Calling Mr. Nelson Pugh Read online

  Calling Mr. Nelson Pugh

  Christopher Opyr

  Copyright © 2020 Christopher Opyr

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Christopher Hutton

  Image(s) used under license from Dreamstime.com.

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  Printed in the United States of America

  To my own supportive wife, Nicole.

  Thank you for tolerating my many neuroses, including my own numerous anxieties.

  Moreover, thanks for bearing with me through years of swearing I was going to publish this novella, then rewriting it yet again. I promise it's done this time.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  BREATHE IN

  BREATHE OUT

  TEN

  NINE

  EIGHT

  SEVEN

  SIX

  FIVE

  FOUR

  THREE

  TWO

  ONE

  BREATHE IN

  BREATHE OUT

  REPEAT

  About The Author

  BREATHE IN

  A low thrum sounded from my pocket as my cell rang on silent. The call could wait. It had to wait. The chaos of the day tore at me and nothing could wrench my attention back from the hell of my anxieties. Not now. Now, I needed to calm that beast and to claw my way back up until I found some semblance of peace. Only then could I face the outside world once more.

  I cast my laptop down upon the bedspread and collapsed onto the mattress, ignoring the continued thrum of my phone. As I sank against the bed, my first instinct was to let the grey isolation of yet another hotel room wash over me. Here I sat in the latest of a string of cheap travel accommodations, none any better than the last. The walls loomed over me, soaked in an air of decay that told me all that I needed to know about the hotel in which I was staying. Painted in an once off-white, now light almond color stained from years of neglect, the room had obviously never known any former splendor of any kind.

  The entirety of the room waded in darkness, save for the dim illumination cast by the flickering street lamps outside, and even that light filtered in diffused through dust-choked curtains until only a weak, muted ambience remained. I sat alone in one more aged and forgotten room.

  Seeking the calm of nothingness, I closed my eyes. My name is Nelson Pugh and I suffer from severe anxiety – severe, crippling anxiety.

  Sure, at that time, on that night, at least as the evening began, I found myself managing through the slog of my ever present agitation. With treatment, I even found myself capable of bearing through the necessary travel of my job – my putrid and soul-shattering attempt at a living. My anxiety, however, never left. Even on a normal day, life seemed at best a tense affair. Traveling days, like this particular day, fared far, far worse.

  Alone and at the end of an exhausting cycle of airports and taxis, I let out a sigh, relaxed my tensed muscles, and let the emptiness take over pushing out the day’s stress as best it could. Oftentimes that emptiness is nowhere to be found, but this time it came. The anxiety eased just enough, and my world slipped into something distantly resembling bliss.

  Of course, it only lasted a moment.

  Just as I settled into that calm, a muffled beep sounded, breaking the silence and vanishing the nothingness that I had sought. The stress of the day came flooding back, my peace destroyed. I tensed, hoping to stem the tide, but too late. Another beep sounded.

  I dragged my cell phone from my pocket. The thrum of the call had ended, but the machine refused to relent. One look at the screen confirmed my suspicions: “New Voicemail.” This wasn’t the only one. The first of the messages had come shortly after my plane had landed and I had turned on my phone again. She had called while I was in flight. Eleanor, my wife.

  I knew that I should call her back. Most of all, I knew that I should at least listen to her messages. That would seem simple enough, I suppose, but that isn’t always the case; it never was for me. The flight that night had taken too much out of me, and I could barely calm my nerves. I needed a moment before I could once again face the world. Eleanor knew this.

  I traveled frequently for work. At the time, this was the major tragedy of my adult life. Looking back, I long for those days and for the peace of that former life, one as of then untouched by the darkness to come. Those were simpler days: days where the month’s flight itinerary loomed as the major stressor of my life.

  One week I’d be in Chicago, the next Minneapolis, and the next off to Boston, Baltimore, Los Angeles, or New York. That week I found myself in Charlotte. I couldn’t bear the incessant weekly relocation. I needed order and routine. I needed calm. Constant travel, and its impact on my pre-existing anxieties, was beyond unhelpful.

  Of course, this travel reigned as my life’s major blessing. That’s how Dr. Smith wanted me to see it. At that time, he was my therapist, my psychologist, or what have you. He was the guy that tried to keep me sane, and I guess since I was still functional in that period of my life that he had succeeded up to that point.

  ***

  “You have a job, Nelson.”

  I glanced up, not quite meeting Dr. Smith’s eyes. Quickly I shifted my attention back to my lap as I smoothed out the wrinkles in my pants with one hand. I laughed inside, wondering what the young doctor sitting across from me would have to say about that incessant smoothing. He’d likely call it an attempt to find order or to assert control. Perhaps he would have even been right, not that I would have admitted it then.

  This was earlier, a few months prior to that night, give or take, and whatever Dr. Smith thought of the gesture, I never found out. He pressed on, ignoring my nervous tics.

  “Most people would consider that a reason to rejoice now, having a job. A reason to conquer your fears and your anxiety.”

  That bunch of positive, forward momentum hooey might as well have been Dr. Smith’s mantra. I hated him for lines like that one. They oozed of inane simplicity and false reassurances, both of which drove me bat-shit crazy. They rang so proper and forced, and at the same time they reeked of judgment.

  Dr. Smith’s tone conveyed it even then, that and the slightly disapproving look in his eyes. Yes, I knew he judged me, and although I realized that the man’s job dictated that he guide me to a healthier, happier me, and that this may have required some measure of judgment, I couldn’t help myself. I loathed him, really loathed him. Even his name irked me: Dr. Smith. It was so ordinary. Yes, I even loathed the man’s name.

  “Nelson?” Dr. Smith asked more than said.

  “Sorry.” I shook myself from my reverie, attempting to cast aside my aspersions. “You’re right.”

  This was the one trait, however, that rubbed at me more than any other, and it was the worst truth of the good Doctor Smith: he was right. The mere fact that I had a job should have been counted as a blessing – travel or no travel. I knew it. With the impact of my anxiety on my employment prospects, let alone the current economy (this would have been around mid 2007), I was lucky to be employed. That’s why I went into t
he office and faced my fears every day; it’s why I boarded plane after plane week after week.

  “Don’t say it, if you don’t mean it. It’s okay to disagree, Nelson.”

  I shook my head. “No, no, I mean it. You’re right. You are. I need this job.”

  “But you don’t want it.” This time it wasn’t a question. Dr. Smith understood my dilemma, even if he also understood the whys of the dilemma in the first place.

  “It’s not getting better. The… well, this,” I said gesturing at all of me. “The constant tension. I wake up and it's there. I go to sleep and it's there. There’s almost never peace; just a constant feeling of high alert.”

  “Even with Eleanor?” And there he went. Always he brought it back to my wife.

  “It’s not about Eleanor,” I said. “It’s this travel. It’s the hotels and the constant litany of city after city, of airports and taxis… and well, you know me. In a perfect world I would just work from home. I’m not built for… well, to be around people like this - to travel and network; can’t do it.”

  “Yet, your work kept you on, your company, to do exactly that. They kept you on because they believe that you are good at that, Nelson. How many people did they let go?”

  “We’ve been over this.”

  “And they kept you.”

  I laughed. “I know what you’re getting at, but it doesn’t change the facts. This travel is killing me.”

  “And your family? You’ve been married for how many years?”

  Son-of-a-bitch. He’d done it again. He had to turn those tables. He had to bring it back to Eleanor - every time. Sometimes it felt like an obsession; like the good doctor couldn’t care less about my problems, but simply wanted to discuss my wife.

  “A while,” I said, keeping my anger to myself.

  “Over fifteen years, I believe?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “Yes, eighteen. Eighteen years married, and employed for over twenty in sales. That sounds somewhat social, Nelson. You worry that the travel is stirring your anxiety, but you’ve been traveling for a long time. You think it’s the networking, but you already lead a social life. Married. Two kids. Friends.”

  “So you’re saying I should just smile and move on?”

  “No, no, Nelson, I didn’t say that. But I don’t think travel is the root of your problem.” He paused then for a moment, casting a sideways glance at my file open upon his desk, then swiveled back toward me.

  “Tell me, Nelson, with this heightened alert as you put it, how has Elly been reacting?”

  At that moment the session had been over for me. As I said, Dr. Smith always brought it back to Eleanor, my Elly. She was always Eleanor when there was tension, and my Elly when things were good. Talk of my anxieties was never good and I didn’t like the sound of Elly coming from Dr. Smith’s lips. That name was reserved, and it wasn’t his to speak.

  ***

  As usual, thinking about Dr. Smith brought me no peace. The tension returned. I shuddered and let out another deep sigh.

  As long as I continued lying there thinking about Dr. Smith, the stresses of travel, and, well, anything really, my mind would never shut down and I would know no relief. I had no choice.

  I stood, stretched my shoulders, and reached for the remote. I didn’t want to watch TV, not really, but I needed a distraction; that or I would actually have to confront my anxiety, and why the hell would I have done that?

  BREATHE OUT

  As I reached for the remote, it happened. The ringing began. I hadn’t even realized that I had switched the phone off silent, yet there it was: that piercing bray of the digital ringtone. Yes, it was just the one simple ring at first, but it was also the precursor to so much more, so much that I will never be able change nor forget.

  I glanced toward the nightstand. My cell phone vibrated across the peeling lacquer adding its rhythmic thudding to the din with each incessant ring. I didn’t need to see the screen to know that it was Eleanor, yet again. Who else would it have been?

  I grabbed the phone - not to answer it of course, but to end its loud vibrations. Sure, I needed to speak with my wife, and that call would come, but not then. I held the phone until the ringing ceased, then tossed it back down upon the nightstand.

  The phone then silent, I stood and began pacing across the cramped room. My momentary impulse for distraction had vanished. With my anxiety there never existed more than a slim window of opportunity in which to escape the constant march of my thoughts, and that window had slammed shut with the ringing of the phone. Eleanor had been trying to reach me, and there I was walking about a rundown hotel room hundreds of miles and two weeks of required travel away from any hope of seeing her. Yes, this job truly was a blessing.

  Yet, to Dr. Smith’s point, much as it pained me to admit it, the fact that I still held a job when so many of my coworkers had found themselves in the unemployment lines did not fall down to coincidence. The good doctor thought it stemmed from some hidden social skill set that I harbored - that this same skill set explained my relatively traditional family life despite the severity of my anxiety disorder. I didn’t buy that for a moment.

  No, I merely had a knack of talking my way out of tight situations - at least, sometimes I did. I had always had a slightly above average skill for debate – I won’t say that I excelled at it, but I was decent. As I often remind myself, mediocre talent is still some modicum of talent. That’s my consolation prize for what is otherwise an average life, if not a shitty excuse for an existence.

  Well, that modicum of talent and the fruits that it bore became my consolation prizes. That talent secured my job, and that talent alone, especially as I had been slated to be axed. I didn’t study debate, and I didn’t practice or do anything to hone the craft, but this talent remained something else, something innate that played me, and always had. When the time came, it bubbled up and I seized upon it like riding a wave to shore. I could think of no better corollary. When the stress hit, I caught onto it and rode it in, steering to avoid obstacles, but no more able to stop than I would have been able to push back against the momentum of a surging sea.

  That was the way of it, too, when Mr. Rochester had pulled me into his office to let me know that my twenty years of service were at an end. I rode that wave and talked my way back into my decades-old cubicle. In the end, Stan Myers had found himself on the chopping block in my stead, ending nearly fifteen years of friendship. After that I had tried not to think about Stan much anymore. I did, however, see him once more after that day; time had not been good to him.

  I shook the thought away and glanced about my tiny room. The compressor of a nearby mini-fridge gasped as it started, breaking the silence once again. The fridge didn’t have much life left. Numerous dents marred its surface, which itself appeared as faded as the room’s walls. Like the room, the fridge had seen better days. As such, I found myself feeling a sudden and undeniable sense of camaraderie with this now dying appliance. Hell, I felt bonded to the room as a whole, replete in its descent from the glory it never had. I grabbed a hotel drinking glass and a small bottle of Kentucky bourbon from the fridge and raised the glass in a toast.

  “To better days and better blessings.” I gulped down the full glass in a fierce and ill-considered swig, squinting with the effort. Realizing my mistake, I shook my head and let out a heavy breath, trying to rid myself of the aftertaste. I had never been a strong drinker and the whiskey fell heavy and hard into my system.

  I rushed to the bathroom sink gulping down a tap water chaser. As the water sloshed down my throat, the phone began to ring for a second time. I ignored it as I swallowed down the thick water. The phone continued to ring and buzz from its resting place on the nightstand, eventually sliding off and landing with a soft thud on the thin hotel carpet. Still it lay there, ringing, unanswered and abandoned upon the floor, but I was not yet ready to speak with Eleanor.

  I missed her, true – her and our two daughters, Erica and Marie. Even more than for
my job, I felt thankful for my family. They were my life’s biggest blessing, my job really nothing more than a means with which to support that dream. The three of them were the reason that I kept my corporate job and suffered through the flights and crowds and the general malaise of a life of business travel. They were my reason for everything.

  All the odder then that I couldn’t bring myself to answer those calls. Why was I so weak? What was it that I feared? What was it that shattered my nerves and left me battered and useless in that dark room?

  As the questions mounted, I began to think that maybe I should answer that call. In fact, I knew that Elly might be the only person that could help talk me down from my travel-induced nerves. Yet, even knowing this, I could not bring myself to speak with her.

  The ringing ended. I glanced out to the phone where it lay lifeless upon the carpet. As always, I had failed. I was not a good man. I was not even a good husband. I hung my head and took another sip from the sink.

  The water downed, and the cheap bourbon aftertaste held at bay, I looked at myself in the mirror. The same bland visage stared back at me that I saw every morning - just an average guy with a hint of disorder. Bags clung beneath my eyes and my face had grown haggard. I had no clue how Eleanor tolerated our life together. Gorgeous, smart, and all the usual clichés, she could have married anyone and yet she chose me. Perhaps that spoke to her own mental failings, I don’t know, but I could make no sense of it. Sometimes I pitied her that choice. Looking into that mirror, I wondered how my life had reached such a juncture of mediocrity and disappointment.

  Lost in my own self-hatred, I barely heard the ring of the phone begin again; yet when it registered, the first trembler of warning broke through my self-indulgent haze like a fist in the gut. Alarm bells sounded shouting for my attention.