I stomp stage left and swing my feather boa dramatically around my neck, glancing back at my onstage husband, Ronald, giving him a look that could kill.

“All this time, Ronald. How could you?”

He approaches but I turn away, sticking my nose defiantly up in the air.

“Helen, I-“

Before he gets his sentence out, I spin around and slap him across the face. The audience gasps. The slap is a bit harder than on other nights, but overall not a bad stage slap. We did have a lot of fun and giggles rehearsing it.

“You bastard! I trusted you!”

I squint and scrunch up my eyes, intimating crying. I’ve never been able to cry on demand. Frankly my crying could use some work. But the audience is less able to detect fake crying when it’s up on a stage than if it’s on a screen right in front of them, so I’m not worried.

“Please, my love, it only happened once.”

The stage lights glare down on us. We can’t see the audience because of it, but we can hear them. Tonight’s audience has been pretty good so far. Laughs in all the right places, applause at every appropriate moment. The grease paint on my face feels like it’s melting, and my nose is itchy. But, impeccable actress that I am, I resist the urge to scratch it. Instead I face the audience and gaze into the distance.

“Ronald, since we’re being so honest with each other…” I pause, to give the audience a moment to wonder what the heck kind of a bomb I’m about to drop. “I should let you know one thing…”

He grabs my arm but I don’t move, I just continue to look past the stage lights and into the dark background of the theater. He is holding onto my arm, and it feels like it’s been there too long.

“Yes? What is it?” He asks dramatically. This is not actually his line, but his way of prompting me to speak my next line, which has suddenly escaped my mind.

“I… I…” Now sweat is really dripping down my face. My heart begins to flutter, and my mouth goes dry.

He grabs my arm a little bit tighter- his way of showing support and saying, “you can do it.” But the gears of my brain have come to a screeching, rusty halt. Nothing is happening and there are no words. There are not even thoughts of words, of ideas of the types of words one might say in a situation such as this. I couldn’t even improvise a line, fumble over it and move onto the next one. I couldn’t get any words out.

This sweet man, I love working with him, I really do. He presses, “Oh, Helen, please don’t tell me that you have fallen for…” He wants me to catch on and say someone’s name. Whose? I have no idea. “Fallen for… my brother!”

Things start to snap back into place but I am still strangely disoriented. “Yes!” I say. “It’s true, your brother.” That is definitely not my line, but it’s all I can come up with. My body feels shaky and frozen, and my breaths become shallow and quick. My fingers and toes feel cold and tingly, and I think I might actually be getting dizzy. Something is wrong with my mind, with my body. I don’t know what’s happening. This is more than just stage fright or forgetting a line.

I figure that I had at least better get off stage before I pass out, so I feign that I am too upset to talk, and I whirl myself and my fluffy boa through a stage door and into the wings before my costar knows what’s happening. The director rushes to me, concerned.

“Is it happening again?”

Cold sweat drips down my face and I nod.

“Oh god. Okay, Sarah, I need you to call Franklin’s team, stat! Joe, help get her onto a couch!”

I look down at my hands as Joe supports/drags me towards an old musty theater couch. My fingernails have grown sharp and long, and they are now an unpleasant shade of taupe. It hurts, feeling my nails coming in like that. Suddenly my spine seems to tear itself apart and the pain is immense. I start heaving like there are worms in my stomach I need to throw up, but nothing is coming out.

And that is the last thing I remember until the next day when I was awoken to Franklin gently shaking my shoulders.