Chapter 4: Breakdown unseen
The door closed and there was silence now in the apartment. She went around double checking all the locks making sure that each window was shut and that there was no one in the apartment with her.
Time, she told herself, time was what she needed and then everything would be okay. She just wanted to be alone or so that is what she thought. She walked back to the bedroom and curled up on the bed once more. She was physically and emotionally tired and was finding it hard to keep her eyes open as they kept wanting to drift shut, but when they did the images that were before her eyes haunted her something horrible. She couldn't get rid of him, his voice, the fear, it had her within it's grasp and it was not letting her go.
She moved from the bedroom to the couch and back to the bedroom, time passing slowly as she drifted in and out of her restless sleep. Nowhere did she feel completely safe and it was almost as if she was waiting for him to come and get her but yet all during that day he never once appeared except in her dreams.
An hour on the couch, then an hour in bed that was how the day passed for her. She could feel that she needed to sleep, knew that she needed to sleep yet when she closed her eyes to get that precious sleep, she was immediately woken up. Her dreams had never been so vivid and so realistic as they were now.
She rolled over now the numbers on the clock blaring 12 am into her tired eyes. She pulled the blankets back up over her head and tossed and turned trying once more to get comfortable. No position seemed to help her to get back to sleep. She got up from the bed and padded quietly into the kitchen where she made herself a cup of hot tea in hopes that that would settle her back to sleep.
2 am came and went and still no going back to sleep, she flipped aimlessly through channels infomercials were about all that was on at this time of the morning. She walked over and curled up in a chair with a book, thinking that maybe she could read herself to sleep. At 6 am with the sound of the alarm clock in her bedroom going off she closed the 200 page book with only 50 more pages to go.
She uncurled her legs from underneath her and headed now into the bathroom turning on the shower and letting the steam fill the room. Glancing in the mirror she saw the bags that were starting to form under her eyes with the dark black circles that were the tell tale sign of little or no sleep.
She undressed and climbed in letting the water cascade down over her body. Trying desperately, almost too desperately to relax and remove those thoughts from her mind. She needed to get back to work, or so she thought, but yet that thought scared her almost as much as the images had. Her temper was short and her mood awful, she hoped that she didn't take her frustrations out on some unsuspecting patient, hazards of the ER.
She climbed out of the shower now, still wound tighter than a drum, and feeling like she was about to explode. There was anger in her that hadn't been there before she climbed into the shower and she wasn't sure where it was coming from. She dried off and went to find her clothes so that she could get on her way. She thought that she was probably just upset with herself for the way that she had snapped at Carter yesterday, he really hadn't done anything to upset her that she could put her finger on. He just happened to be the one that was in the line of fire when she burst.
She got dressed and headed now for the door, it was almost seven and she was going to be a little late if she didn't get a move on it. When her hand hit the door a wave of nausea swept over her and she had to run back towards the bathroom for fear of throwing up on her living room floor.
After 10 minutes in the bathroom, nothing coming up but air as she gagged and coughed Abby somehow managed to recompose herself enough to find the strength to try it again. This time when her hand touched the door she didn't have the urge to throw up. She locked the door behind her and headed for the stairs. She got as far as the top of them when her knees started to shake and her hands began to tremble. Slowly each step a little heavier than the one before she managed to get down the two flights of stairs so that she could see the front door of the building.
She took a deep breath letting it slowly out as she walked towards it. "It's just the front door Abby it's not going to bite you." She said out loud to herself and she kept willing herself to move forward rather than to bolt right back up those stairs.
She was sweating bullets right now as she approached the door, she could feel the walls of the building starting to slowly close in on her as she continued. A trip that normally would have taken her maybe two minutes now taking closer to ten. "Almost there." She said, "just a few more steps and you've got it."
The door came open and Abby about died right there and then. She felt her heart jump up into her throat and she struggled to breath now. She couldn't move, there was no running backwards up the stairs and she couldn't bolt out the door.
"Good Morning Abby." It was Miss Anderson from upstairs that was coming back home from running to the market.
"G… g… good morning." Abby managed to stutter out still shocked.
"Off to work," Miss Anderson asked as the frail older woman headed up the stairs now towards her own apartment, "you have a good day."
Abby just stood there. Her feet where rooted in the spot where she had been standing and she was willing her heart to stop pounding in her head. She closed her eyes leaning against the wall now. After a few minutes of standing there she attempted to move towards the door again to go outside.
The closer she got to the door the louder the voices in her head got. His voice was the one she was hearing the loudest. She brought her hands up over her ears in an attempt to block them out but even that didn't seem to silence them. Her stomach was turning in knots, her hands still shaking as they covered her ears, her muscles hurt, and she had sweat running down her forehead now, why couldn't she go out that door?
She turned and headed back up the stairs and inside her apartment as the tears started to fall. She couldn't stop them; she tried but yet the just kept coming one giant stream that was never-ending. She closed her apartment door behind her locking it before leaning against it as she fought not to slide down onto the floor. What was happening to her? Abby had never been afraid to walk out her own front door like this before and having all of these reactions to something as simple and necessary as that was, hurt. Not only did it hurt but it scared her too. She couldn't live like this, there was the world outside that she needed to be able to go out into and she freaking couldn't even go outside her own door.
She pulled the phone off the hook and dead bolted the door, she didn't want to talk to anyone right now and she didn't want anyone to see her like this. This was not who she was, not even close. But yet she was beginning to think that she was going to have to give in to the fact that this had happened and now this is who she had become.
