The panic attack over, I drop my head back against the wall with a soft thud. It’s not the way I imagined my next run-in with Devin going at all. In my fantasies, I was confident, collected, maybe even charming. Not curled up on the floor like a child afraid of the dark. She’s still sitting next to me, quiet as a mouse, patient in a way I never was with her.
I could defend myself, make up some excuse about not feeling well, or try to play off what just happened. Though, really, how can I do that? She just watched me have a complete meltdown.
“How long have you been having panic attacks?” She finally asks, her voice gentle, professional but not cold.
I lift my head off the wall and stare at her. Guess there’s no playing it off, since she knows exactly what just happened. Recognition born from experience. “Um...” I lick my lips, they’re dry and probably chapped from the cold. “It started when I was in the hospital after... my wrist injury.”
She nods, no judgment in her expression. “Do you know what the trigger is?”
“They’re random.”
One corner of her lips twitches, a habit that hasn’t changed in our five years apart, a tell I used to tease her about during poker games with friends. She doesn’t believe me.
“Really,” I say, needing her to believe me even though I’m not sure I believe myself, “they’re random.” The irony of this moment isn’t lost on me. When we were together, I didn’t even take the time to understand her chronic fatigue syndrome. I dismissed it, minimized it, treated it like an inconvenience to my life rather than a daily battle she wasfighting.
“They might seem random...” She shifts slightly, her knee pulling up toward her chest in that flexible way she’s always moved. “But do you find they happen before or after certain events? Like, maybe, before you do something new? Or when you feel overwhelmed?”
I sit on that. Really sit on it. Let the question sink past my defenses.
She’s right. Of course she’s right.
The panic attack today happened before my first practice as assistant coach. The last one happened when I felt overwhelmed in the pizzeria by all the people asking for photos, their phones in my face, their voices overlapping until they became white noise. And when they started, back in that sterile hospital room...
“They would happen in the hospital after my family visited me.”
Understanding washes over her face like sunrise. “Oh.”
She knows what my family is like, how nothing I ever do is good enough for them. How my brothers’ football careers always overshadowed my hockey. How my parents’ visits were performances of concern that turned into lectures about what I should have done differently.
“I didn’t see the pattern to them, but yeah. You’re right.” I shake my head and stare at the treatment table across from me, its white paper pristine, waiting for the next injured athlete. Above it, there’s a poster showing proper taping technique for various joints. “It makes sense now.”
“I’ve gotten a few panic attacks before appointments. I even had one during an appointment once.” She pulls at a loose thread on her fleece, not meeting my eyes. “That was embarrassing.”
“You did?” I turn back to her, searching her face. “When was that?”
“Back in New York. It’s been years, though. I’ve figured out how to stop them in their tracks before they get going.”
“Back in New York,” I slowly say, the words heavy as stones in my mouth. “When we were together?”
“Mm hmm.” She nods, matter of fact, like she’s mentioning the weather.
But my heart doesn’t feel so nonchalant about it. It aches like hell, a crushing weight in my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I knew you’d tell me I could outthink panic attacks, that I was just giving in to my feelings.” Her voice stays level, but I can hear years of hurt underneath. “That’s what you always told me about fatigue flares. ‘Mind over matter, Devin.’ ‘You just need to push through.’ Eventually, I learned that I just shouldn’t tell you when I was doing poorly. Not unless it was so bad that I had to.”
She’s so direct, so unabashed with the information, laying out the facts of our failed relationship like evidence in a case. I’ve never heard her talk about her health like this—confident, unapologetic, owning her experience. I always figured her silence meant she agreed with my assessment.
I know that I mishandled her condition, but I had no clue that I scared her into silence. That my dismissiveness, my impatience, my constant suggestions that she could overcome her symptoms if she just tried harder had taught her to hide her struggles from me. Hearing her say these things fills me up with anger at myself, hot and bitter. I had a good thing going with her, the best thing, and I pushed her away. Broke up with her because I thought she didn’t care enough about my career, about our future.
Now I see that my ending our relationship was a reflex, a result of my not really liking myself. But because it was too hard to admit how much I hated myself—the pressure, the constantperformance, the feeling that I was never enough—I took my frustrations out on her. Which she never deserved.
From somewhere in the complex, a door slams and teenage voices echo down the hallway, getting closer. Through the small window in the PT room door, I can see players starting to walk by, their gear bags slung over shoulders, some of them already wearing their practice jerseys. The familiar pre-practice energy radiates from them—that mix of excitement and nerves that used to fuel my entire existence.
I gaze back at Devin, so many things resting on the tip of my tongue. I want to tell her thank you for being here, for sitting with me through this humiliating moment. That I’m sorry for the way I treated her. I was an asshole and should have done better.
I want to tell her that I’m happy we ended up here, in the same area, in the same room, even if this reconnection never goes further beyond this moment. She means something to me. She always will.
“Devin,” my voice cracks like I’m sixteen again.
