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First LawBy John Stegner QuailBellMagazine.com 
As soon as Stacy opened the bathroom door she heard a crash and then a scream from Jason, her boyfriend of six months. Despite the crash’s oddly high volume and the definitively painful tone of the scream, she had already showered and combed her hair without hearing a sound, so she assumed that he had been sleeping soundly until that point. It was more than likely that he’d had one of the traumatic nightmares to which he was prone, and so she turned on the cold dormitory fluorescent ceiling light and rushed to his side. “Poor Jason! It’s okay, baby” she tried to place her hand on his head, but he jerked it off as he struggled to sit up. He was very disoriented, and so she put her arms around his shoulders to steady him. “Holy shit.” He said between deep, gasping breaths. He held his head and leaned his arms on his knees. “Oh my god.” “Shh, it’s okay” she said. Her hand stroked his matted hair. He still had not made any eye contact. “Does your head hurt, baby? Do you want to talk about it?” “I don’t know, I was floating. Like,” he took another large breath and stared at the spot from where he’d just landed. “I was floating above the bed. I was out of control.” “Oh, wow babe, that sounds terrible,” she said in the steady tone and cadence of the wearily patient. “How did that make you feel, darling?” “No, you don’t get it,” he said standing up and shifting his head to the ceiling, the walls, the floor. “I was literally out of control. I couldn’t get down.” He kept his hands on his head and paced. She wrinkled her mouth—this conveyed a note of concern and solemnity worthy of this level of disturbance without seeming condescending or hyperbolic or generally fake in any degree—and nodded her head slowly to show that she was neither frightened nor dismissive. He knocked her shoulder as he climbed onto the bed. He put his hands to each of the walls. He stood up and jumped to reach the ceiling. “I was able to fucking touch the ceiling, Stacy. I can’t touch it now, but…” He continued jumping until he leaped from the bottom of the bed and ripped off the blankets. She stood, blinked very slowly upon inhaling, and calmly rationalized whether she should stop him or let his manic state continue until it calmed down. She did this while imagining herself on a lovely beach, perhaps Hawaii or, no, definitely Cannes, and materialized her concern and fear into a large ship in the middle of the ocean. She could see the ship, could wave to Jason on the ship, but she herself was serene. She could hear nothing but the waves on the ocean, which were only interrupted by Jason’s banging the walls. “Baby, calm down,” she said in earnest after the third bang sent the framed Thelonious Monk poster on the opposite wall to the floor with a beach-leveling impact. “Everyone has dreams like this, sweetheart. Everyone.” He looked down at her and realized he must look insane up there banging the walls. She wouldn’t believe him, but he wanted to convey the realness, the fucking realness, of what had happened. But then again, he’d been stabbed, helplessly watched her be stabbed, and done the stabbing himself consecutively in the past three nights. He breathed deeply. “I want a cig,” he said, and ducked under the bed to check the pockets of a pair of Duke sweatpants. “Shit—do we have any left?” “I do,” she said and picked up her purse in front of the door. She searched through it, noting the plane ticket and reminding herself that she needed to leave soon, fifteen minutes soon, hardly enough time to settle him down. She confirmed the time on the gleaming digital alarm clock beside the bed: 6:01 a.m. “Darn,” she said, “I can’t find the pack.” “Oh,” he took his head from his hands. “Shit, I took it last night.” He crouched. “Um, it must still be under the bed somewhere.” She pressed a button on the phone inside her purse, one new message. She didn’t check it. Fourteen minutes soon. He found the pack and stood. His breathing had calmed and he gave a weak smile. Holding up the near-empty pack of Camel Lights, he looked like someone her mother would call “a lost soul.” She embraced him. “I’m so sorry, baby. Let’s go smoke outside, okay? I have to leave soon.” “Oh,” he squeezed the pack accidentally and stared at its crushed form. “Shit, I forgot about that.” He looked at her. “Are you ready? Oh, you are.” “Yeah, I showered earlier.” She smiled. “Let’s go outside.” They opened the door, descended down the elevator, and exited the building. Jason was shaking from both cold and adrenaline. Stacy checked the message; it was a farewell from a sorority sister. Twelve minutes soon. She lit Jason’s cigarette for him. He sat on the edge of the brick wall, shivering more vigorously with each exhale. She remained standing to avoid staining her skirt. The stream of blue emergency campus telephone stalls lit the path she would take ten minutes soon. She didn’t ask about whatever hallucination he’d had; they’d been common for the past two months and she’d stopped asking because it would only send him into a panic attic. She’d invented schmaltzy terms for Jason’s various psychotic episodes in an effort to create some semiotic distance from their traumatic effects. These included dissociation station (a lackadaisical disconnect from reality in which the subject is unsure whether s/he is dreaming, unable to form coherent thoughts or responses to stimuli, often accompanied by mild hallucinatory sensations, in Jason’s case the flexibility/translucency of walls), aftershocks (the moment when a night terror ends and the subject spastically regains the ability to move), shark sleep (in which vivid dreams involving violence against him, stabbing or choking in Jason’s case, occur), and fucking shitty Friday (in which the subject finds a particular day, obvious in this case, particularly difficult and while in a disassociation station attempts to harm him/herself). They were typically only useful one hour or three cigarettes after the experience itself. Two weeks ago, Jason had relayed to her a meeting with a school-sponsored therapist that had explained that these were common reactions in both the grieving process and the trauma-induced bipolar disorder that stemmed from it. It was a loss of control, stage three of the grieving process. The mind struggles to cease its cognitive dissonance; death could not be bargained with, and it was this that led to the dreams of the choking and stabbing. It was a simple loss of control. He’d explained it in some detail every time he searched trauma on WebMD (which was several times a day) but she hadn’t been able to consistently listen with three papers due and only a week left before the collective deadline. That was during midterms; she wanted to drop everything, to listen fully, but she didn’t know when this would end and she’d decided it would be best if he handled it on his own at least part of the time. His one class was already monumentally difficult for him and he occupied hours attempting to read ten pages of Othello between binge-searches for individual SSRI chemistry entries on wikipedia. There were three different conciliatory phrases or conversation guidelines she’d perfected. Firstly, for use in the most dire of circumstances, she reminded him of all the traumatic experiences that had happened to him in the past six months, experiences that would take months or years to really truly get over; this normally required a large amount of time due to how troubling even the acknowledgment of the tragedy was. Secondly, for a five to ten minute conversation, she would remind him of the people who still cared for him and ask him whether or he’d taken a klonopin in the last six hours; even though she knew when he took his medication, this question reoriented his sense of time to result in a negligible increase in productivity, or he would check his laptop clock and become distracted long enough for her to read a quarter to one half of a research article. Lastly, the maneuver of the most minimal involvement, she would ask him to google something, the result of which was almost sure that of the second strategy but with minimized risk of troubled thoughts and thus inevitable first-strategy usage. He stared above at the black sky before resting his gaze on the small yellow postage stamp window of his dorm room on the sixth floor. When viewed from above, the building was shaped like a U with a straight bottom and obtuse instead of right angles; it held them inside itself gently. “Did you check your phone?” she asked. “No,” he said, and pulled it out of his pants pocket. He examined it, his eyes squinting from troubled sleep. He held it up to her as if he saw something she would immediately notice. “The phone wasn’t weightless, Stace,” he said. “That was the weirdest part. Just me. It was holding me down, I think, like an anchor or something.” “Wow, that sounds so intense.” He breathed in the cold, dark air. It stung his throat. “It was.” He saw a new message. “Text from Dad. Couldn’t sleep last night. Just wanted to tell you I love you.” “That’s so sweet,” she said. “I love your dad. You should text him back.” “Later,” he said, and stared at the screen without blinking until the text blurred into a gelatinous mass. “I need to leave,” she finally said. “Okay,” he stood slowly and coughed. “Do me one favor?” “Of course, baby.” “This is stupid.” “No! What?” She gave him her hand to help him up. “You can tell me.” “Would you walk me upstairs? I’m kind of spacey right now.” “Of course.” Thirty seconds soon. Her mother had made the sound judgment that the trip would be an important test to their relationship: if he could handle two weeks alone, he would be okay without her surveillance for the next two years in school without her. If not, then there was lamictal, lithium, klonopin, xanax, or the meds she hadn’t written down from the documentary Jason’s therapist had recommended she watch. Leaning against the parallel walls, They ascended six floors in the elevator. She opened the door for him and he crawled back into bed. She smoothed his hair and kissed him. “I’ll be back soon,” she said. “Mmkay,” he said, half his face on the pillow. He lifted it to kiss her again, but she was already by the door. “I love you.” “I love you too, darling. Remember: you know how to get out of the attic yourself.” She couldn’t see him after she turned off the light, only the bed was visible in the dim green glow of his digital alarm clock. “Mmkay.” he said, eyes closed. “Love you. Be safe.” “Have a good weekend,” she said as the door closed. It shut completely, darkness settled, and he lifted. … Scream her name she already left there’s no sound no noise phone yes text call something where no fuck it’s outside no anchor push push hard now… Flying… Crashed bookshelf next to the door clinging top shelf books crashing but no noise but no sound pull forward hold steady… Hold steady… Fuck shit sick vomit gurgling gargling splash splatter… Shaking ringing pounding hold it steady… Dear god please… Steady… Push again… Push hard now… Flying… Against the other wall now back again gently back… Floating… The door’s right there grab it grab the door hold the handle yes yes okay yes there steady… Pull hard… Hard harder fuck no… Open please open pull harder… No no no bang no bang no bang blood bang please bang someone… Outside it’s there anchor Stacy Dad someone just outside right out there past the window yes the window… Push slow just push gently… Floating… Blinds dig deep hold tight yes okay yes just open the blinds… Crank the window destroy the screen then outside Stacy or Dad he’s up definitely… Shit time what time clock 89:99 what the fuck whatever outside anchor Stacy Dad… First pull the string on the blinds… Pull hit the ceiling weightless damn… Pull hard hit the ceiling little bit… Pull harder hit the ceiling last one… Pull hard hit the ceiling good enough… Darkness nothing no one no lights no time no noise anchor yes crank next rotate… Hold steady first rotate steady… Hold steady and rotate… Cold air beautiful fresh frigid stinging last thing… The screen last thing window screen push… Nothing push… Salty breathing pulse break break open please break anchor yes… Nothing… Scratch bite claw gnaw pound no steady steady hold steady… Momentum opposite wall f = m x a mom physics homework screaming frustrated but laughing at the end fuck hurts still… Why today why leave today… But the anchor yes please push hard float… Door handle again hold tight push shove everything now everything as hard as you can… Flying… Burst… Out god yes… Sinking down down down down slowly slowly blurry bricks slowly slowly five ten fifteen minutes maybe cold freezing maybe the ground hurts sometimes but not now not ever anymore no friction no pain Stacy Dad anchor closer closer hold steady. John Stegner, studies English Education at the University of Virginia and currently resides in the bovine wonderland of Powhatan, Virginia. He has received the Wagenheim Prize for Best Short Story from the university, and has served as an editor for the Virginia Literary Review. #ShortStory #Fiction #CreativeWriting #Relationships #BipolarDisorder
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