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Writer's pictureJ. Joseph

Stress Makes Anything a Whole-Ass Time

I wake up just after my alarm. A fairly regular state of affairs. It stirs me while I’m still asleep, raises my heartrate a little, and causes me to start waking up. And also as is often the case, I’m still a little tired. Not too tired to function, mind you, just a little more tired than I’d like. I start my morning the same way I always do, a habit I started during that first week after the accident. I take a deep breath, and check out the window. The sun is rising. I check the analogue clock on the wall. It’s ticking away, roughly the right speed. I walk over to the calendar hanging on my bedroom wall. Marking off another day. It’s been almost a month since the crash. And it’s definitely been a weird month.

That first week was the hardest by far. Or, at least the most complicated and the most confusing by far. See, I didn’t exactly know what was going on that week, and I was stressed by the crash and sleeping poorly and irregularly. I’d get nightmares and wake up an hour after I fell asleep, fully rested. It’s why I started to check for dawns. I took the first few days off for medical leave, due to the whole, well, everything going on. Then when it was actually time to start my job, I started finishing my work in what felt like hours but lasted minutes. Fortunately, since I’m still fully remote, it didn’t seem to matter too much, I just spaced out the actual delivery of the work a bit. Unfortunately, that didn’t make my sense of timing and life any easier. Especially not knowing, much less understanding, what was happening. Or why it was happening.

In a rough sum total, I would guess that first week took around two months to pass from my perspective. I wasn’t exactly tracking something, heck I even now wouldn’t know how to track it. But I have figured out what it is. Kind of. See, one day I finished my work and started to watch the clock. My heart pounding in my chest and my stress levels through the roof, I watched as the clock’s second hand held still for far too long. Then it jumped, and held still once more. But rather than look away, I continued to watch that clock as I calmed down. The second hand started to speed up as my heart rate fell and I grew more relaxed. So I had two theories. So I decided to time myself on a relaxing mile run. I figured that would be a reasonable way to separate the mental and physical possibilities. Sure enough, relaxed as could be, my light jog ended up taking well under eight minutes.

Once I figured out that time and my heart rate were tied together somehow, at least for me, it became a bit easier to manage. I got a few of those meditation app things, I focus on my breathing, slow and deep, whenever I notice things start to slow, or get into stressful situations. The only real difficulties are related to the bits I can’t control. I can’t go to the gym anymore to stay fit. I’m not going to go alone and my workouts would be done by the time anyone I went with got started. And there’s the sleep thing, being always a little tired. I can’t prove it, but I would bet that’s because the connection works the other way too, to a degree, so when my heart rate falls as I sleep, time speeds up for me slightly, and the seven hours or so is even less sleep for me. I can’t test that for the same reason I can’t figure out specifics, because how am I supposed to measure something like seconds per second? I’m no clock, and anything else I try to use will just tell me how one second passed in that second because of course that’s the objective answer. But with a rough approximation, I can do some useful and fun things. Like by hyperventilating, I can get my work done quite quickly, relative to the world around me. And by playing with my breathing, I can change people’s voices. And, again, while it means no gym time, I can get whole-ass workouts in before the morning begins.

On the calendar for today is written ‘A-home’. So much for a normal relaxing day. I walk down towards the kitchen. Matt’s in the living room, doing his physical therapy. “Ally’s coming home today, know where Will is?” I ask as I walk over to the kitchen’s coffee machine. It’s already finished running, sitting warmed is a half full pot.

“He’s showering before work. I’m assuming Ally’s on you?” Mike asks.

I take a whiff of the real coffee, then continue over to the pod-coffee maker. Putting in the decaf pod, some water, and my cup, I turn it on. “I assume so. Are you going to be doing anything today?”

“Why are you asking? Do you want me to pick her up?” he replies, suspicious.

I loudly groan. “After the last time you were behind the wheel?” I joke in poor taste, then quickly add, “No, I just want to know timings. I want to make sure someone is with Ally all day today, but I also, contrary to popular belief, do actually have a job.”

Will shows up, wearing only his bathrobe, to pour himself another cup of coffee. “Sure you do,” he jokes.

I stick my tongue out at him, which makes him chuckle. Mike eventually replies, “I’m probably going to at least try to go out this evening, not for a real thing, but just to say hello to my coworkers and apologize for this last month. Other than that, though, I’ll be here.”

I nod. “Great,” then to Will I add a quick, “I’m picking up Ally, so I get the beater. You can take the bus or something.”

“Screw you. Also yeah. If I’m late I’m blaming you, though.”

I raise an eyebrow at my robed roommate. “Me? Not Ally?”

He shrugs as he walks away with his cup of coffee. “Ally and Mike are injured. I’d feel bad blaming either of them.”

I nod. “Fair enough,” I reply as I drink my decaf coffee and head into the living room. Sipping it, only to trick that part of my brain that needs caffeine without dealing with the time-speed issues that arise from actually drinking caffeine, I breathe. In. Then out. I open my phone. The calendar on my phone says Ally is leaving at eleven. I have some time. In. I should check in with work. Then out. They know I’m leaving in the middle of the day for a few hours, but technically I’m not taking the whole day off. Just a few hours in the middle. In. So I should log in this morning. Even though I’m not going to do any non-emergency work before noon. Then out. Just in case something important comes up. So I can claim to be on call.

I head back upstairs to the third floor. In my room, at my desk, is my computer. One monitor is on a moveable arm, the other sits firm atop the desk. I turn it on. On the main monitor, I open up the remote work software we’re required to use by management. My computer takes a moment to start it, as though questioning why anyone would use such a clunky, poorly optimized monstrosity. But it does run. I log in, and immediately turn focus to my other monitor. There is no red light, so nothing urgent came up overnight. On my second monitor, I open up a streaming site and turn on an old show. One of my comfort foods. To keep me relaxed for the next three and a half hours.

Sure enough, time passes without a hitch. My boss thanks me for being available, but doesn’t ask for anything. No one else from work even notices, much less cares. The show is nice and relaxing. But, after seven episodes pass, it’s time for me to leave. I turn off the show, though I don’t close the site. I log out of the remote-work program, leaving the program itself open. While it may be a waste of processing power, it truly pains my computer to open it up. Easier to just keep it open for these next couple hours. I take a deep breath. In. I stand up. And out. I walk down stairs, focusing on each breath. Keeping them even, deep, and slow.

I head out the back, to our garage. Well, the garage we share with our neighbors. It’s a three car garage and our rent gets us one space in it. In our space of the garage sits a truly terrible car. Not the one that got wrecked, that wasn’t salvageable. Will and I pooled together enough for a new used car. Beaten all to shit and very ugly early 2000s Civic. One of the doors is straight up just a different color than the rest of the car, as is the rear bumper. But it was cheap, and it works. Climbing in, I open the garage, and slowly back out. In the alleyway, I close the garage. I stop before heading to the road proper, taking another deep breath. I turn on the radio, tuned to the classical station. Everything I can to stay relaxed. In. Then out. I drive.

Driving is a whole-ass time. The drive over to the hospital, entirely uneventful. But it’s still driving, being in a car. Which means, no matter the focus, no matter the background, I start to get stressed the moment I notice any cars doing anything even remotely dangerous. Then comes the fun thing. See, in a car, turning the steering wheel twists a thing that spins a gear that then moves the wheels. Roughly speaking, I’m sure there are a few other steps in there. But each of those interactions has some level of resistance to them naturally. And when I’m stressed and time is slower, each of those resistances become much harder to overcome. Which means just normal everyday turns become a bit of a workout. So, in spite of the relative ease of the drive, I arrive at the hospital more than a bit sweaty.

I pull into a parking space, park, then take yet another moment to breathe. In. I need to be normal, calm. Then out. Otherwise my stress level will affect Ally. In. And that’ll just spiral all the way up. That’s not ideal. Then out. I climb out of the old beater and head inside the hospital. I head up and over to Ally’s room. I keep the blinders on, ignoring the rest of my surroundings. Just hyper focused on maintaining slow, deep, even breaths. I really don’t like hospitals. Her door is open. Ally’s sitting on the bed, clearly worn by some effort recently expended, her purse beside her ready to go. I knock on the open door. She looks up at me. “How’re you doing?” I ask with a pleasant smile.

“Shitty,” she shoots back with a chuckle.

I head in and wheel her terrible, hospital “provided” wheelchair around. From the clothes and the bag, I assume she’s already signed out. “So the usual,” I joke.

“Pretty much. Everything alright at home?”

I smirk. “Pretty much the usual.”

Ally laughs a warm, pleasant laugh. “So, Will’s still in the habit of forgetting robes are clothes,” she jokes back.

“Oh, no,” I insist, “I’m pretty sure he remembers. He actively chooses evil.” I help her into the chair.

“And Mike?” she asks as I begin to wheel her out.

I shrug as I walk. The nurses wave goodbye to Ally as we pass. “Same as last week. Still insists today is the day he’s going to meet up with his coworkers again.”

“Hey,” Ally states, “As the person just getting back from the hospital today, I for one will be happy when he ends up not doing that this evening.”

“Just you wait,” I insist with a smile as I roll her to the Civic. “Ready?” I ask her, earnestly.

She looks for a moment, sighs, then shrugs. “As ready as I’ll ever be, I suppose,” she says.

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