Of course, Katie hadn’t said any of those things. She had smiled politely, practiced with the bag, and kept her judgment of his professional aptitude (i.e., that he was a total quack!) entirely to herself.
Still, since she hadn’t had a panic attack in the past five years. She hadn’t ever been able to test out the technique and prove his quackitude with rock-solid evidence. Now that she was in the middle of one and the exercise actually seemed to be working?
Well, I’ll move his status down to ‘Jury’s Still Out on the Level of His Quackosity’ but I’m not nominating him for the Nobel Prize just yet, Katie thought. Of course, this wasn’t even close to a bad attack. This one was fairly mild.
But, that’s exactly how they had started ten years ago. They had begun as hyperventilating episodes and over time had developed into severe attacks resulting in her being rushed to the emergency room—twice—having truly believed she was having a heart attack. Which had not been the case.
The E.R. docs were the reason she had ended up lying on the overpriced therapist couch (metaphorically speaking; in reality she had sat in a plush leather chair). Once the doctors at the hospital had ruled out the possibility that anything was physically wrong with her, they had strongly recommended that she delve into the possibility that it was her psyche, not her body, that needed medical attention.
Even now, as the panic attack was subsiding, Katie was still feeling some of the physical symptoms. Her head felt as if it were floating away, her fingers were tingling as if they were being stabbed by a thousand tiny needles, and she was being bombarded by an obnoxiously loud ringing sound. She forced herself to anchor to the sensation of the paper bag digging into her lips to ground her in reality and repeated the mantra (which, she had to admit, was kind of growing on her.)
You can breathe. Just breathe. Breathe in and out slowly. You can breathe.
Slowly, bit by bit, she drifted back to the present and into her body. She closed her eyes to appreciate the little sensations she was now aware of—the leather of the seat pressed cold against her back, the icy breeze from the air conditioning blowing refreshingly on her face.
Leaning her head back against the headrest, she felt the weight of her chest rising and falling. Her arms felt heavy. Lowering them to her sides, Katie was vaguely aware that the paper bag had slipped from her hand and landed on the console beside her.
After several minutes, her breathing returned to normal and the ringing sound in her head grew sporadic. Katie searched her memory in an attempt to identify if ‘sporadic ringing in the head’ was a normal side effect post-panic attack. She hated that these horrible attacks used to occur with such frequency that she actually had a personal database of experiences to check her symptoms against.
Nope, she concluded, the sporadic ringing is new.
Turning her head to take in her surroundings, she saw cars whizzing by on the interstate. She squinted against the glare of the sun, which was shining brightly down on the pavement and bouncing off the car windshields speeding by.
Katie retrieved the paper bag and folded it up, returning it to her purse. She didn’t love the thought that she might need to keep it handy for future use, but better safe than sorry. I mean, let’s be real, she told herself. You’re less than an hour off the plane and barely starting down the highway toward Harper’s Crossing and you had a panic attack. You really think you’re getting through the rest of the weekend unscathed? Not likely.
As she placed the paper bag inside her gigantic ‘in case of emergency’ carry-on bag, she discovered the source of the ringing.
She felt like an idiot. On the good side, she thought to herself, is the fact that I don’t have to add tinnitus to the looooong list of symptoms that characterize my panic attacks. On the bad side? Apparently, I no longer recognize my cell phone’s ring tone.
Picking up her iPhone, she swiped the screen to answer, saying warmly, “Hey Sophiebell!”
“Katie, where are you? I thought you would be here by now. Was your flight delayed? I can’t wait to see you,” Sophie squealed, the words tumbling out of her mouth one over another. Katie smiled to herself. She had always thought that Sophie could paraphrase that old Army motto to adopt as her own. ‘I say more before nine a.m. than most people say all day!’
“The flight was fine. I am on my way, and I will be there in less than an hour. I can’t wait to see you, too!”
“Okay, hurry,” Sophie pleaded but then followed it up with the command, “but drive safe!”
“I will. See you soon, bride-to-be!” Katie tried to cover the stress in her voice with ebullience as she said goodbye and hung up the phone.