The minute Beau steps out the door, I feel my cheeks start to burn and the nervous jolts rip through my chest. I don’t think about it for a minute. I take another sublingual Trankimazin. I need something to pass the time. And I don’t want to take advantage of Beau. I’m seeing him tonight anyway. I quickly scan the cinema show times for a comedy. I settle on Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It starts in half an hour.

In the taxi, I make a few calls, get the name of an on-call psychiatrist. I can see him this evening. Right now, I need something to feed my head. I call Patricia, she asks me how I’m feeling, I tell her about my visit to Gabriela and ask whether I can come see her. She says of course, she’ll be at home all day with Lorena, her four-year-old daughter. That should take up the next four hours. I call Beau to tell him everything’s fine, and that I’m going to see Gondry’s movie.

When the taxi gets to the city center, the streets are teeming with crowds of people. It’s like a protest march where every demonstrator has a different slogan and a different cause. Utter chaos. I feel horrendous. The taxi is stuck in traffic. I pay the driver and get out. I run the last stretch to the cinema, pushing my way through the crowd.

Neither Michel Gondry nor his movie is to blame for not distracting me from the successive waves of suffocating panic.