Page 22 of The Fallen Man

“When?”

“Last week at work,” she said. “Aiden called about something. And then Max called, and we were talking, and we hung up, and I looked at my calendar, and then I thought I was going to die. And one of the nerds at work told me what it was and said he takes anxiety medication, and now he doesn’t have them anymore. But I don’t want to take medication. I’m totally fine. I am fine.”

She pushed away from Jackson and sat up, swiping at her eyes.

“Fine,” she said, smiling.

“Uh-huh.” Jackson took out his phone and hit one of the favorites in his contact list.

“Hey,” said Evan picking up as Jackson put the call on speaker. “Did Nika and Max decide to come with? I need to pull out morewine if they’re coming to dinner too.”

“No, Nika needs an evening in. And also, I need permission to talk to your therapist.”

“Oh, Jesus, what did I do now?”

“Nothing. I need to ask your therapist for a recommendation for Nika or whether or not she’d be comfortable seeing Nika. I can find others, but she’s the best one I know.”

“I am fine,” said Nika. “I don’t need a therapist.”

“Nika’s having panic attacks.”

“Nika! Shit. I’m coming over.”

“I’m fine!” Dominique slapped her hand up to her face, trying to hide from both of them even though Evan couldn’t see her. “I’m not having one now. Does everyone have to know about this?”

“Yes! Of course, we need to know!” said Evan. “How else are we supposed to help?”

“I don’t need help. I’m dealing with it. Myself.”

Evan’s laugh was so perfectly reminiscent of his old derisive self that Dominique groaned.

“Yeah, because that works soooooo well,” said Evan.

“I’m not sure sarcasm is the helpful tack to take here,” said Jackson.

“It’s certainly not something my therapist recommends,” agreed Evan. “She recommends way more helpful strategies for dealing with anxiety. And as a result, see how I barely even made fun of Aiden at your party?”

Dominque found herself reluctantly laughing.

“And since you’re probably just having some sort of mild issue, she’ll actually be able to fixyou,” Evan continued. “So you should talk to her.”

“I don’t want….” Dominique couldn’t figure out what she wanted. But she knew she didn’t want to be thinking about this. She wanted everything back to normal.

“Don’t want what?” demanded Evan. “People to think you’re broken?”

“Hey!” snapped Dominique. “I have never said that. I believe in therapy. I just don’t think I need it. I’m sure this will go away.”

“No,” said Jackson. “It will get worse. Hasn’t it gotten worse already? You cleaned an oven, Nika.”

“Does she even know how to clean an oven?” asked Evan, sounding confused.

“No,” said Dominique. “I don’t. That didn’t stop me from trying. I just sprayed stuff in there and scrubbed at it. I probably made it worse. I don’t know. It seemed like a productive way to deal with things at the time.”

“Yeah, I also thought drugs sounded productive,” said Evan. “You know what’s more productive? Getting help.”

“I’ll call tomorrow,” said Jackson.

“I already texted,” said Evan. “She says she can give you a four o’clock appointment if you want to come in and talk about what kind of help you want.”