Medicine Man

Today she’s crying because of me and I swear to God, I want to destroy myself.

And I’m going to do it. I’m going to show her everything that I am so she can break me if she wants to.

“I can’t,” I rasp.

An adorable frown appears on her brow, and she sweeps her bangs off her forehead, stealing my breaths with her innocent gesture. “You can’t what?”

I walk toward her. With every step I notice her eyes getting wider and wider. Her tiny frame is getting stiffer.

I’ve seen her do that a million times before. She did that the day I broke her heart. The day I lied because I thought she deserved better. She deserved someone who wasn’t trapped inside his own head, reliving the worst day of his life.

Someone who isn’t responsible for a death.

I stop a few feet away from her. “Have a good life.”

“What?”

Her face is wiped clean. Pink and soft. There are no lingering droplets of rain or tears, but I can see their path. I can imagine them.

I clench my jaw against the avalanche of pain in my chest. It’s been coming more and more, this cold, icy pain that started as soon as I drove away from Heartstone, leaving her behind.

“You said…” I swallow. “Have a good life.”

Anger flickers in her eyes before it dies down. “So?”

“So, I’m answering you that I can’t.”

“Look, Simon. It wasn’t –”

Her voice is laced with such sadness that I don’t let her talk. “I killed a woman.”

I’ve kept this moment away from my imagination, confessing my part in Claire’s death to anyone. To me, confession has always meant acceptance, and I never wanted to accept that I failed.

The only time I’ve come close to saying these words were the day I told Willow about my mother’s suicide. For some reason, I wanted to tell her that day, confess all my crimes, lay myself bare after I fucked her like an animal on my office floor. That was the least I could do after being such a savage with her, hardly showing her mercy, beating up her pretty pussy with my cock.

I couldn’t then. But it’s time now.

I need to accept that I did, in fact, fail, but that doesn’t mean I’m a failure.

Even so, my body tightens up in shame as I see Willow’s lips part. She drags in a choppy breath, and I wait for judgement, horror, anything to cross her face. But it doesn’t.

She looks nothing but heartbreakingly beautiful.

Mine.

The thought pushes my words forward and I say, “Her name was Claire. She was my patient. Bipolar, like my mom. I’ve had a lot of patients like that but something about her reminded me most of my mother. Maybe because she was alone. Her parents had given up on her. Her fiancé had left her. When she came to me, she was very sick, and I wanted to fix that. I did everything I could. We went through a dozen therapists, med changes, dosage changes. I became obsessed with saving her. So much so that I didn’t think it was wrong to let her stay in my apartment a few times or give her money if she was short on her rent. One time I even saved her from this party she went to.”

I rake my fingers through my wet hair. “Christ, it sounds like the textbook case of transference, the exact thing they tell us to beware of. I didn’t see it that way, though. I got so blinded. All I knew was that I couldn’t let what happened to my mom, happen to her. I couldn’t be like my dad. All my life, I’ve been so consumed by that. I’ve hated how he made her feel less because she was ill and he couldn’t stand that. I’ve hated that he was weak. I… When my mom died I… I even punched him at her funeral.”

I chuckle harshly. “He never punched me back. I thought he would. All he did was walk away. I never understood why. Until recently. Maybe he knew he was guilty. Though he never said it.”

Sighing, I put the memory out of my head. “By the time I realized what I was doing with Claire was wrong, it was too late. She’d gotten completely dependent on me. There were rumors everywhere. I told her she should see another doctor. I told her I’d help her with the transition.”

I remember the night I told her that she should see someone else. It was raining. I had a list of the contenders she could see instead of me, and I discussed all her options with her.

She looked fine when she left. She was smiling, even. And then an hour later, I got the call that she’d been in a car accident.

They blamed the poor weather. They said she probably couldn’t see where she was going. Or her tire must have skidded for her car to crash against the tree.