Inventory

Five things you can see. The kettle. It's white. There's a limescale ring near the spout. Somebody's stuck a label on it that says NOT FOR SOUP, which is a story you've never been told. The window. Car park. A silver hatchback with one wheel on the line. Rain on the glass, not heavy. Your hands. On the counter. They look like someone else's hands, which is a thing that happens, which is a thing Priya told you happens, which does not mean anything is wrong with you. It's just the adrenaline. It's just chemistry. The mug. Blue. Chipped at the handle. The clock. 11:42. You have a meeting at 12. You're not going to think about the meeting. Four things you can touch. The counter, cold. The edge of it, sharp-ish, under your palms. Your own sleeve. Cotton. You pull at the cuff. The tiles behind you with your shoulder blades, and they're cold too, and that's good, that's a fact about the world you can hold onto. The floor. Both feet. Flat. You're standing. You're standing in a kitchen and nothing is happening to you except your heart going and your breath going and the specific, ridiculous conviction that you're about to die, which you've had before, which you've had maybe fifty times, and every single time you didn't. Three things you can hear. The fridge. It hums in a note you could probably name if you tried. You're not going to try. Someone laughing down the corridor. Not at you. About something else. People are laughing about other things and that means the world is continuing. Your breath. Which is fast. Which you're going to slow down now. Not all at once. Priya said don't try to fix it all at once, just make the out-breath a bit longer than the in. So. In. And out, a bit longer. In. And out. Two things you can smell. Coffee, old, from the pot nobody cleans. Rain, through the window someone's left cracked. One thing you can taste. The mint you had at your desk. Still there, just about, at the back.

11:44. Two minutes. It's always about two minutes, it just feels like the whole afternoon. Your hands look like your hands again. You fill the mug. Water, not coffee, coffee's a bad idea. You drink it standing up, looking at the car park and the hatchback on the line, and your heart's still going but it's going like a heart now, not like a fist on a door. You'll go to the meeting. You'll sit near the exit, because you always do, and nobody has ever once noticed, and you'll say your bit about the Q3 numbers and it'll be fine. You put the mug in the sink. On the way out you touch the doorframe, once, which is a thing you do, and which is fine.