Playing Doctor

Chapter 6

Aurelia

Saturday morning, Aurelia woke up feeling somewhat better. She'd had dinner with Kelly the night before, well technically Kelly had insisted she come over and let her cook for her, but still it had been dinner with her new BFF. Thinking of her as that made Aurelia grin. It had been so long since she'd had any real friends. A friend she could do stuff with, someone she enjoyed hanging out with. It had been so nice.

Dr. West's visage popped into her head then and she half wished she could hang out with him too. From her appointment she knew they had a lot in common, at least in movie and book tastes and she had enjoyed chatting with him. And he was so good looking too, and easy going… her crush on him had only grown since her appointment.

Thinking about Kelly and Dr. West, led Aurelia to think about the people she'd left behind in Portland. Granted she hadn't spoken to them in years, since Marcus basically had her stop making plans with them, but now she felt the real ache in her heart for the friendships she'd abandoned. She decided to log into her old Facebook account and make some changes. Update things and maybe contact some of those old friends she'd let go. Maybe try to explain how brainwashed she'd been and apologize for letting the friendships go dormant.

Logging in took some doing, she couldn't remember her password right away and it took several tries to get in. Then of course Facebook had made a million changes since she'd last been on and she had to figure out where everything was now. A little bell icon at the top said she had ninety-nine plus notifications. Why so many? she wondered. Clicking the bell, she noticed that most of them were from her mother and Marcus. She tapped on the first one, which was a post to her from her mother.

Aurelia Louise where the hell are you? I have been calling you for a week and a half and you are completely ignoring me! I will not have it! I demand you returned to Portland!

"Damn it. Guess I am going to have to call her before she goes posting where I'm at!" Aurelia said to her laptop with a frown.

But before she could, her mouse scrolled down to the next message and she saw it was from Marcus.

"Yeah, first things first. You, sir, are getting blocked!"

She quickly made adjustments to her page, blocking Marcus, erasing his posts from her page, and then for good measure, she erased her mother's posts too. She went into her profile and edited her location from Portland, but instead of putting in White Plains, she grinned as she typed in Nowhere, USA. Marcus had friends, so just because she blocked him, didn't mean he wouldn't still be able to snoop on her. She left the old phone number there, but then noticed she could set her profile to private, so anyone she wasn't currently friends with couldn't see her stuff.

From there she went through the fifty friends she had attached to her page and unfriended about thirty of them who she'd only had on there because of Marcus. Then she went through her photos and deleted any that had shots of Marcus in them. A couple of them she cropped just to cut him out because she liked the background and the way she looked in the shot.

Once that was done, she decided to leave a post to update anyone who actually cared to know.

It's been a while since I've been on Facebook, and even longer since I've connected with a lot of you. I thought it was about time I let you know what's been going on. I left Marcus over a month ago and moved away from Portland. I'm not going to say where to, not at this time, but know it was a good move for me, for the most part.

Unfortunately, after arriving here, because of some of the things Marcus did to me, I ended up in the hospital for about a week. I was diagnosed with Viral Pericarditis, which means the membrane around my heart is inflamed. I am now recovering, and I want to reconnect with those of you I lost touch with over the last several years. I greatly regret not having you in my life and I hope we can recover our friendships. Here's to a new me, a new year, and a better life.

Aurelia read it over, tagged the friends she had lost contact with and then feeling good about it, hit post. She didn't want to just sit and wait for someone to 'like' her post or answer her back, it felt a little desperate, so she closed down Facebook and just as she was about to check her email her phone rang.