Lightheaded

January 2014

Jillian told herself she didn’t know why she did it, other than it felt right. But there was a little voice in the back of her mind that told her otherwise, that she’d done it out of fear and jealousy and all the other pent up emotions she’d been neglecting. Though that voice was silenced when Harry’s hands landed on her hips to steady her. Maybe it was the wine or the magic of new year’s, she wasn’t sure, but for some reason, Harry kissed her back.

Harry thought maybe he was dreaming or that maybe his best friend had finally lost her mind. One second she was looking up at him with a tipsy smile and the next, the clock was striking midnight and she was kissing him.

She tasted sweet and familiar and he could feel her smiling against his lips and that should’ve been enough to make him pull away, convince himself it was a joke or something meaningless, but it wasn’t. He was a little drunk and his head was spinning and kissing her was something he’d wanted for as long as he could remember.

Harry had always been a little in love with Jillian, and probably always would be. That was just the way it worked, the way they worked. He’d spent years convincing himself it didn’t make him a shitty person not to confess his feelings for fear of losing his best friend, it was the right thing to do. There was never a right place or time or word for what he felt and what was at risk. But he knew when he sobered up, drunkenly kissing his best friend all the way down the hall would make him a shitty person.

“Jilly,” he breathed as her bedroom door slammed shut with him pushed up against it.

“Hm?” her fingers were already on the buttons of his shirt. He felt like his skin was on fire. He felt electric.

“What’re we doing?” his hands caught her wrists.

She blinked up at him, “Kissing.”

His drunken head told him that that was okay. Kissing was allowed.

He let her hands finish the buttons on his shirt and shed it to the floor. She looked fucking irresistible. Her hair was a mess and her lips were stained pink, soft and uneven breaths falling from them. It was instinctive when his hands landed on her hips, gripping her tightly, and he kissed her again.

They stumbled across the room, a flurry of hands and lips, until her back hit her desk a bit too harshly and the sound of porcelain shattering pulled them apart.

Jillian was certain she felt her heart stop. There, beneath their feet, were her brushes and her broken sand dollar mug and the little baggie of pills. She watched Harry’s expression change from confusion to shock to anger. She felt her stomach fall and her heart stutter back to life.

“H-Harry-”

“W-what the fuck is that, Jillian?” his voice was harsh and unfamiliar.

“I-it’s not what you think it is-” was the first pathetic excuse that began to spill from her lips.

“So it’s not a bag of pills you’ve been hiding from me?!” his head whipped up, eyes burning into her.

Her stomach rolled. All of a sudden the alcohol that had once made her feel so nice was churning around uncomfortably and her head was a mess. She didn’t even know where to begin but just the way he was looking at her told her it didn’t matter. He wouldn’t believe her.

“Z-Zayn gave them to me-” she breathed, watching his chest rise and fall a bit more quickly as he backed away from her and the broken mug, “I-I didn’t know how to get rid of them, I-I didn’t even want them. I-I don’t want them-”

“How many have you taken?!” he cut her off, leaning down to snatch them up as if he didn’t trust her at all, as if she’d just shattered everything.

“H-Harry-” she choked, head spinning.

“How many Jillian?!” he studied the little white ovals, “Don’t fucking lie to me!”

“Two,” she whispered. She couldn’t lie to him, her best friend standing in the middle of her bedroom half naked and worried only about her.

“Jesus,” he turned away from her and ran a hand through his hair, “When?”

“I-I took them a half at a time,” she confessed truthfully, “O-only when I hadn’t slept for more than three days. I-I haven’t taken one since we’ve been back.”

The silence between them was deafening and Jillian felt a little too sober all of a sudden. She should’ve dumped them as soon as she got home that very first night. She shouldn’t have taken any of them and they shouldn’t have worked. Most of all, she shouldn’t have kept it from her best friend.

“That’s what you’ve been taking them for?” he spun back around to face her, “To sleep?”

She nodded sheepishly, too ashamed to admit it out loud. It sounded so stupid out loud. It sounded so insignificant and fixable, like it didn’t call for such drastic measures.

“Why didn’t you come to me?!” he pulled at the roots of his hair, beginning to pace again, “Is that why you didn’t take the Prozac prescription?!”

She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. There were so many things she had to say, so many things he needed to know, but none of them would come out. She couldn’t find the right words, let alone form them on her lips. She wasn’t sure if it was alcohol or fear.

“I-I’m not depressed again, Harry-” her voice broke. She was afraid of the conclusion he was coming to, the same one her mother and doctor had, that she wasn’t sick at all. That it was her brain again and she wasn’t acknowledging it.

“That’s not what I’m asking, Jilly!” he was exasperated, his pupils blow and his face filled with worry lines, “I know that!”

Her jaw went slack. He believed her.

“I-I was scared,” the first answer, her first confession, was barely audible. Tears were welling up in her eyes, a combination of too much alcohol and stress and too little sleep.

“Of what?” his voice softened but his expression didn’t.

“Th-that you’d think the same thing my mom a-and my doctor think,” she breathed truthfully, feeling a little bit of the weight she’d been carrying on her chest for weeks lighten, “Th-that I’m just depressed, not something else.”

“You know I don’t think that, Jillian.”

“I-I’m sorry-” she choked because he was right, she should’ve known that. He was her best friend, he knew her like the back of his hand. Of course he would believe her when no one else did, not even her own flesh and blood.

“Fuck’s sake, don’t cry,” he shoved the baggie into the pocket of his tight jeans and held his hands out, “C’mere, Jilly.”

She let out a tiny, pathetic sob but took his outstretched hands. She’d been so stupid and she needed him. She needed her best friend, the one person who believed her no matter what, to wrap her up and make it all go away.

“I-I’m sorry-” she whimpered, pressing her face into his bare chest despite the tears falling and the broken glass around them.

“Shh,” he held her to him, one hand on the back of her head and the other around her waist, “‘S gonna be alright. We’re gonna find out what’s wrong with you, Jilly.”

*

Harry must have called every doctor’s office in Manhattan before the first week of 2014 was over. She hadn’t seen such pure, heated determination from him in months. Every time her insurance was declined or a nurse insisted a doctor wasn’t taking new patients, it only fueled him more. She was honored to have someone fight so fiercely for her.

The first doctor to accept her was an adolescent medicine doctor which by name alone was enough to make her skeptical. But the office wasn’t far and it took her insurance, which was more than she could say for most of the places they’d tried.

They scraped up the extra money to take a cab because just the idea of riding the busy, jolting subway made Jillian want to vomit. Harry held her hand and assured her it would be fine but she wasn’t so sure.

One of Jillian’s most vivid, most happy memories, was the day Harry moved in. When she thought about it, (usually when she was sad or lonely or drifting off to sleep) it played out in her head like a movie. But Jillian’s worst memory played like a horror film.

She was thirteen when she had her first experience with a hospital. She’d come home to her mother locked in the bathroom sobbing. She slid her a phone number under the bathroom door and asked her to call her father at work. The rest of the day was a blur of blood and tears and a doctor telling them her baby brother had arrived, but he couldn’t stay on earth for more than a few hours.

This hospital was quieter, though maybe because it wasn’t the same building as the emergency room. The office was on the tenth floor down a long, white hallway. Harry carried her coat (that she’d almost immediately stripped off when they entered the building) and supported most of her weight. Her mind and heart were racing.

He helped her fill out the paperwork and sign the forms, he waited in the waiting room with her and tried to distract her with the plot of the book he was reading (except he kept mixing up the character’s names and confusing her even more).

The nurse that took them back, Grace, was older and sweet. She listened to all of Jillian’s complaints and Harry’s explanations. She took her vitals and asked a few questions, never seeming once like she didn’t believe her, before assuring her the doctor would be in soon to figure out what was going on.

Jillian’s whole body was filled with nerves as she sat on the exam table covered in crinkly, sterile paper. She wasn’t sure what she was more afraid of, finally getting a diagnosis or being denied one again. On one hand, all of her fears and symptoms could finally be validated but her life could change forever. On the other hand, she could be discouraged and made to feel utterly insane again.

“Jilly,” Harry’s voice brought her back down to earth, “‘S gonna be alright. No matter what.”

He sounded so sure and really, she wanted nothing more to believe him in him just as certainly, but she wasn’t a child anymore. She knew the horror that a hospital could turn your life into in just a few seconds.

Dr. Collins was younger than Jillian expected but it put her at ease. She arrived with a warm smile and firm handshake. She didn’t seem half as foreign or far away as Dr. Peterson back home.

After the initial awkward introductions, they dove straight into her medical history and symptoms. She told her about the infinite tiredness deep inside of her, the way the world went fuzzy and dark, the way it sometimes felt like she’d run a marathon after simply getting out of bed. She told her about falling asleep on the subway, about passing out in the living room, about how her own childhood doctor didn’t believe her.

Dr. Collins took it all in with a pad and pen in hand and a crease between her eyebrows that Jillian couldn’t read. She was out of breath and her heart felt like it might pound out of her chest. She couldn’t tell what the doctor was thinking but she could practically see the wheels turning in her head.

“Would you mind standing up for me?” Dr. Collins asked suddenly, “Without holding on to anything? I’d like to take your pulse for a few minutes.”

Jillian blinked at her dumbly, before glancing at Harry for reassurance and doing as she asked. Her vision went dark and fuzzy around the edges as she stood, something she was reluctant to admit she was growing more and more accustomed to. She swayed a bit on her feet as her vision refocused and her breathing quickened. Dr. Collins fingers on her wrist and her eyes on her expensive watch gave her something steady to focus on that didn’t make her more nauseous.

“Can you tell me what symptoms you’re experiencing right now?” Dr. Collins kept her eyes on her watch, “As you just stood up.”

Jillian swallowed roughly, her mouth dry and her breathing short, “M-my vision went all dark a-and I feel like I just ran a marathon and like I could puke.”

Dr. Collins nodded, watching the torturous seconds pass by. Jillian’s symptoms only worsened until her eyes were screwed shut and her sense of balance was gone.

“Alright,” Dr. Collins let go of her wrist, “That’s enough, let’s sit you down.”

She helped Jillian into the chair next to Harry. As soon as she landed in the chair she felt a massive weight lift off of her chest. She pulled her knees to her chest, unscrewed her eyes, and tried to breathe normally again.

Dr. Collins was understanding enough to wait until she didn’t feel so close to the brink of death before she spoke again.

“We’ll have to do more definitive testing, but I already suspect I know what’s going on,” she folded her hands in her lap, blinking at Jillian, “I believe you have POTS.”

“W-wha-”

“Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.”