Page 29 of The Life-Changing Magic of Falling in Love

It’s a credit to the tequila we were drinking at the time that I ever fell for that line.

Like, who am I going to meet on a children’s ward?

Other than the kids I would be there to read to, and possibly their parents. Even if, by pure happenstance, some of those dads were single, I’m pretty sure they might have a little more on their minds than flirting with the volunteer readers.

I don’t want to do this.

What started out as something small and easy that Sarah knew I had little intention of following through on has turned into something way bigger so that now all I can think is:

Haven’t I been through enough?

But what about the poor little sick children?

The exact words Sarah would guilt me with if she wasn’t busy elsewhere and could see me walking up and down, wearing a groove in the concrete, and throwing suspicious looks over my shoulder because the hospital feels as if it’s creeping closer every time I look away.

She would rush out the entrance in her scrubs, put her hand on my arm, stick out her bottom lip and say, ‘But what about the poor little sick ch?—’

Damn it.

I promised.

And what the hell am I going to tell Mrs. Lundy when she asks?

She said I looked like someone who followed through.

The guilt at how much that is not true settles on my shoulders so that in my next breath I’m thinking, ‘Screw it,’ and turning around and heading for the safety of the subway that will rush me away from all of this. Next week, if I am asked, I will simply be honest and tell her I didn’t do it.

When she asks why, I will own my cowardice and I will—aargh! Suddenly I’m turning around and heading straight back to the hospital, flyer clutched to my breast like it’s a lifeline.

At the doors, I march myself right on through. The swooshing sound they make continues in my ears as I head for the volunteer station.

One story to one patient. That’s all I’m reading.

Then I never have to come back here again.

As I take step after wobbly step the only thing that feels solid is my fixed gaze on the floor in front of me. Tunnel vision is the name of the game because if I look up and register my surroundings… If I engage in any way with this overly bright, overly loud environment I will probably pass out.

Anxiety is hijacking my every thought now, making me misremember the super simple directions so that I feel disoriented.

Lost.

So lost.

Someone takes pity on me.

That’s how pathetic I must look.

I try to stretch my mouth into a smile that doesn’t wobble so that I can concentrate on this new set of instructions and then the person simply walks off and I congratulate myself for fooling them into thinking that I was listening. Absorbing. Instead of what I was actually doing: panicking.

When I feel tears threatening, I’m desperate enough to begin the square-breathing technique I learned in the offices of Best Home magazine – or, to be more accurate, the technique I grappled with perfecting on a daily basis in a toilet cubicle in the offices of Best Home magazine.

Those days… Those endless days with my arms stretched to either side of the cubicle walls as if I could physically hold them back from closing in on me – half afraid the counting wasn’t going to work, always, always praying that it would because it had to. Because I couldn’t lose my job.

Couldn’t.

Couldn’t.

Couldn’t.

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