narrative.

[anklin]

JULY 24, 2017; NIGHT Jack Franklin, stoic action hero, conqueror of all things pressure related, and king of the steady hand does not do panic attacks. He is used to things going awry, used to his voice going to a flat monotone when the shit starts flying because that’s what keeps people calm. It was Jack that kept the junior EMT calm when it was Jack that was bleeding out against a wall, blood bubbling from between his fingers from a well-placed stab wound. He has been through break ups and make ups and deaths and births and handled them all nearly perfectly. But Jack Franklin cannot breathe. The first drink goes down hard, the bitter hops more punitive and medicinal than any sort of comforting measure. His heart races through it, races through the second, too, but by the time he starts drinking tequila things have slowed down to a point where his chest can open up a bit and he can take in a full lungful of air. His fingers hesitate after that one, play on the empty shotglass in front of him in a dim bar half a world away from his apartment that he can’t entirely remember getting to because he just got in his car and drove. His hand reaches back for his wallet, but the bartender beats him to it and asks if he wants another, and Jack, the world just starting to feel some sort of warm, nods, because it seems impolite not to. Things go from warm to foggy. His chest tightens again and he buys another round. He neither remembers paying for his tab nor going to the ATM around the corner to get more cash, a lot more cash, but both happen and suddenly he is somewhere else, a few blocks from a car he can no longer use, with a pool stick in his hand and double vision. It is only after bone and muscle connect with flesh that he takes another full breath. Though he will lose the memory of it by the morning, for a full minute, everything is sharp and in Technicolor again, the iron taste of blood in his mouth unmistakable and invigorating. He doesn’t fight fair, but its sometime past midnight in a part of the city where better men get mugged so he’s not sure there is such a thing. Mike, or Rick, or whatever his name is has a good seventy five pounds on him but Jack has experience and a lack of fear and though his jaw aches and he is sure his hand is broken, he’s not the one on the ground in the end. He spits blood onto the pavement, checks his teeth are intact, and staggers off to find somewhere else before a cop he doesn’t know finds them both. The bar he slips into is loud and dark, and he doesn’t make it three feet inside before he is promptly turned around and told to go sleep it off. She sees him before he sees her. “Jackie,” she coos softly, her cold fingers coming to his hot jaw, thumbs brushing over the bruises already forming. He doesn’t know how he managed the two blocks it took to run into her, or how he knew where she’d be, but she’s there, her lips slightly pursed, her fingers smoothing back his hair, turning his head this way and that to inspect the rest of his face. “You been drinkin’, huh?” Her words are soft and warm and though they’re standing on pavement that smells like piss and garbage, he is somehow able to keep breathing, and keep his chest open. He protests only weakly when she starts dragging him down the street, and he mutters something about how he’s losing her money, but she ignores him, and talks about how she hasn’t seen him in a while, how he looks like shit, how she’s going to start school in the fall. She is young, her multicolored hair and wafer-thin frame making her look even younger but she bears most of his weight without trouble and while the words seem frivolous they do their job at keeping him awake and alert and moving. Her apartment is a shoebox, a closet with a bed and a sink in the same room but he sees none of it as he kicks off his shoes and plants himself firmly face down on a double that’s closer to a twin. “Nu uh, no you don’t.” The words are hard around the edges, and she pushes hard on him to get him to turn over. He groans, and stirs just enough to find his wallet, the money inside. The messy part of it that should cause his chest to tighten again but it doesn’t. “’mnothavingyouloseanightofpay,” all one word, all slurred out, and she takes it and quietly disposes of it, and slips her legs under his head and props his body up enough that she can turn him if he starts to get sick. She is blurry around the edges and the room is spinning but when she strokes his hair he can breathe so what does it matter? She doesn’t ask what’s wrong and he doesn’t tell her, and though he doesn’t pass out right away, when he does it is easily for the first time in weeks, the fight completely gone out of him. When he does wake up fully dressed to the feeling of her lips on his temple and a soft murmur that he’s gotta get going, he gotta get to work, you foolish, beautiful narc, he remembers nothing, or near nothing. He is sore and sick and his head is swimming as he buys them both shitty coffee from a truck on the corner next to his car, but the weight tugging at him the night before is gone. He kisses her cheek and tells her it’s good to see her and moves on without looking back. To his memory, he still does not do panic attacks.