Free I Survived Seattle by J.K. Hogan

have to keep moving until the meds kick in. Otherwise, I’ll pass out, or throw up or something.”
    He wouldn’t meet Nic’s eyes. The way he was acting, Nic wasn’t sure if he shouldn’t try and take Justice to a hospital. He was getting kind of scared that the guy was going to drop dead in his bedroom.
    “I’m sorry. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything but, um…what’s happening?”
    Justice closed his eyes and took a deep, long breath, and his jittery motion seemed to calm slightly. He finally looked at Nic, and Nic was struck by just how miserable and alone he looked.
    Justice gingerly sat on the bed, and after a brief pause, he lowered his head to the pillow so that he was lying down. He stretched out and flung an arm over his eyes.
    “No, I’m sorry,” he said, so quietly that Nic barely heard. “This is so fucking embarrassing. This is why I never go out.”
    Nic moved to sit on the bed beside him, sliding back until his back was against the headboard. “Maybe you should tell me about it. Might make you feel better.”
    “Yeah. I usually feel better when I’m around people who know about my…problem. Less pressure to hide it, I guess.”
    “Okay.” Nic wasn’t sure what the proper response was, so he simply waited for Justice to continue.
    “My official diagnosis is Acute Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, and mild-to-moderate Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.”
    “Wow.”
    “Yeah.” Justice squinted at Nic. “It’s not a good combination, trust me. My own diagnosis is that I’m just batshit crazy. I used to be worse actually. I didn’t know what was happening when I was younger. Back then, little was known about these kinds of behavioral disorders. They usually got blamed on some other problem. You know, like how the symptoms of ADHD often get blamed on a lack of focus or willingness in school.
    “Anyway, even after I finally got counseling, I was really opposed to medications. I didn’t want to become a drugged up zombie —something I’d seen happen too often to people, especially depressed kids whose parents make them take the meds.
    “But it got to where I couldn’t function in my daily life, with the added pressure of being gay on top of everything. So now I have a daily med protocol, and then the stuff I take for panic attacks.”
    “Christ,” Nic hissed. His heart went out to the guy. With all the crap that he had, it was a wonder he went out at all. “So you were anxious about going out with me? You don’t have to be, I’d never do anything to hurt you.”
    Justice was shaking his head before Nic finished the sentence. “I know that. Believe me. You see, this isn’t a feeling. It’s a condition, a disorder. If it doesn’t make any sense to you, it’s because there’s no sense to be made of it. It just is…it’s what I live with.
    “The top three things people say to me when they find out about I’m having a panic attack are ‘calm down’; ‘what do you have to be anxious about?’; and ‘did I do something?’ The answers to those are ‘if I could calm down, I wouldn’t be having a panic attack’; ‘lots of things’; and ‘no.’”
    “So I didn’t do anything?” Nic asked quietly. He hated asking, but that had been one of his fears.
    Justice lifted his arm off of his eyes and gave Nic a sweet smile that sent his stomach flip-flopping. “No, of course not. But, in your case, thanks for asking. Anxiety disorders are rarely rational. A lot of people don’t even know what causes their anxiety and if they do, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I have things called triggers, and when something pulls the trigger —boom, panic.”
    “Okay. Do you know what…pulled the trigger this time?”
    Justice gave him a crooked smile and his cheeks turned pink. It was better than the ghostly pale he had been a few minutes ago. “I don’t usually do this kind of thing.”
    “What? Date men?”
    Justice’s eyes widened comically