Lamb - Thrive (Episode 3): Leave

Two days earlier

Emmas OCD had just begun to improve when the dead started walking.

Sitting in her therapists office, she sighed and tried to think how best to describe the turn her pervasive thought spirals had taken recently.

They havent gone away. Im still aware of them happening but they dont overwhelm me anymore. When I feel myself starting to spiral, I do the breathing exercises you showed me and it helps me recentre. As long as I have something else to focus on, they pretty much fade away. Emma raised her eyes to meet her therapist, Mrs Ecclestons, placid gaze.

Thats brilliant to hear. I think we made some strong progress last week, Mrs Eccleston said. She made a few notes in Emmas record, then regarded the clock on the wall behind her patient. Well, thats forty-five minutes so I think well wrap this session up now. Ill book you in again for the same time next week if that suits you, and then well work out a plan for our sessions moving forward. I think well start seeing each other once a fortnight rather than weekly

Mrs Eccleston stopped as she realised Emma wasnt listening. Her patients attention had shifted to the window. Mrs Eccleston craned forward over her desk to see what was out there, but her view was obstructed by the magnolia tree on a grassy knoll outside the tall window.

Emma watched the scene unfold on the street outside the office; a woman backed away from a man who staggered towards her, reaching his arms out to grab her. She was shouting at him. Emma couldnt hear what the woman was saying, but it sounded like a name the mans name. The woman clearly knew him, and just as clearly felt threatened by him.

Emmas first thought was that the man was drunk or high. The way he was acting, it could have been either.

But his walk was strange. It was not the unbalanced, sluggish gait of a drunk person, but more like the limp of someone with a disability. And the man seemed to be saying something to the woman or at least trying to, his mouth opening and closing repeatedly.

Perhaps he was having some kind of seizure.

The woman was now holding her phone to her ear and speaking into it. Calling an ambulance. Or the police, maybe. Her backwards walk had slowed and she held her arm out to keep the man at a distance.

Mrs Eccleston rose from her seat and went to the window to see what was going on.

Suddenly there was a scream from outside. Emma got up and joined Mrs Eccleston. Both of them watched as the man bit down on the womans hand and she howled in pain, pushing at his head with her other hand which had dropped the phone.

Other people had been drawn to the scene by the commotion and now the bystanders crowded the screaming woman, struggling to free her hand from the mans jaws. When they finally pried him from her, the man turned and tried to bite someone else, but two people restrained him and held him back.

Blood seeped from the bite mark on the womans hand and dribbled down her wrist. Emma moved away from the window, her face pale.

Christ, she said. Should we call the police or something?

Mrs Eccleston shook her head slowly, still staring out the window. Theyre already getting help by the look of it.

What was that?

I dont know. Mrs Eccleston turned to Emma. Go home. Get some rest. Are you okay to drive?

Yeah, Ill be fine.

Okay. Same time next week?

Emma nodded.

*

Back home, Emma couldnt shake the image from her head of the man biting the womans hand, blood dripping down her arm. She wanted to know what had happened, why the man had acted like that, what had been wrong with him.

So Emma did what she always did when she had questions. She went to Google.

The explanation that made the most sense to her was that the guy had been having a seizure of some kind and itd caused him to act uncontrollably violent towards who Emma assumed was his wife or girlfriend. She knew that seizures could affect different parts of the brain and cause a variety of strange repetitive behaviours. She had googled it before during a crippling bout of OCD when her health anxiety was through the roof and she was convinced she would die if she didnt give in to her compulsions.

Yes. A seizure would explain the biting, the way the man had opened and closed his mouth over and over again as if hed been trying to say something.

Emma opened her laptop and brought up the Google browser. She typed can seizures make you violent? into the search bar and hit enter. Several links popped up with reference to violent and aggressive behaviour in cases of frontal lobe epilepsy.

Scrolling through the search results, Emma suddenly thought, What am I doing? I dont need to know this.

Her mental health had been good recently. The best it had been since the accident. So why was she obsessing over the details of an incident completely unrelated to her?

No, she had to stop. She couldnt let herself spiral so easily.

Emma closed the tab, breathed in through her nose, held it for a few seconds, breathed out. Searching for a distraction, she realised she hadnt looked at the news today, so she brought up her newsfeed and began scrolling through the morning's headlines.