Page 60 of Crescendo

I was too old to be calling my dad in tears like this, but here we were.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he replied, soft, gentle, familiar. “I’m here. It’s okay. I’m here.”

“I can’t breathe.” Hot tears ran fast down my cheeks. Scary, violent, rattling chokes echoed around the room.

Enough oxygen to stay alive, not enough not to panic.

“Ella,” he said clearly, “feel the floor beneath you—solid, sturdy, constant. My voice in your ear—familiar, safe.”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. He knew the drill. We knew the drill. It had been a minute—and I knew I should know better, should know how to handle this. I was a doctor for fuck’s sake. But the body and the mind remembered. And we both knew we’d been here before.

Maybe he’d known we’d be here again.

“The sky is blue and clear here—shocking, I know.” He let out a gentle, breathed laugh. A sign that everything was fine, life was still going on, I could be a part of something other than dying alone on a bathroom floor.

I’d run out of class in front of everyone.

My breathing came faster again, shallow.

He paused for the briefest of seconds, registering that. “Papa came home with seven gnomes the other day.”

I blinked.

“I know. Can you believe that man? Never shown a single bit of interest in gnomes in the forty years we’ve been together, and then, out of the blue, he comes home with seven of them. Named them and everything. Seven new residents.” He laughed and switched his tone to his impersonation of Papa. “But look at their little faces!”

“Sherlock Gnomes,” I managed to gurgle through my burning throat.

“Oh, that’s right. He did love that film. So, I guess he’s shown an interest in gnomesoncein forty years. But it feels a little different—Sherlock as an animated, living, talking gnome versus moving seven of them into our house.”

I tried to hum in agreement but it came out as a sad, grizzled sound.

His accent was so soothing. I’d never had the strongest accent growing up, but, listening to him now, I realised how much more London mine had become since living here. I guess thirteen years in a place did that to you. Just like growing up with a Northern dad had an impact on you, even when he was raising you in Harpenden.

“Oh, what are their names, you say?” my dad asked, and I could just see the way he’d be shaking his head so fondly. “Lancelot, Deborah, Harry, Oscar, Olivia, Bernadette, and… Pookie.”

“Pookie?”

“Pookie.”

“Why?” Some of the other choices were odd together, too, but Pookie really stood out.

He chuckled again. “If you think forty years of knowing someone is long enough to know why they’re going to show up with seven gnomes one day and name one of them Pookie, well, allow me to disabuse you of that notion immediately.”

I breathed a laugh, still shaky and unsure, but better than before.

My dad hummed quietly. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“No.” I wrung my fingers through my shirt. “I ran out in the middle of class. Everyone’s going to be—”

“Fine. Everyone is going to be just fine.”

“I’m going to have to—”

“Just tell them you have food poisoning.”

“I don’t, though.”

He laughed. “We know that, but they don’t have to.”

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