Free The First Time by Joy Fielding Page B

closed, it felt as if she were lying in her grave, as if she were suffocating. Then the table on which she was lying began its slow slide into the long narrow tunnel, and she felt like one of those Russian dolls, a doll within a doll within a doll, and she knew she had to get out of this damn machine that was worse than the accident, worse than the air bag, worse than anything she’d experienced in her entire life. She had to get out or she would die, and so she started screaming for the technician to help her, forgetting about the buzzer, forgetting about everything but her panic, until Noreen told her she could open her eyes, and she started to cry, because she hurt all over, and she was acting like a baby, and she’d never felt so alone in her entire life.
    And now Noreen Aliwallia was asking her to push all that fear and loneliness aside and do it again, and Mattie was thinking, no, she’d rather risk internal bleeding in her brain and whatever else might be lurking there than go through that again. She’d always harbored a secret fear of suffocating, of being buried alive. She couldn’t do it. She wouldn’t do it.
    “You’ll bring me out if I start to panic?” she heard herself ask. What was the matter with her? Was she crazy?
    “Just press the buzzer. I’ll bring you right out.” Noreen’s surprisingly strong arms lowered Mattie’sshoulders back to the table. “Just try to relax. You might even fall asleep.”
    Oh God, oh God, oh God, Mattie thought, eyes tightly closed, left hand gripping the buzzer against the pounding of her heart, as once again her head was placed inside the box, the top of which slid down over her face to her chest, plunging her into total darkness and abject despair. I can’t breathe, Mattie thought. I’m suffocating.
    “So, how long have you known Dr. Katzman?” Noreen asked, obviously straining to distract Mattie.
    “Since forever,” Mattie replied through tightly clenched teeth, picturing Dr. Lisa Katzman as a freckle-faced child. “She’s been my best friend since we were three years old.”
    “That’s amazing,” Noreen said, her words trailing off as she abandoned Mattie’s side. “I’m going to start the machine now, Mattie. How are you doing?”
    Not great, Mattie thought, as the table beneath her began to move, carrying her into the body of the machine. Stay calm. Stay calm. It’ll all be over soon. Forty-five minutes. That’s not so long. It’s very long. It’s almost an hour, for God’s sake. I can’t do this. I have to get out. I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating.
    “The first series of X rays are going to start now,” Noreen said. “It’s going to sound a bit like horses’ hooves, and it’ll last about five minutes.”
    “And then what?” Keep breathing, Mattie told herself. Stay calm. Think pleasant thoughts.
    “And then there’ll be a break of a few minutes, and then some more X rays. Five in all. Are you ready?”
    No, I’m not ready, Mattie screamed silently over the sound of horses approaching from the distance. This isinteresting, Mattie found herself thinking, her panic temporarily diverted by the loud clip-clop, clip-clop, as behind tightly closed eyes, a team of black-and-white stallions raced toward her. Black and white, she mused. Things are rarely black or white, only varying shades of gray. Where had she heard that?
    The accident, she thought, suddenly back in her car, watching helplessly as it swerved into oncoming traffic. Black and white colliding. Varying shades of gray. What had she been thinking?
    “You okay, Mattie?”
    Mattie grunted, trying to pretend the top of the box wasn’t inches from her nose. I have lots of space, she told herself. I’m lying on an empty, white, sandy beach in the Bahamas, and my eyes are closed, and the ocean is lapping at my toes. And a hundred horses are galloping toward me, she thought, about to bury me alive beneath the sand, as the noise of the second set of X rays began. Stay calm.