Not with a Bang but a Whisper (Part I)

Author's Note: This is the first part of a story I wrote this semester for a short story writing class. I'll be posting the other two parts over the next couple of weeks (with possibly a bonus part)! Thanks for reading :)

Trigger Warning: This story deals with anxiety and, in later parts, contains a couple short scenes of physical abuse.

All Harmony wants is ice cream. Black raspberry in a cup with extra rainbow sprinkles, as always.

           No big deal, thinks Sheila. As long as Asad doesn’t make it a big deal.

           As the mother of two siblings who have never gotten along well, Sheila knows what to expect from a car ride with Asad and Harmony. Usually, she wouldn’t put herself in such a tenuous situation, but Asad has a soccer game at 2, and Harmony just had to have an anxiety attack at 1:30. Not to mention Sheila has to take the cat to the vet at 2:30, so she can’t even stay to watch her son’s game.

           The smell of pine and shabby fur fills the space of the gray sedan as they stop at a red light.

           “We’ll go to Cravings, okay?” Sheila says, tapping Harmony’s shoulder with one hand while the other taps the wheel impatiently. She says everything slowly and facing Harmony so she can read her lips.

           Harmony nods, and Asad complains from the back seat, “Cravings is on the other side of town from the field.”

           Sheila blows air through her lips, easing her foot off the brake as the light on the other street turns yellow. “I know, but it’s the closest one to us. We’ll be there in ten minutes. That gives us plenty of time to get to your game.”

           Asad rolls his eyes and pops in his AirPods. “Whatever.”

           Sheila reaches for the radio, fiddling with the dial, doing anything to distract herself. The boots she bought last week—intended for Harmony—are slightly too small for her, but they were too nice to return. She should’ve known Harmony wouldn’t want them; the only shoes her daughter ever wears are sneakers and sandals.

           The boots dig into Sheila’s toes like a reminder of everything she can’t do right. I’ll never forget to buy ice cream at the grocery store again. I can’t take Harmony out every single time she has an anxiety attack.

           But the last thing Sheila needs is for Harmony’s anxiety to turn into full-blown panic, with wheezing breaths and wide, panicked eyes like an animal caught in a trap.

           The first time Harmony had an anxiety attack, she was only seven years old. I had just picked her and Asad up from school when Harmony realized her stuffed bunny was missing.

           “Mommmm!” she wailed, her voice just beginning to show a trace of panic. “I can’t find Fluff!”

           I sighed. It had been a long day at the bank. Three customers had yelled at me; usually, it was just one.

           “Maybe you left Fluff at home,” I said as I turned onto our street. “We’re two minutes away.”

           “I want Fluff NOW!” she shouted, sounding close to tears.

           I glanced in the rearview mirror. Her face was scrunched up in frustration.

           “Mom, make her stop,” Asad hollered.

           “Calm down, both of you,” I said in a level voice. “We’ll find Fluff when we get home.”

           But we didn’t. We searched everywhere. We were running late for Asad’s soccer practice, so I promised Harmony we would look later. And if Fluff wasn’t at home, maybe he was at school or in the car somewhere.

           That was the moment when the look on Harmony’s face changed. Her brown eyes went wide. She started gasping for breath. I’d never witnessed a panic attack before, never had one before myself, so I had no idea what was happening.

           By the time I’d called an ambulance and the EMTs arrived, Harmony was barely able to stand up by herself. She slumped in my arms as I stroked her thick curls, my thoughts running in a frantic circle around her. Asad stood on the porch out front and yelled when the ambulance pulled up, lights flashing.

           The EMTs took one look at Harmony before hooking her up to some oxygen and rushing her to the hospital. They thought something might be wrong with her heart. There wasn’t, but that didn’t make the experience any less terrifying, watching my daughter like that.

           The light finally turns green, and Sheila presses on the gas. The car zooms forward, jolting over a steel plate left by a construction company.

           Cravings is only seven minutes away now, but it’s a busy Saturday downtown. Traffic is stop and go, the line outside the new patisserie extends around the block, and the farmer’s market is in full swing. Sheila stops for a couple of teenage jaywalkers, glancing at the clock—1:41—as she begins to ease her foot off the brake.

           Harmony’s life has been full of changes, with Sheila leaving her abusive husband when Harmony was only six, then Harmony suffering a bout of anxiety that never went away, followed by losing her hearing in middle school. Sometimes Sheila feels guilty about all of it, even though it’s not her fault. She did everything right, after all. She got herself and her children out of a bad situation. Her husband never hurt the kids, but it wasn’t a life Sheila could bear living anymore. She couldn’t bear letting her children live that life.

           But sometimes, the guilt is for a different reason. If Sheila’s side of the family didn’t have such bad medical history, maybe Harmony would’ve recovered fully from each of her ear infections. Maybe she wouldn’t have gone deaf, or even had so many infections in the first place.

           Sheila has been drifting, staring out the window, lost in thought. The jaywalkers are safely on the other side of the street, and the navy minivan behind her honks. She grumbles under her breath as her booted foot—My toes really hurt—hits the gas.

           Too fast.

           The tires make an awful screeching noise as she slams on the brake, too late, the airbag popping out of the wheel as she throws her arm out to protect Harmony, and white overtakes her vision.