Lightheaded

December 2013

Harry felt like the entire world had stopped spinning. He watched her sway, he felt her name leave his lips, and then he saw her collapse in a heap on the living room floor, her head knocking harshly on the edge of the coffee table. It didn’t feel real. He felt like he was looking in on someone else’s life.

He tried his hardest not to panic, and failed. He tried to remember what he’d learned in Boy Scouts or health class or whatever, about fainting and head injuries. He couldn’t. Instead, he called 911 crying like a child. He bawled to the operator, his entire body shaking as he tried to listen to their instructions.

She was awake when the paramedics arrived, but not all there. Her eyelids were heavy and her pupils were hazy and she just kept blinking at Harry like she was lost. The immense relief he’d felt when her eyes had opened was swept away with the chilling realization that maybe she had no idea who he was.

They told him that he did the right thing, she’d hit her head awfully hard and needed to be taken in for a precautionary CT scan, but he still found himself crying in the ambulance when they let him ride along. He was overwhelmed and terrified and all alone. He had no idea what had even happened, one second she’d stood up for a soda and the next she was on the floor.

The scan was fine, the doctor’s evaluation was fine, everything was fine. She remembered wanting Dr Pepper, she remembered standing up, she even remembered the world going dark around her. They told them she was lucky there was no traumatic injury or even a minor concussion, but insisted she stay the night so they could check her every few hours. Therefore, Harry insisted he stay too.

They didn’t know what had gone wrong, they had no idea why she’d passed out, and it wasn’t really their job to. They told her she needed to see her primary care provider, who of course was in Florida, to find the underlying cause.

“You’ve at least gotta call your parents, Jilly.”

It was nearing midnight by the time they were done poking and prodding and testing her. She felt like she’d been hit by a truck, like someone had sucked all the energy right out of her.

“Th-they’ll freak, Harry,” she said weakly, “Th-they’ll make me see some expensive Manhattan doctor or something.”

“They won’t freak,” he shook his head, squeezing the hand that had been in his for as long as possible since they’d arrived, “They’ll be worried but they’ll calm down. You need to see someone. Just to be sure.”

“I-it’s just finals,” she insisted and looked down at the white, scratchy blankets covering her lap, “I’m not sleeping cause ‘m stressed out and ‘m stressed out because ‘m not sleeping and I’ll be fine as soon as I’m done with my last final.”

“What if I call them?”

That was a fair enough compromise.

Harry slipped out into the hall to call them because despite the reassuring front he’d put up for his best friend, he wasn’t sure how they’d react. He couldn’t risk upsetting her more than she already was. He’d explain the situation, tell them everything the doctor and nurses had said, calm them down, and then let them speak to her.

Her mother cried and her father wanted to speak to the doctor. Harry calmed them down because that was what he was good at, he’d always been a good mediator. And then, against Jillian’s wishes, he let them FaceTime her. Harry held the phone and Jillian held Harry’s hand.

“I’ll make an appointment tomorrow,” Sarah assured her softly, promising she wouldn’t have to see any strange doctors, “As soon as you get home for the holidays.”

“Th-thanks,” Jillian smiled weakly, “You’ll go with me?”

“Of course,” she promised, “Absolutely.”

Her parents waited until she was collected enough to put Cassidy on. Her bright eyes and missing teeth seemed to brighten Jillian up a little almost instantly.

“Jilly?” her brows knit, the only other person in the world allowed to use Harry’s nickname, “Are you sad again?”

Her hand squeezed Harry’s and Harry’s squeezed back. He wanted to speak up for her but his mouth had gone dry and he knew it would be no use. Cassidy needed to hear it from her big sister.

“No, Cass,” she smiled softly, “I’m just tired.”

*

Jillian scraped through her finals. Immediately after the last one she went home and slept on the couch for twelve hours. Harry brought her chicken noodle soup from Pret a Manger on his way home from work and let her fall asleep on him while they watched Disney movies and he spewed off random quotes seconds before they were actually said.

They spent the rest of the week like that, until it was time for him to help her pack to go home for Christmas. They didn’t have to pack much, they’d be back for New Year’s and Jillian’s birthday, but it felt like an impossible feat when she could hardly stay awake to decide which sweaters she wanted.

She wouldn’t have been able to fly home without him, she would’ve never made it. He carried her bags and found their gate and made sure she ate during layovers and slept on the plane. He did everything for her. She wanted to care, she’d always prided herself on being independent, but she couldn’t find the energy. Every little thing took too much out of her.

They were reunited tearfully with their parents at baggage claim. It took a heavy weight off of both of them, to not have to be adults anymore. They were allowed to be sick and afraid and confused. They were allowed to not have any idea what was going on. They were allowed to be just kids again.

Jillian slept in her childhood bedroom for nearly three days straight until the day of her doctor’s appointment. She’d slowly accepted the fact that something was wrong, that it wasn’t just finals. Sarah came in and opened the shades and laid out her clothes just like she was six years old again.

Without her mother, Jillian wasn’t sure she would’ve even made it to the waiting room.

“It’s gonna be alright,” her mother promised, laying her hand on Jillian’s bouncing knee to still it, “I promise.”

The nurse sat her on an exam table in a room dotted with zoo animal decals and took her vitals before promising her pediatrician, Dr. Peterson, would be in shortly.

Dr. Peterson had been Jillian’s doctor for her entire life. He’d put her first broken bone in a cast at age seven and prescribed her her first antidepressants at age sixteen. She trusted him, her mother adored him, he was the best doctor in town. Despite her nerves, Jillian never once doubted he’d be able to figure out what was wrong with her from the moment she finally started recognizing that something wasn’t right.

He looked her over from head to toe, asked her a hundred and one questions, even had her mother step out of the room for a few of them. But none of her answers seemed to satisfy him and the way he was studying her in the silence that followed was unsettling.

“Well, Jillian,” he pushed his glasses up his nose and leaned back in his chair before crossing his arms over his chest, “I’ll be honest with you. I think you’ve fallen into a bout of depression again.”

Jillian had never felt her blood boil the way it did at that very moment. She knew immediately, instinctively, that he was wrong. Jillian had been depressed, she’d fallen in and out of bouts of it, she knew what it felt like. And this wasn’t it.

“I-I’m not depressed right now,” she blinked at him, head spinning. This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Depression didn’t make you faint.

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell,” he smiled politely as her mother squeezed her hand, “Even when you’ve had experience with the illness.”

But she knew he was wrong. She’d always had a tumultuous love/hate relationship with her body, but she liked to think she knew it better than anyone else in the room. She knew something was wrong with it, something that wasn’t just her brain for once, and it terrified her that he didn’t believe her. If her own doctor didn’t, who would?

He wrote her a new prescription for Prozac that she tore up in the car as she cried to her mother. Sarah insisted she go back to therapy, just in case, but Jillian knew what that meant. Her own mother didn’t believe anything physical was going on.

*

The days up until Christmas all bled together. She slept through most of them and the hours she was awake were covered in a hazy fog of being unable to stay awake. It felt like a dream, like what she imagined sleepwalking to be like. Everything required too much energy, she was just going through the motions to keep her head above water.

Like clockwork at seven am on Christmas morning, there was a little eight year old body jumping on her bed. Jillian tried to be okay, she tried to be excited, she tried not to snap at her brother, she tried not to ruin her family’s favorite holiday. But she fell asleep in the armchair after eating two Christmas cookies and before even half of the gifts had been opened.

For the most part, they left her undisturbed. She drifted in and out of consciousness, occasionally blinking open to watch a few presents being unwrapped or listen to her mother and father bicker in the kitchen. It didn’t even feel like a holiday, let alone her favorite. There was no magic in the air, there was no excitement in her chest. She was cold and tired and nauseous.

“You’ve gotta wake her up at some point,” she could make out her older brother’s voice bringing her back to consciousness, but she refused to open her eyes, “They’ll be here any minute and she’s been wearing the same pajamas for like three days.”

“Tyson,” her mother snapped, “Let her rest.”

“Whatever,” he hissed and stormed off, “Let her sleep through the new year for all I care.”

She dozed again, the bits of reality she heard were mashed up with the swirling half-dreams in her head until she couldn’t tell what was real anymore.

Eventually, she recognized Harry’s voice, “Jilly.”

Her eyes blinked instinctively. In the background she could hear their mothers talking about her, about things she didn’t want to hear. Words like ‘depression’ and ‘worried’ and ‘medication’.

“Harry,” she blinked, sunlight burning her eyes.

“Hi,” he was crouched in front of her with a soft smile tugging at his lips and worry lines tucked between his brows.

“Hi.”

“Let’s go get dressed, yeah?” he held out his hands.

She took them and stood up slowly, the world going a little dark around the edges. He led her to her room carefully, both of them grateful it was on the first floor. It didn’t comfort her like it used to, most of the art and photos on the walls were gone and though the memories remained, it wasn’t the same.

She plopped down on the bed heavily as he turned to her dresser, “So. How did it go?”

“Apparently I’m depressed again,” she picked at her nails, “Because obviously that’s why I passed out and can’t stay awake and can hardly manage one meal a day.”

Harry snorted and tossed a soft sweater she’d left behind on the bed, “Obviously.”

“He wrote me a new prescription for Prozac like it was nothing,” she snorted, lifting her arms just enough to tug her pajama shirt over her head, “What kind of doctor does that?”

“Jesus,” Harry shook his head, tossing a pair of leggings toward her, “You aren’t an idiot. If you thought you were depressed again, you’d know what to do.”

“I know,” she let the soft green material fall over her shoulders, “Clearly my mother doesn’t.”

“That’s bullshit,” he turned with a pair of fuzzy socks, “I’ll talk to her, yeah? Lemme help you with your leggings.”

He dressed her carefully, with gentle hands and a soft smile, like it wasn’t a big deal at all. She wanted to be embarrassed or frustrated but she couldn’t find the energy to dress herself, let alone be upset that she couldn’t.

Harry sat next to her at dinner just like he had for every Christmas for the past decade. He’d become even more of an anchor to her in the past few months than before. He kept her grounded, kept her from drifting away. She needed him.

“So, Harry,” her father smiled from the head of the table, “How’s that internship going?”

Jillian cringed internally and poked his thigh reassuringly under the table as she pushed ham around on her plate. She knew how much he hated it, how hard he worked and how little he was paid, how everyone treated him unfairly because he was the boss’ step-nephew.

“Busy,” he smiled politely and took a sip of wine to deter anymore conversation as he poked Jilly’s thigh back.

Most of the dinner was relatively normal, Cassidy told Harry her favorite presents, Jillian and Tyson refused to make eye contact, everyone ignored the fact that Jillian appeared to be on her deathbed. It wasn’t until the second bottle of wine, when the kids were cleaning up and the adults were bringing out the desserts, that things bubbled over.

Jillian was scraping dishes into containers for leftovers, trying to be as much of a help as her limited energy would allow. Tyson appeared with another stack of dishes and set them in the sink between her and Gemma a little too harshly.

“You don’t get to do this again,” he hissed, turning to her with his arms crossed over his chest.

Every muscle in her body tensed. Even when she felt like she was dying, he wouldn’t give her a break, wouldn’t call a ceasefire.

“I’m not doing anything, Tyson.”

“You don’t get to put them through this again,” he sneered, towering over her, “Especially not Cassidy. All because some girl dumped you again.”

Her heart stuttered in her chest as he spun on his heel and walked away.