Medicine Man

A flashback grips me, then and throws me back into the past. The hospital room, my crying mom, the doctors. Everyone looking at me like there was something wrong with me. Everyone looking at me like I was an animal, needed to be put down.

But unlike that day, I’m not afraid of what’s to come.

In fact, I want it. I want the numbness. I want that sting. The needle. Let them put me down. Let them fucking do it.

I’m not a hysterical patient with no rational thought. I’m an insane, heartbroken girl in full possession of my mental faculties.

Let him fucking do it.

I won’t calm down, no matter what.

I flail my legs, my arms, until they don’t let me anymore. I scream harder and harder, until I feel my throat bleed. All through this, I stare tear-eyed at my tormentor, the man I love. The man who broke my heart.

And then, I feel a slight sting.

A sting I was waiting for. It brings sweet relief. And calm and peace.

Death.

Yes. Thank God.

I feel myself going into it, getting absorbed into the black mass. At the same time, I feel myself being caged in a set of arms. These are different from the ones holding me around my stomach.

I’d know those arms anywhere.

Simon.

He’s taken me in his arms as I’m dying. I smile, or try to, because I’m slipping.

I’ve thought a lot about death, and how I’ll die. I’ve made plans for it. But not once did I think that I’ll die in the arms of the man I love. It never occurred to me.

It actually seems like a good way to die. The best way to die.

To draw your last breath in his arms and to look at his face before you forever close your eyes and say your last words.

“You’re breaking my heart…”

“She’s stable,” Beth says, standing at my office door. “Sleeping.”

I look up from where I’m shoving files in my bag at my desk. I’m probably crushing the papers, ruining them beyond repair but I don’t really care.

This isn’t the worst thing I’ve ruined. And there are worse things that I can ruin.

“I want someone to monitor her all night. In case she wakes up,” I say, going back to my task.

She shouldn’t, however. She should sleep through the night with Trazadone. I hope she does.

I look around the scene of the crime. My office. Everything is straightened up. Staff here at Heartstone are pretty efficient. It makes me angry. Fucking furious that there isn’t any evidence of it. Any evidence of how I broke her heart.

Scratches on my neck and my jaw, a few on my biceps sting like she’s still digging her nails into my flesh, but they aren’t enough. Her blunt nails didn’t manage to break my skin and make me bleed. Like I made her bleed exactly seven days ago.

Where’s the justice in that? Where’s the justice in me going unpunished?

“You know this is it, right?” Beth says, reminding me that she’s still here. “I can’t help you after this. People are talking about what happened here. I can’t stop it.”

“I’m not asking for help.”

“You’re going to lose this job. I don’t think even Joseph can convince the board –”

I stop what I’m doing and focus on her. “Do I look like I care about this job?”

“Do you care about her?” she asks, standing right across from me, on the other side of the desk, as if we’re in a stand-off.

My hands fist around the flap of the messenger bag. “What do you want, Beth?”

“I want you to admit it. I know you’ve been spending time with her. Do you think I don’t know, Simon?” She arches her eyebrows. “I know about frequent meetings. You haven’t taken such an interest in any other patient but her.”

“Then why haven’t you done anything about it? Why haven’t you stopped me? If it were someone else, you would’ve had this conversation long ago. Right?”

She nods. “Yes, I would have. I would’ve let them go. And if I thought they were taking advantage of one of my patients, I would’ve made sure that everybody knew about it, too.”

“So why didn’t you? Why didn’t you let me go?”

Smiling sadly, she says, “Because you weren’t taking advantage of her.”

“Yeah? How do you know that? You’ve heard the rumors, right?” I cross my arms across my chest. “They say I took advantage of Claire. They say that I slept with her and when she got clingy, I told her to change doctors. There’s a lawsuit against me, remember?”

She shakes her head, analyzing me. I fucking hate when she does that. Like I’m still that fourteen-year-old kid who’s just lost his mother.

“I know you didn’t do that.”

She’s right. I didn’t. But everybody else thinks so.

“How? How do you know that, Beth? Maybe I’ve been lying to you. Maybe I didn’t tell you the whole story.”