tall.
"What is it?" he repeated. "Schrodinger playing you up again?"
She shook her head. Her voice sounded tinny in her ears as she answered: "Not Schrodinger. Something a little bit more mundane and close to home. My own personal hell….You can order in Chinese. I can't eat."
He was plainly at a loss, and though she didn't blame him for looking blank, she felt vaguely furious that she should have to play this out with Giles around.
"Can I do anything?"
She shook her head.
After another chagrined look, he went into the kitchen. She heard him opening and shutting cabinets; the clink of a bottle coming out of the fridge.
Giles came out again. "Have you eaten anything today?"
"No."
"Well—you should try, shouldn't you?"
"Can't," she said.
And now, of course, he was getting annoyed. Not precisely at her; but that mattered very little right now. This was all part of it too. Elisabeth sighed, and swallowed down a wave of nausea.
He was coming toward her again. Elisabeth sat up dizzily. "No, don't," she said. "I really just need to be left—" And the nausea took over. She stumbled to her feet and down the hall to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her a little harder than she meant.
Several dry heaves later, Elisabeth sat shaking on the tile floor and laid her forehead on her updrawn pajama-clad knees. She was past cursing now; there was only the enduring. In a quarter hour this would begin again; and the quarter hour after that. Until she was worn out and drained of adrenaline.
There was a tentative knock at the door, and he opened it and sidled halfway in. "Elisabeth," he said.
She nodded without lifting her head, to show she was listening.
"Can you tell me what is wrong with you?" he said.
She lifted her head, keeping her eyes closed, and recited the shameful litany.
"Anxiety attack. Starts out with acute disorientation. Progresses to the physical. Takes hours or days to run its course, depending. My prescriptions identify me, so of course they're missing from my bag. So I'm just going to have to ride it out on my own."
He hesitated. "Do you know what's triggered it?"
Shame made her wax sarcastic. "I don't know. Maybe getting ripped out of my own dimension and sent to Sunnydale has something to do with it."
She put her head back down on her knees again.
He sighed. "Of course."
"Sorry," she grunted; but he made no sign of recrimination.
She could hear him thinking, and it made her own head hurt. "I haven't any tranquilizers, unfortunately," he said. "Perhaps you could take a brandy?"
"I'd love a brandy," she said, "if I could still swallow."
"Oh."
"I'm just best if I'm left alone to deal with it," she said, lying through her teeth. She was best, of course, with a friend nearby, close and even touching her; but such a creature was not to be had, and Giles was no substitute. She hoped she would not have to spell that out to him—it would sound like the merest ingratitude, no matter how she put it.
It was coming up again. "Please go," she groaned.
"I'll be nearby," he said, and disappeared, shutting the door softly and leaving her to her vigil at the toilet.
*
There is a moment in the height of an anxiety attack in which one confronts the miasma of intolerable hurt and restlessness, stares one's other, insane, self in the eyes, and—amazingly—survives, though not unscathed. It is at that moment that the body's reactions become perceived not as causes but effects, aftershocks radiating from that epicenter in the mind, waves slapping without mercy but with lesser and lesser intensity. By the time the cycle has worn itself out, one sits or lies insensible, waiting glassy-eyed while the world rearranges itself out of chaos.
It was dark night when Giles returned to the bathroom and softly opened the door to check on his strange guest. He found Elisabeth sitting propped awkwardly against the bathtub, bare feet splayed, hands astray on the floor. She looked up at him and blinked; and the film that separated herself from the world cleared a little.
"Bedtime?" he said.
She gave a small listless nod and moved, as if adjusting a rickle of bones, to begin to rise. Almost without thought she lifted her arm, found his hand there, took it, and used it to lever herself swaying to her feet.
Without any words he walked her slowly back down the hall to her nest on the couch, which he'd made into a bed again, and helped her into it. She collapsed wordlessly into a heap there, and lay, not sleeping, but quiet.
It was yet longer before her mind and vision cleared enough for her to make sense of what she saw sitting on the coffee table before her: two glasses, one short, one tall—one filled with deep amber liquid, one with clear. Furthermore, a man was sitting in the armchair across from her, deep in a book. She shut her eyes; and it was an index of her mending that she could smile a little, without being overcome by her pride.
After a moment she opened her eyes again and numbly snaked out a hand for the water glass. He saw it and glanced over; then returned his eyes to his book. He made no other movement, but she could see anyway that he had relaxed a little.
A few sips of water later, Elisabeth felt well enough to open her eyes fully and watch him read. "You look like Atticus Finch," she said in a whisper, "sitting there reading like that."
"Atticus Finch, really," he said quietly, turning a page as he glanced at her.
She turned over until she was mostly on her back, and pulled the covers up to her chin. "Atticus Finch," she said muzzily, "is the sexiest character in American Literature, capital A, capital L."
His crow's feet smiled before his mouth did.
"And it's not because of Gregory Peck, either."
"Hmmm."
"It's in spite of Gregory Peck."
"Haven't seen the movie," Giles said.
"Good movie. Book is better."
"The book is always better."
"Amen, brother."
He chuckled.
Silence. Giles turned another page.
Her head was clearing, slowly, gradually.
"You read Dante?" Elisabeth asked at length.
"Yes, I've read Dante."
"Purgatorio," she murmured. "Peccatum, peccatum, peccatum…the thing I like about the Purgatory is the hope with which everyone suffers. It is terrible, but it isn't meaningless." She reached for the brandy glass and took a sip; it was a very good brandy. "And one can always afford to be kind to one's neighbors," she went on, eyes half-closed. "Everyone is going upward, whether they're more sinned against or sinning. I'd quote some right now, but I can't remember any of it. All my Dante must be with my other half."
He was smiling. A full smile this time, almost-shyly directed into his book.
Elisabeth swallowed as much as she could stand of the brandy and put the glass back on the coffee table; then settled back into the nest he'd arranged for her. "Goodnight, Giles," she said.
And amazingly, fell asleep within minutes.
*
Chapter 6