TRIGGER WARNINGS: DEPRESSION, SUICIDE, PANIC ATTACK, ANXIETY, VIOLENCE, VOMIT

Andy interviewed eighteen people in two days for the job of finance manager, and felt he was getting nowhere. It wasn't that they were bad, but that he was running on no sleep and his anxiety was pounding the insides of his skull, and he kept not hearing what they were saying because he was focussing so hard on staying calm at least in how he looked. 

After the eighteenth had left, he shut his office door, closed the blinds, and allowed the panic attack to swallow him. It was the worst one he'd had so far, and he sat against the closed door gasping for air, sobbing, and pulling at his hair until his scalp burned. 

He stood up some point after the ten minute mark and tried to get rid of the attack by pacing back and forth, hands manically bouncing up and down, but the more he walked, the worse it seemed to get. 

It was mid-afternoon. If he could just get through the next two hours, he'd be okay. It was just two more hours, and then he'd be okay. 

Despite the worsening state of the attack, he kept pacing, whispering, 'Two more hours,' over and over. It felt like a long time. The whole day had dragged, and the night. He had been counting down the minutes and the hours obsessively as a way of reassurance. At eight am, it had been nine hours. At midday, it was five. Now it was two. Just two, and then he'd be okay. 

After twenty minutes of the attack, he stopped pacing, stood close to his desk, and looked at everything on it. Organised. The pens, the phone, the files. His entire company, it was here, in this office, folded neatly into little boxes and stacked into piles. Everything he'd done since his early twenties, it was all here. 

He stared at the table and had to make himself blink, and when he opened his eyes again, they were hot with tears. "It's gonna be okay," he said out loud, forcing the words through breaths that felt like they were made of concrete. "You're gonna be okay. You're gonna be okay. Two hours." 

He felt sick again, like he had been a lot recently, and had to make a dash for the bin under the desk. With his hands grasping it like it might grow legs and leave him, he sunk to the floor and heaved and wretched. He thought his body might have been trying to turn itself inside out, and he welcomed it. 

With every gasp of oxygen, the sickness increased, and he vomited so much that eventually, nothing came up, but it wouldn't stop. His body was determined. 

For some time, he was bent over the bin dry heaving, his whole body jerking, tears dripping from his face and leaving ugly red marks.

When eventually he stood up, the room was  wavering around him and he felt like he was in a boat, and he kicked at the wall so hard that his toes went numb.

"Fuck!" He yelled, and kicked the wall again. "Fuck!" With the next kick, he begun throwing his fists at it, his knuckles screaming in protest.

Attacking the wall didn't help like he wished it would, but he continued anyway, swearing repeatedly until the words didn't sound like words anymore, just noise, and his voice didn't sound like it belonged to him, but rather to a person whom he'd never met.

Soon everything on his desk was on the floor, and he couldn't breathe, and he was frightened of how little control he had over himself, and on the ground, he grasped his phone.

"It needs to stop," he said when she picked up. "I'm gonna-I'm gonna make it stop."

"Where are you?"

"I...It's gonna-it's gonna stop."

"Andy, I need you to tell me where you are."

"It hurts. It hurts so bad."

"I know, but this isn't the way to make it better. Where are you? Work?" 

Andy begun to sob again. There was knocking on the door, which he'd locked from the inside. 

"Dying isn't the answer, Andy. I know it feels like there's no other way, but I promise you, there is." 

"I don't-I-I don't wanna die, but-" He broke the himself off with a gasp. "But I...I'm gonna-I'm making it stop. It has to stop." 

"What has to stop? Tell me about it." 

"This...this regret. All this fucking regret." 

"What do you regret?" 

"The wedding and-and firing Jon and-and-and everything. And everything." 

"Why do you regret firing Jon?" Abigail asked. She was only asking as a way to stall him from what he was planning to do so that her receptionist could call an ambulance to his office, hoped that it would arrive before he had the chance to cause himself too much physical harm. 

Andy kept sobbing but forced the words out anyway. "I don't know. But-but I do. And now-and now I have to-now I have to find someone else for-for his job, and-and I..." He gasped. "And I don't-I can't, 'cause I-'cause I keep-I keep having panic attacks all the time. All the time. All the time." 

"How many have you had today?"

"Just one, but-but it's-it's so...it hurts so bad." 

"Where does it hurt?" 

"Everywhere. Everything hurts everywhere. Like-like someone has-like I've been set on fire." 

"What were you doing before you called me?" 

Andy ignored the banging on his door, hardly noticed it. "I think I-I think I broke my hand." 

"How did you do that?" 

"The wall." 

"You punched the wall?" 

"Yes. Yes. And-and I-and I've been sick. So sick." 

In the doorway, Abigail's receptionist nodded, confirming that the ambulance was on its way. "And what are you planning on doing next? Explain it to me." 

"I have pills." 

"You have pills. Okay. Where are they?" 

"My-my pocket. Lots. And...and they're-they're gonna make it stop. It has to stop. Gonna make it stop." 

"What will happen to your company?" 

"I...I don't...I don't know." 

"Do you want that to stop, too?" 

"No, but-no, but everything else. Everything else." 

"And what will happen after it's all stopped? Who will run your company, Andy?" 

He hadn't thought about that, and the idea that someone else would be in charge of it made him feel worse. "No one." 

"No one? So it's going to stop, too?" 

"No. No. It...no." 

"Tell me what you're doing right now besides talking to me." 

"Nothing." 

"Why did you call me?" 

"Because-because I-I needed  to." 

"You needed to? Why's that?" 

"I don't-I don't know. But I'm-but I'm going now. Gonna make it stop now." 

"How will you do that?" 

Andy dug into his pocket with his hand and pulled out the bottle of pills. "OD," he said. He'd stopped crying. 

"You're gonna OD?" 

"Yes. Yes." 

"Okay. And how is that going to feel? Is that going to make all the hurt stop? Won't it hurt even more?" 

"Yes, but...but..." 

"You don't want more hurt, Andy. Don't give yourself more hurt." 

"But..." 

"How many pills are you going to take?" 

"All of them." 

"Okay. How many is that?" 

"I don't know. A lot." 

"Give me an estimate. Ten? Twenty? Thirty?" 

Andy looked at the bottle in his hand. "A lot," he repeated. "A lot." 

"Okay," Abigail said, still calm, and continued watching the clock. The ambulance should have arrived less then a minute ago, and the paramedics would be running up the stairs two steps at a time. "Tell me what will happen after you take them." 

"Everything will stop," he said. There was a series of much louder bangs on the door and he snapped his head around, knew who it was, and, dropping his phone, fumbled to open the pill bottle. 

His hands were in so much pain that the child-locked seal was impossible and angrily, he threw the bottle at the wall with enough force that it shattered. Pills scattered the ground like blossom from a tree in the breeze, and as he was manically collecting them, the door flew open and he was grabbed. 

He screamed and screamed and thrashed and sobbed, and the paramedics held him down and forced his hands open so that they could steal the pills from him. There were three of them. Two had his arms, one was keeping his ankles to the ground. He kept screaming and thrashing, his employees crowding around the door to see what was going on. 

The paramedic on his left pressed a long needle into his shoulder and he tried to fight off the affects of the chemicals, but he didn't know how, and soon, he couldn't feel his body anymore, and it all stopped.