Page 101 of The Wild Beneath

The frigid air finds the skin between the ties of her hospital gown. Her bare legs are covered in goosebumps. She tries to rub them away.

Evan would have wanted to come. He would have sat patiently in the waiting room for as long as it took. Afterward, he would have pressed for details and plans, with those attentive eyes.

During med school, right after Ruth died and Annie entered that year-long-barely-eating-barely-showering-zombie-robot-phase, she tried all the antidepressant medications. First, the Cipralex that didn’t numb much at all, except it made her face feel like it was incapable of moving. She was nauseated all day, even when she broke the 10 mg tablet in half.

“Try a different kind, maybe?” Evan had said, in the bathroom, while Annie bit off a quarter of a tablet with her front teeth and wondered if a medication could fix the fact that she’d lost everything. If a medication could make her a new life.

Next was the Zoloft; she couldn’t stay awake, even when she took it at night. The fatigue was incapacitating, the fatigue spilled out everywhere and it was impossible to study and her always-anxious-feeling rode underneath it, still surfacing. Her anxiety became a swampy mix of tired-anxious heart palpitations and wanting to prop her eyelids open at 8:00 p.m. Effexorand its electric brain zaps every time she tried to lower the dose or stop it. Pristiq was the same, and Abilify gave her godawful headaches that made her wonder about subarachnoid hemorrhages and if her brain was really truly being squeezed into the bones of her skull.

Trintellix made her feel like she was behind a plate of Plexiglas.

“Maybe it’s undiagnosed ADHD,” Dr. Tessa said, as Annie tried to explain that everything was both faraway, unreachable, but also too close, too loud, and at times exquisitely beautiful, all at once. She told Tessa she wanted to get better, and about the violin trio at the Vancouver Public Library.

Tessa gave her a six-page ADHD checklist to complete.

“The Plexiglas feeling is better than nothing,” Annie concluded.

Whatever was wrong with her back then, meds couldn’t fix it. It needed time and baby steps. She tapered down to half-of-a-half of a standard dose of Trintellix through med school, as it let her work night shifts in the ER without being a puddle. And thingshadbecome so much easier. In her last year of residency, she was taking a microscopic dose of Trintellix—­Tessa said it was doing nothing—­and many days she forgot to take it at all.

Annie has logistical things figured out, like weekly grocery lists, batch cooking. Tax filings and how to get an oil change. She’s discovered other small satisfactions: the heaviness of a down comforter on her feet, the bittersweet taste of espresso, the hummingbird feeder on their balcony. The birds visit most mornings, with their iridescent throats and the way they sometimes hover beside Annie’s ears and tickle the insides of them, a Walker-ish vibration that starts in her scalp and cascades itself down her neck and arms, rushing off her fingertips.

And they have each other. He knows everything about her and vice versa. Annie and Evan have built something new, a life that resembles the lives of people around them here in the city. The way lives are supposed to look.

Ruth would have approved.

“Maybe we should have a baby,” Evan had said casually, two months ago. He was lounged out on the couch, watching a reality TV show about a middle-aged guy who lived on the edge of Vancouver Island, off-grid with his dog, and built cabins for people in the middle of nowhere. Even though she hates TV, Annie couldn’t help sitting next to him to watch.

“We could get a sailboat,” Annie replied, shocking herself. A sailboat? It came from nowhere; she had not allowed herself to think about sailing for years.

Evan paused the show. “Or that.”

She went off all the meds.

Not because she had to. Even if she were pregnant, they were likely safe to take. But she didn’t want to get pregnant yet and it wasn’t the idea of having a baby that made her want to stop taking them. It was the views of the Pacific Ocean on the screen, the sunburn on the man’s cheeks. It was the waves hugging the shore and the trees too large to wrap your arms around, the sand covering his dog’s paws.

It was that TV show.

Annie doesn’t need Evan in the waiting room today, worrying about her, the way he does, especially if nothing is fixable. Especially since she can’t reveal the thing about Walker’s sound, which would possibly verify what Isaac has been warning Evan about all along. She didn’t mention to Evan that she had booked in with Tessa. She left him at home repairing their leaky faucet.

“I’m shift one today. I’ll be home around four.” She said it quickly as she zipped up her fleece.

“I’ll do dinner.” He kissed her gently in the doorway, his palm lingering on her cheek. “Try to claw your way out of there on time.”

Annie is not working shift one.

Tessa whirls into the room, carrying a take-out coffee in onehand, a pile of folders in the other. She’s tall with a long neck and reminds Annie of a graceful giraffe. Her sleek brown hair is tucked behind her ears. “God. Sorry, Annie. I’m so behind.”

“No, thank you for squeezing me in.”

Tessa sits down on a swivel desk chair and clicks rapidly on the mouse in front of the computer. “This thing never starts up fast enough... There we go.” The hard drive comes to life. A sign-in box flashes onscreen.

Annie shifts on the table.

“So, you’re tired,” Tessa says, typing. “When did it start?”

It’s been months. When was the last time she felt vital? She can’t really remember. She’s been zoned out and repeating the days this week, lugging herself around like a sandbag. Maybe she is pale, too, like Evan said? It isn’t only this Walker preoccupation. Something else is off.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Annie says.