Oxygen (Catfish And The Bottlemen/1975)

Saffron

I didn't pass out.

When I opened my eyes, when I managed a little sign of life, everyone rushed to tell me that I'd passed out in the club but I hadn't.

I'd collapsed maybe, my eyes had rolled back and I'd fallen limp in Kittys arms. My body had slumped forward and I had appeared for hours, the rest of the night, to be lifeless. Unconscious.
But I wasn't.

I'd been aware of everything.
Every new sensation, every new voice. I'd felt the cotton of Kittys tshirt against my cheek, the cold of the spitting rain on my hand, the warmth of someone holding me, playing with my fingers for hours on and off.

I'd heard the panic and the sirens and the paramedics. I'd heard the sound of machinery and other people discussing me.
I heard Fliss mumbling all sorts of sentimental reassuring things in my ear and I felt it every time her hair fell from behind her ear and brushed across my nose, caught in my eyelashes or grazed my lips.

I felt a numb sort of tingling in my arm and then everything else which followed.

For a small ammount of time I saw shadows of light in slight colours through my eyelids, but somewhere between the hospital waiting room and a room where a nurse debated which tests to do, all that faded and my vision returned once again to a black darker than the night.
Darker than the depths of the sea or a shallow grave.

The constant however was the fear. A cold sort of stiff fear I'd never felt before. White rabbit fear, a blind, helpless panic. Heart racing, blood rushing through your ears. It felt like I was dying, or desperately trying to die, just lingering on the edge, sort of swaying. Dipping my toes in the water, wiggling them around, tempting fate. I felt heavy with it. This strange grip on all my muscles as if riggamortise had already set in. Claustrophobic and choked.
And it hadn't ever relented, hadn't ever felt like it might fade.
The light and the numbness came in waves, but the fear was a constant. It was terrible.

When I came round all I could do was cry as they all rushed to tell me that I'd passed out in the club. When I told them of how I'd heard every detail of their conversations, how I'd smelt the clinical cool of the disinfectant and their latex gloves, how I'd felt them open and close my eyes several times, I confirmed their concerns.

"I was spiked," my voice shivered on the phone to Bondy. I sat propped upright in a hospital bed, a blue blanket draped around my shoulders, loose across my limbs, not really keeping me warm the way that it should have done, "and everyone keeps saying i was unconcious but I know that I wasn't," i said feeling the threat of a crack in my voice, swallowing it down suddenly, painfully. I'd been trying to keep him from hearing my tears, trying to keep him from worrying too much, because I knew him well enough to know that he'd catch the next ferry over if he thought I couldn't cope and I couldn't cope with the guilt of pulling him away from the band. Away from their week of isolation in the studio. Still, i didnt try hard enough and with his next sweet little sentiment of reassurance I choked on a sob and started crying again, using ny hospital blue blanket to wipe at my tears and stifle the sound of my fear.

"ey, shh Saffy you're gonna be alright, you're safe now darlin," he was being ever so careful, ever so gentle with me and somehow the sanctuary he was offering me only made it worse. I couldn't hold my tears in, I could hardly breath between words.

"I don't know, h, how it, h, h, happened and I took th, that f, fucking p ppp pill and I, s, someone m m must have been watchin us and they must have p picked m me out and I could still feel everythin..."

"ey buttercup you're upsettin yourself just take a coupla deep breaths for me, it want your fault Saffy," he said the rest of his words a string of similarly soothing and yet ever more certain sentiments.