This Is My Brain on Guilt

JOCELYN

Will doesn’t so much faint as crumble onto the Venkatrams’ rug. The fall is slow enough that I catch his head before he hits the ground, and my first thought is, This is the first time I’ve touched him in weeks. I’d forgotten the texture of his hair, the smoothness of his skin.

“Dad! Help!” Priya’s shout, though, brings me back to reality pretty quick.

I just broke Will.

For a moment I just sit there with my hands cradling his head and think about how I’ve never understood how heavy a person’s head is. It just seems so easy for the neck to hold it up, but it’s only when a person’s passed out on your supposed best friend’s dad’s office floor that you realize that it’s basically a bowling ball held up by a lollipop stick.

Meanwhile, Priya’s freaking out for the both of us. “Oh my God. Oh my God. I got a first aid badge in Girl Scouts, but I don’t remember what we’re supposed to do? Do we do chest compressions first? Or mouth breaths?”

“He’s still breathing,” I say, still numb. “I think the first thing we’re supposed to do is call 911.” Maybe the thing that strikes the most fear in me is how lax Will’s face is, erased of any expression. While Priya calls for help from the landline in her dad’s office, I can’t stop myself. I take his hand in mine and fumble at his wrist until I find his pulse, closing my eyes when I finally feel it, steady and firm.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. Then I turn to Priya, who’s still giving out directions to the ambulance. “I’m so sorry, Pri,” I tell her.

She doesn’t respond, just puts the phone receiver to her chest. “They say to lay him on his back and raise his legs. Loosen any constrictive clothing.” She listens to the dispatcher again. “No, he’s not bleeding,” she says. “Oh, hey, he’s waking up.”

I turn back to Will, and his eyes are blinking open and closed, deliberate, like he’s checking to make sure the muscles still work. They’re unfocused, blank. Then, in a heartbeat, he gives a start, his gaze sharpens into terror, and he turns his head, eyes darting, scanning the room and trying to place his surroundings.

“Hey, Will. It’s okay. It’s Jocelyn. I’m here. We’re in Priya’s house. There’s an ambulance coming.”

“What?” He gasps and struggles to sit up. “No, I’m fine. You don’t need to do that.”

“Will, you just passed out,” Priya says severely. “I swear to God there were, like, ten seconds where you weren’t even breathing. They’re on the way. Give me your parents’ number so I can tell them to meet us at the hospital.”

“No!” Will scrunches his face, as if to reset it. “I’m fine, guys, I’m breathing just fine. Look, my lungs are great.” He takes in a huge breath, puffing his mouth out like a fish, and lets it out. “Panic attacks aren’t actually life-threatening,” he says, sounding like he’s reciting something from a book.

When the EMTs come in, they find that his heart rate is okay but say that he still needs to be checked out by a doctor. They cart him out in a wheelchair even though he insists that he can walk out by himself, and they tell us that we can meet him at St. Luke’s if we want.

“I can drive you both,” Mr. Venkatram offers. Priya ran for him just after she got off the phone with 911, and he was the one who ultimately contacted Will’s dad. He asked me if he should call my family, too, and I said no. They’re used to me sulking in my room and probably won’t even notice I’m gone.

We pile into the Venkatrams’ Ford Explorer, Priya taking shotgun, leaving me alone in the back seat like a kid who’s been told to sit in the corner and think about what they’ve done.

Let me tell you, my head isn’t the most inviting place in the world right now.

All the life-and-death, having-to-call-911 shit hit the reset button on my anger, which is great in that, yay, no more feeling like I’m Hulking out on my supposed boo and BFF, but also bad because once the fury’s gone, all that’s left is guilt and pain and me wanting to hit myself on the head, repeatedly. Seriously, spying on my best friend and boyfriend and assuming that they’re cheating on me? It’s not like they were kissing or anything.

Up in the front seat, Mr. Venkatram’s grilling Priya for details.

“What did you say was going on when he fainted?”

“We were just looking over some video footage.”

“Maybe he had a seizure or something.”

Priya just hums, and my stomach prickles with guilt over what she’s not saying, over what she’s hiding for me. I don’t deserve her. I don’t deserve Will.

When we get to the emergency room there are four people waiting in line just to check in. Mr. Venkatram waves us over to where there are two empty seats in the almost-full waiting room. “You guys sit. I’ll go find out where Will is and when we can go see him. Then maybe I’ll go get some coffee. It might be a long night.”

Priya and I trudge over and squeeze ourselves in between an elderly man who’s been there for so long that he’s fallen asleep and a woman with a lethargic toddler draped over her shoulder.

We sit in silence for a while. The automatic door to the ER opens twice, and I catch a glimpse of stretchers and people milling around in scrubs and white coats. The TV in the waiting room is on CNN and I lose myself in the scrolling captions. More forest fires in California. Gridlock in Washington. The follow-up to a college admissions scandal. I try to numb myself with other people’s problems, but it doesn’t quite work.

The AC is jacked up to high, and I twist my hands together, trying to rub in some warmth. When I glance over at Priya, she’s scanning the room, and I would bet a million bucks that she’s making up backstories in her head, casting the people in the waiting room as characters in her Great American Movie.

“What do you think?” I whisper, jutting my chin out in the direction of a man with a bloody rag tied around his hand. He’s wearing work boots that are chalky with dust. “Handyman who was sleeping with his client. Attacked with a chef’s knife when her husband walked in on them doing the nasty on the kitchen counter?”

Priya huffs, and her mouth twists into a not-smile. “Have you got cheating on the brain, or what?”

I look at my hands and wish I could just disappear, but there’s no running from this. I bite my lip and sigh. “I’m sorry things got out of hand. I wasn’t… like, clearly I wasn’t thinking. My brain was like that old Keanu Reeves movie, what was it, the one you made me watch where he’s on a runaway bus that will explode if it goes under fifty miles an hour?”

“Speed. AFI Thrills list.”

“Yeah, that one.

“That’s what it felt like. Completely out of control. Like, if I stopped to, I don’t know, work things out, I’d explode with jealousy.”

Priya bites at her fingernails, searching my face. She sucks her cheeks in like she’s just tasted a lemon. “Well, as you so kindly noted, it’s not like there’s much for you to be jealous about,” she says bitterly.

And oh, I feel sick to my stomach when I remember the things I said to her. They were like targeted missiles directed straight at her worst insecurities.

I am such a shit friend.

“Pri, you know that was all BS.… That was just the crazy speaking. You know I’m crazy, right?” I say it like it’s a joke, a parody of the way people say that they’re “reclaiming” the words “crazy,” “insane,” and “bonkers.” I say it like it’s the most central truth of my life. It’s the first time I’ve even hinted that I might suffer from mental illness.

“That’s not an excuse,” she says sharply enough that I feel it in my gut. “You can’t say stuff like that to people, then apologize and expect them to forgive you right away.”

“I know.” My voice comes out wheezy now, because my throat is closing up. I feel that all-too-familiar pressure in my sinuses that means I’m going to cry.

Yet another thing I can’t control.

“Pri, I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I say with a gasp. The waiting room blurs, and I sniff loudly in a valiant attempt to stop the snot dripping down my right nostril. I fail and have to stand up to grab a tissue from the hand-sanitizing stand by the reception counter. My nose blowing startles the little girl in her mother’s arms and she starts to whimper.

“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” I hiccup as the woman stands up.

“Don’t apologize! Take care of yourself,” she says, and turns to make a rotation around the room, bouncing the girl up and down to soothe her.

Somehow, that little kernel of forgiveness calms me down. It only ends up being a three-tissue cry.

Once I’m all cleaned up I draw in a shaky breath. “I don’t know why I’m so fucking insecure all the time.”

Priya doesn’t laugh, or say, “Me neither.” Her silence is worse than that.