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I got up slowly and walked back across the room towards the bookshelves, closely observing each step. I reached out to touch things as I passed them, to reassure myself – the side of the couch, the table, the desk. I looked back at where I had come from, and couldn’t believe it. It didn’t seem real that I had been leaning out of that window, and leaning out so far …

With my heart still thumping, I went into the bathroom. If this thing was going to start up again, and develop, I had to find some way to stop it. I opened the medicine cabinet above the washbasin and quickly searched through all the bottles and packets and sealed containers, the accumulated toiletries, shaving things, soap products, non-prescription painkillers. I found a bottle of cough syrup I’d bought the previous winter but had never used. I scanned the label and saw that it contained codeine. I opened the cap, pausing for a second as I glanced at myself in the mirror, and then started chugging the stuff down. It was horrible, sickly and viscous, and I gagged between swallows, but at least I knew that whatever synaptic short-circuiting in my brain was causing these blackouts, the codeine would slow me down and make me drowsy, and probably sufficiently drowsy to keep me here, passed out on the couch or on the floor – I didn’t mind which, just so long as I wasn’t outside somewhere in the city, out and about and on the loose …

I emptied the bottle of its last drop, put the cap back on and threw it into the little basket beside the toilet. Then I had to steel myself against throwing up. I sat on the edge of the bathtub for a while, clutching the sides of it tightly, and stared at the wall opposite, afraid even to close my eyes.

Over the next five minutes, before the codeine kicked in, there were two more occurrences, both brief as flickers in a slideshow, but no less terrifying for that. From the edge of the bathtub, and with no conscious movement on my part, I found myself standing in the middle of the living-room. I stood there, swaying slightly, trying to act unfazed – as if ignoring what had happened might mean it wouldn’t happen again. Soon after that – click, click – I was half-way down the stairs, sitting on the bottom step of the first landing with my head in my hands. I realized that another trip-switch forward like that and I’d be outside on the street, being mobbed by photographers and reporters – maybe in danger, maybe a danger to others, certainly out of control …

But I could feel the onset now of a heaviness in my limbs and a kind of general spaciness. I stood up, grabbing on to the banisters for support, and turned around. I made my way slowly back up to the third floor. Walking now was like wading through treacle and by the time I got to the door of my apartment, which was wide open, I knew I wouldn’t be going anywhere.

It then took me a couple of moments, standing in the doorway, to realize that the ringing sound I was hearing wasn’t just in my head. It was the telephone, and before I’d had time to reason that I shouldn’t be answering the telephone, given my present state, I was watching my hand floating down to pick up the receiver and then floating back up again towards my head.

‘Hello.’

‘Eddie?’

I paused for a moment, in shock. It was Melissa.

‘Eddie?’

‘Yeah, it’s me. Sorry. Hi.’

My voice felt heavy, slack.

‘Eddie, why did you lie to me?’

‘I didn’t … wh-what are you talking about?’

‘MDT. Vernon. You know what I’m talking about.’

‘But—’

‘I’ve just been reading the Post, Eddie. Short-selling stocks? Second-guessing the markets? You? Come on.’

I didn’t know what to say. Eventually, I came up with, ‘Since when do you read the New York Post?’

‘These days the Post’s about all I can read.’

What did that mean?

‘I don’t under—’

‘Look, Eddie, forget the Post, forget the fact that you lied to me. MDT is the problem. Are you still taking it?’

I didn’t answer. I could barely keep my eyelids open.

‘You’ve got to stop taking it. Jesus.’

I paused again, but had no clear sense this time of how long the pause went on for.

‘Eddie? Talk to me.’

‘OK … let’s meet.’

Now she paused, and then said, ‘Fine, when?’

‘You tell me.’

When I spoke, my tongue felt thick and swollen.

‘Tomorrow. In the morning. I don’t know – eleven-thirty, twelve?’

‘OK. In the city?’

‘Fine. Where?’

I suggested a bar on Spring Street.

‘Fine.’

That was it. Then Melissa said, ‘Eddie, are you OK? You sound strange. I’m worried.’

I was staring down at a knot in one of the floorboards. I rallied all of my strength and managed, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Melissa.’

Then, without waiting for an answer, I put the phone down.