Top Bunk

DAY 27

⌚ 4:36 AM

El should have noticed.

When she is thrusted from her own dreams with a violent scream from above her, it dawns on her. Grace hasn't let out a peep about her mom for the past few days. Now, she's muttering utter nonsense, words melding together, "Nonono please mom please please mom don't anything I'll please nono mom..." And her breaths are short and ragged and it scares El.

Then, a loud thud. A groan. More wailing.

El feels compelled to rise, all the sleepiness drained from her when she sees Grace on the floor in the semi-dark. The strawberry blonde has her eyes squeezed shut and she's quivering like a fucking leaf and she's pale as snow and she's covered in a thin sheen of sweat. Panic paired with adrenaline boils in El's blood. Grace hasn't acknowledged El in so long. Should she - ?

She should. "G-grace?" El whispers, crouching beside Grace.

Grace doesn't budge, still shaking, wailing, asleep, despite falling five feet. "Please I'll no please..."

"Grace," El says louder.

"Don't don't no don't no..."

El bites her lip. "Grace?" The pathetic statement comes out as a scared question. "Grace." The sound of her own voice shocks her. She brings her hand down slowly, and she feels her heart drumming violently against her ribcage as she touches Grace's arm ever so slightly.

El has barely made contact when Grace jolts awake, stormy eyes wide as saucers. She gasps, but it's strangled as she's still trembling. Her breaths are too sporadic to be considered normal - Grace is hyperventilating.

And honestly, the spectacle shocks El. This is the weakest she's ever seen Grace Upland. All those times she's cried in her sleep combined wouldn't compare to her now. El gulps, now unaware of what to do.

Grace seems to forget that she's meant to be giving El the cold shoulder. A panic attack does that to a person, El guesses. Tears trickle out of Grace's eyes, huge droplets that leave tracks on her round cheeks. "E-el?" Grace croaks out. The sound of her name coming from those lips warms El's insides but there's no time for that.

"What do I do?" El mutters. Her mother used to have panic attacks, and she'd push a ten year old El out of her room, begging for silence and time. El chews on the inside of her cheek. Her mother never had it this bad. Grace is practically writhing on the hardwood floor of the cabin, her chest caving in on itself, sweating profusely. "Should I - should I go? Leave you alone?"

Leave me alone, El's mother would beg. Please. So El would. It would take anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours for her mother to calm down, and she'd then bring El out for ice cream, all smiles and cheery voice.

"No," Grace is saying now. "N-no. Stay." She sniffs, bringing a shaky hand up to her nose. "P-please."

El doesn't know what she's meant to do. Grace is a mess. It's as if she isn't meant to see her like this. What happened to the confident, queenly, majestic woman? Why is this quivering, vulnerable mess at El's cold feet?

"Okay," El says. She'll stay.

Grace twitches her head. A nod? She purses her lips and tries to lift herself from the hardwood, only to have her weak arms give in beneath her and let her fall back to the floor. Whimpering, Grace lays on her side, hugging her legs to her torso. Her breaths still can be likened to a sputtering engine - like the engine of El's shitty car.

El has never felt so useless, just watching Grace lie there, gasping for air and crying. She knows she should do something. But what is that something? Hold Grace in her arms? Massage her? Tell her a bedtime story? El doesn't have any experience with panic attacks aside from her mother's old spells and if it isn't obvious enough, Lisa Thropp and Grace Upland are very different people. El can't stand only sitting there with nothing to do.