I did try to breathe. But it felt like every breath was the same breath, a used-up breath, never big enough.

A small group gathered. Normally I would have been mortified. But who cared who gathered and gawked now? They closed in, murmuring what sounded like shame, shame, or maybe what a shame; I wondered if I was dying.

“I can help,” someone said, a young guy with a shaved head and a beard. “I mean I’m no doctor, but—”

“I think we need an actual doctor,” Oz said. He had a phone against his face.

“Is it your heart?” someone said.

“It’s my heart,” I said.

My heart was a bird flung against a window, that terrible thump over and over. The man looked into my eyes. He held my wrist between his moist fingers.

“Has she eaten today?” he asked. The crowd of people waited to hear.

“Have you?” Oz said.

“Breakfast.”

“Breakfast,” Oz reported to everyone. “And lots of coffee.”

“You’re having a panic attack,” the kid with the shaved head said with certainty. “My old girlfriend used to have these. You need some drugs. You need like Valium.”

“I need to look in a mirror,” I said. And then everything went gold, and someone led me away, blind.

When I could see again, I realized there was a little mirror in my hands. I found my reflection among some scratches and smears. There I was, the same person, the same face. I wasn’t gone or altered in any way. I held the mirror tightly and looked around to see where I was. A quiet room, an office. I saw manila folders in stacks on a metal desk.

“We’ve got an ambulance coming,” someone said. It was Oz, and he was sitting on a plastic chair near me.

“No,” I said. “I’m not going anywhere in an ambulance.”

“Well, you need to get some kind of medical treatment from someone.”

“I’m totally fine,” I said. “Look, watch.”

I stood up. He stood up, too.

“I’m sorry about this,” I said.

“Stop right there,” he said, holding up his hand. “You have nothing to be sorry about.”

“I’m still not going to the hospital,” I said.

“I heard you the first time.”

I raised the mirror to my face and focused on the tiny blurred reflection of myself. Tiny Lydia. Smear of a face. My heart was calm now. Everything was slow and quiet.

This was what I meant when I said it was hard to leave the island. I had never thought to call it a panic attack. I always just felt waves, crashing, racing, drowning. Looking back, I realize I hadn’t tried to leave the island for years. Since my mother’s death, time had slipped by, and I hadn’t needed to go anywhere—not really—so I didn’t know how fierce it had become, the force pulling me home.