Rhapsody on a Theme (17 page)

But that, to Darren, was even worse. This was an episode, but at an extreme, like he’d succeeded and was an inch from death and simply
waiting
now, and he was terrified. Trapped in himself, he was absolutely terrified. This was unabating, with no come-and-go like the usual shadows. This was a blacked-out room, with no doors and windows and no way of creating light.

And he was trapped here too. Between Jayden and the doctor, he couldn’t stop taking the pills, couldn’t shake off the cloying decay, couldn’t punch through it, physically or otherwise. He was too exhausted to box, and when he tried, nothing happened. He was being smothered in clingfilm, and there was nothing that could be done to break through it, no way out. There were nights he lay awake just trying to
breathe
, just trying to feel the way his lungs expanded and collapsed, and had to assume he breathed because he hadn’t died. Nights he wanted to scream just to get some of the air in his lungs out, to get sound out, to
get out
.

This was worse. This was so much
worse
than the bad days, and he wanted to lash out, to break through it, to
something
, to…to die, even, if that would let him out. To die, if it would break the film that had settled over him.

When the saucer smashed on the kitchen floor, Darren snapped.

* * * *

In week six of the fluoxetine treatment, Darren shifted—and violently—away from the pattern that he’d followed on citalopram. On citalopram, he’d never come away from listless, apathetic, and
depressed
. And until week six of the fluoxetine, Jayden had watched the same symptoms unfold: the swinging between insomnia and narcoleptic-scale sleeping, the loss of appetite, the nausea, the loss of sex drive (and function), the jags of tears in the night, and the unwavering, unyielding, rock-solid depression.

And then Darren exploded.

Jayden had managed to work him out of bed on the Sunday and get him into the kitchen for lunch, purportedly to help, and in reality to try and get some actual food down him. The doctor had weighed him on their last appointment, and Darren had lost half a stone that he really, really couldn’t afford. It was becoming a permanent battle, and Jayden was beginning to hate mealtimes with a passion.

Rachel was chattering away, tearing salad into a bowl and trying to keep the atmosphere out of the murky stillness into which it had descended when the pills had kicked in, and Jayden had set Darren on chopping carrots for a casserole that Jayden was preparing for the evening meal. He had learned that putting Darren to work was the only way to even be able to
think
about getting any substantive meal down him, and even then it was hit and miss. Mealtimes were terse. Rachel had typically started avoiding them, and her curries were a thing of the drug-free past.

And then it happened—Darren’s elbow swung a little too far out to the left and pushed an empty saucer off the counter.

The sound of smashing ceramic rang like a bell through the tiny kitchen.

“Oh, hell,” Jayden muttered, bending to scoop up the pieces. Above him, Darren braced his arms against the counter, pushing slightly back from it, and dropped his head forward, taking long and shuddering breaths, as though he’d just run a marathon. “Hey, it’s all right, it’s just a saucer,” Jayden added as he threw the pieces away.

Darren tipped his head back, the tendons in his neck straining. He was breathing through his nose, loud and stilted, and Jayden frowned anxiously as he dusted his fingers off. That wasn’t normal. At all.

“Darren?”

“Just…shut it,” Darren said harshly. His voice was tight, and he spoke through gritted teeth, jaw taut and locked. Jayden flinched back, startled, but Rachel scowled.

“He’s just asking, Jesus.”

“Just fucking shut it, both of you,” Darren snarled. His knuckles were white where they gripped the counter, and he was breathing too fast and too harsh. He was shaking. Even his hair was shivering slightly from the movement. “I just need a fucking minute, just…”

“You’ve had six bloody weeks,” Rachel snapped, “and I’m sick of having to walk on eggshells if you’re in the house.”

“Rachel…” Jayden warned, but the warning came too late. Darren lashed out, near-throwing the entire dishrack off the drainage board and onto the floor, backhanding it so hard that a bruise blossomed almost instantly on his skin. Every plate smashed into smithereens in a cacophany, shards skidding across the floor, and Pog—lurking under the table in hopes of scraps—yowled and shot out into the living room.

“Darren, fuck’s sake!” Rachel yelled.

“Fucking
can it
!” Darren shouted back, briefly fisting both hands in his hair with a painful ripping sound before violently striking out again, and flinging the casserole dish to the floor. It shattered, and the tile it hit cracked with a dull sound. “I can’t fucking breathe, I can’t
motherFUCKING breathe
!” he bellowed, and Jayden pulled Rachel back to the kitchen door as the outburst reached rampage levels, and everything was flung from the counter to the floor—cutlery, the salad bowl, tea-towels, the
toaster—
and Darren’s voice cracked and reached incoherent levels of volume. He simply screamed, tore the kettle and its plug free of the wall, and flung that too. The tiles were wet and cracked under the heavier items; the kettle flung an arc of recently boiled water up the back door, and Rachel shrieked when he kicked a chair over and it clattered loudly against the tiles.

“Fucking
SHUT IT
!” Darren bellowed, but didn’t turn towards either of them to say it. He was pacing, almost, like a caged wild animal, eyes wild and breathing too shaky, too shallow, and far, far too fast. His hands rose and fell sporadically from his hair, the tips of his fingers bloody, and an angry fresh burn flowering on his palm. “I can’t,” he whispered frantically, every muscle in his neck twitching. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, Ican’t
can’tcan’tcantcantcant
…”

“Darren,
stop it
!” Jayden shouted, lunging and catching him from behind, locking his arms around Darren’s to pin him. For a brief second, Darren stilled, a deep inhalation punching against Jayden’s arms for a moment—and then he wrenched free effortlessly, still stronger than Jayden despite the depression and the illness and the weight loss and the inactivity. He tore free, hard enough that Jayden’s fingers dug grooves into Darren’s arms, and yet he didn’t seem to notice.

“I need out,” he said brusquely and shouldered past Rachel.

She clutched her cat to her chest and watched him wide-eyed as he slammed out of the house, the front door hitting the frame so hard that plaster dust floated free of the ceiling and the doorbell rang on the other side, jolted into life.

“Oh my God,” Rachel said.

“Shit.” Jayden ran both hands over his face. “Oh shit, that isn’t good.”

“Um, Jayden?”

“What?” he asked shortly, staring through his fingers at the destroyed kitchen. Darren had never done that before, not ever. He’d never so much as flung a cushion in anger, he’d never raised his voice to
screaming
levels, and Jayden realised with a vague sort of detachment that he was shaking. He had to call the doctor. That hadn’t been on the side-effects list, he was sure of it, it couldn’t have been, how the hell was that a stupid
side effect
…

Rachel interrupted his spiralling thoughts. “That…does Darren have panic attacks?”

“What? No,” Jayden said bewildered.

Rachel chewed her lip. “I don’t know, that just really kind of…sounded like one,” she said awkwardly after a minute, and sighed, putting her startled and affronted cat on the piano seat. “I’ll…I’ll clean up.”

“Rach…”

“You need to call the quack, and then you need to go find him,” she said shortly. “Maybe not even in that order.”

“You’re the one with a car.”

She sighed, running her hands through her hair, and Jayden felt sharply sorry for her, being caught up in this mess. She was pale. He felt pale himself, almost frightened. “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll go and see if I can’t pick him up. And if I can’t in half an hour, I’ll come back and clean, and you go and find him. You’ll know where he might go better than me anyway.”

Jayden hoped he knew and nodded.

“Okay,” he said and abandoned the remains of the kitchen for the cordless phone. And this time, he wasn’t going to be taking ‘normal side-effect’ for an answer.

* * * *

It wasn’t working. He had beaten his hands bloody, but it wasn’t working: the fog was still there, clinging around his mind and his senses, and it wasn’t being shaken off. With a lack of anything else to do, he tried harder and harder, but nothing happened. He could see the blood, could see the swelling, but nothing was getting
through
, it wasn’t
working
…

“Darren.”

He stepped back from the bag, exhausted and shaking, ribs heaving, and stopped. Jayden was standing in the bag-room doorway, face white and pinched, arms folded across his chest.

“Are you feeling…better?” Jayden asked slowly.

Darren clenched his jaw against the threat of tears. He wanted to cry. He desperately wanted to cry, but there’d be no emotional release from it. He’d been crying for nights upon nights now, but there was no sense of relief, of having shifted this. What was the use in giving in? What was the point of explaining when it wouldn’t help?

What was the use of
any
of this?

“No,” he croaked.

Jayden stepped delicately across the foam mats.

“Darren…” he murmured and caught at Darren’s elbows. “What’s going on?”

“I’m suffocating,” he said flatly. “I’m being wrapped in clingfilm or something. I can’t breathe, and I can’t think, and I can’t get out like I can with the moods because they don’t stop, and you and the quack and Rach are pinning me in here and…”

Jayden’s face crumpled. “It’s for your own good,” he pleaded, his hands squeezing at Darren’s arms almost desperately. “It’s supposed to make you a bit better. I…you
know
I wouldn’t make you do this if…”

“
This
isn’t better,” Darren hissed. “This isn’t good for me. I feel like I can’t
breathe
, Jayden. I wake up in the night feeling like I’m choking, and I don’t want to leave the house because of the fucking depression but if I stay
in
the house I’m suffocating and…I’m going fucking mental, Jayden. I just trashed a kitchen because I broke a saucer, and I’m going fucking mad. I’m losing it. I’m losing my fucking
mind
.”

His voice broke, and then he lost the war anyway, the tears boiling over and trailing down his face. Jayden made a pained noise and hugged him tightly, pressing a hand into his hair and murmuring. Darren clutched, shuddering, and ground his teeth against the fury. Fury at Jayden, fury at the doctor, fury at
himself
.

“I can’t do this,” he whispered pathetically.
Stupid fucking useless waste of space that you are, you can’t even do this one thing for him, or any of them. You couldn’t do it last time, what chance do you think you have now?
“I can’t do it, Jayden, I can’t, I’m going to hurt myself or hurt you or Rach, I’m going to do something really fucking bad if I can’t stop this…”

Jayden began to rock him, a little side-to-side motion intended to soothe but that really just made Darren feel dizzy and like he was being teased loose again. He clung hard, and whispered a plea to stop through a rising sob, and Jayden stopped. “I called the doctor,” he whispered. “He’s agreed to see us on Tuesday morning, first thing. He said it sounds like a bad reaction, so maybe he’ll take you off it, but…”

“No buts,” Darren whispered weakly. “I can’t do it, Jayden. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t, I can’t.”

Jayden squeezed tightly. “You’ve been trying so
hard
,” he whispered fervently into Darren’s hair, and Darren desperately wanted to believe him. “You’ve been trying so hard, and please don’t let this set you back,
please
, Darren. I know it’s not easy but you tried, you’ve been trying so hard, and…”

“Jayden, I
can’t
, please, I can’t,” Darren repeated, and he knew he was begging, but he didn’t care, clinging as though Jayden could somehow free him. “I’m…Jayden, this is too much, this is taking over, and if I can’t get out I’m going to do something really bad, I’m going to…I’ll hurt myself, Jayden, I’ll kill myself, it’s coming and I can
feel
it.”

Jayden made a pained sound, deep in his chest, and Darren felt the savage tear of more tears in the back of his throat. He buried his face in Jayden’s shoulder, and cried. Hard.

“Ssh,” Jayden whispered. “I won’t let you, Darren, you know I won’t. We can fix this, we
can
, and I’m not going let you hurt yourself, I promise, I won’t…”

“Shut up,” Darren whispered and felt Jayden kiss his hair. “I don’t want to talk about it. I want it to fucking
stop
.”

“Maybe Dr. Zielinski will stop the pills, or cut the dosage, or…”

Most likely, Darren thought bitterly, he’d switch him onto something even worse. A tri-cyclical antidepressant, or something like that. The ones on which people killed themselves left, right and centre. He would be switched on to something worse, and then one day…one day…

Darren didn’t want to die—but he did. In his maddest moments, he
did
, and that was what he was so horribly afraid of. This was coming.
It was coming
.

“Come home,” Jayden whispered. “Rachel’s sorted out the kitchen and I’ve spoken to the doctor, so let’s just go home, get some food into you, and go to bed. Just you and me. You’ll feel a bit less wrung-out once you sleep, that’ll have taken it out of you, and I’ll keep watch.”

“I never
don’t
feel wrung out anymore.”

Jayden murmured soothingly and rubbed smooth fingers through his hair and over his scalp. It should have felt nice. Darren usually
liked
that treatment, but now he felt nothing but the exhausted pain in his face and throat from the tears. “Come home,” Jayden repeated, and Darren felt suddenly
shattered
, as though he were so exhausted he could literally, physically die where he stood. And the fact that it wasn’t such a bad thought was…was…