Suicide Med (11 page)

I hardly see Abe for the next few days. It’s almost like he’s avoiding me.

I’m too agitated to study.
How can I? Every time I try to concentrate on anatomy, I start imagining what Abe could possibly be hiding from me. A tattoo with another girl’s name on it? No, that doesn’t seem like something Abe would do.

A horrible, hide
ous scar? No, most guys think scars are manly.

I drive over to the school,
hoping maybe putting some distance between me and Abe will help. My mind keeps racing and my stomach feels sick all the time. I wish I could imagine that Abe is hiding something unimportant from me, but my gut tells me that’s not the case.

I’ve got to talk to someone about this.
But Abe is my best friend. Still, there’s one other person who comes to mind.

Dr. Patrice Winters’s office is directly above the anatomy labs.
It’s a long shot that she’ll be around—I fully expect to have to make an appointment—but I figure it can’t hurt to drop by. Patrice is a therapist so anything I tell her will be confidential, and that’s exactly what I’m looking for right now.

I’m surprised to see the door to her office is ajar.
I walk over tentatively, but stop when I hear a familiar voice from inside. I recognize it instantly as Dr. Conlon.

“Thank you so much, Patrice,” he’s saying.
“You’re the best. Really.”

“Anything for you, Matt,” she replies.

I freeze. I may just be a med student, but I’m also a girl and I recognize flirtation. I didn’t hear it in Dr. Conlon’s voice, but Patrice’s words are just dripping with it. Is there something going on between the two of them? No, if there were, they’d surely close the door.

Before I can contemplate further, the door is yanked open in front of me and I nearly fall into the office.
Dr. Conlon’s blue eyes widen when he sees me. “Heather?”

I straighten up, trying to smile.
Patrice looks decidedly annoyed, but her face changes when she hears Dr. Conlon say my name. Her features soften and she holds out her hand to me.

“Heather McKinley,” she says.
“Please come in.”

It’s like she’s been waiting for me.
Creepy.

Dr. Conlon limps off and closes the door behind him.
Patrice gestures at the sofa in front of her desk, which is light blue, and I sink into it so deeply that I’m worried I might not be able to get up. Patrice has mood lighting going on in here, although part of me wonders if that was for Dr. Conlon’s benefit.

“So, Heather,” Patrice says, sliding a pair of half-moon glasses up her narrow nose.
“What brings you to see me?”

“It’s…” I want to tell her everything, but I can’t.
This woman makes me uncomfortable. “It’s silly.”

“Nothing is silly, Heather,” she assures me.

I squeeze my fists together. Okay, I need to just say it. If I don’t talk to somebody about this, I’m going to burst. Even if that somebody Patrice.

“It’s about my boyfriend,” I say.
“He’s a student here. Abe Kaufman.”

Patrice nods.

“He’s acting really weird,” I continue. “I mean,
really
weird.”

Patrice nods again.

“Not like he’s going to kill himself or anything,” I add quickly. “But… I mean, he’s my boyfriend, and I caught him in the shower and he totally flipped out. Like there was something he didn’t want me to see.”

Patrice nods
yet again. I wish she’d say something. I’m beginning to regret having come to her. This lady is the opposite of what I’d call “understanding.” But I’m already telling her, so I may as well go through with it. And anyway, there’s nothing to tell. Not yet.

“W
hat could he be hiding?” I say. “Anything about his body that’s not perfect, I’d be okay with it.”

“Would you?”

Now it’s my turn to nod. Vigorously.

“Yes.
Definitely. I mean, it’s
Abe
. I love him.”

I haven’t
said those words to his face yet but I’ve been feeling it more and more. I love this guy. I really do. And it kills me that he’s doing this.

“Maybe you think you’d be okay with it,” Patrice suggests.
“But you really wouldn’t.”

“I
would
,” I insist.

“You know, Heather,” Patrice says.
“There are a lot of boys in your class. If Abe is really hiding things from you, maybe you’d be better off with someone else.”

“What?” I stare at her.
“That’s not… I mean, I wouldn’t…”

Why is Patrice telling me that?
Isn’t she supposed to be helping me work out my relationship problems, not try to find someone else?

And then
something horrible occurs to me. This isn’t a coincidence. Patrice knew my name right away, almost like she knew I was going to show up here…

“You talked to Abe, didn’t you?” I accuse her.

Patrice’s face pales under her make-up. “I can’t divulge that.”

I shake my head.
“You
know
. You know what he’s hiding from me.”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” she insists, but my answer is right there on her face.
She’s a horrible liar. You’d think a shrink would have a better poker face.

So Patrice knows Abe’s secret.
And what’s more, she knows and her advice is that I ought to move on. I need to get as far away as I can from Abe Kaufman.

I’m just not sure I can do that.

_____

When I get home later that day, I discover a huge basket of flowers that takes up half my bed. I see the lavender card embedded between two lilacs, and I open it up to see Abe’s handwriting:
Please forgive me.

Rachel i
s lying in my bed with headphones over her ears. She pulls them off and makes a face.

“I think your boyfriend is single-handedly supporting the flower industry.”

I bring my nose close to the bouquet to inhale the scent. I love lilacs and Abe knows it.

“Seriously,” Rachel
says, “will you just forgive him already? Before I asphyxiate from all the pollen?”

I
stare at my roommate in surprise. “You approve of my relationship with Abe? I can’t believe it.”

Rachel shru
gs. “Well, he appears to make you happy and… I guess he’s not as horrible as most guys.” She shakes her head. “So what despicable thing did he do to piss you off anyway?”

I
wish I could tell Rachel everything. But even though we’ve been living together for months, I don’t trust Rachel. Especially since I’m fairly sure she’s hooking up with someone in the class and she won’t tell me who. Anyway, this is Abe’s secret and I don’t want to share it with just anybody, even if I don’t know what it is.

Yet.

Tonight that’s going to change. I’m going to confront Abe and offer him an ultimatum: the truth or I walk. Simple as that. If Abe cares about me, he’ll make the right decision.

I
felt so sure of myself when I composed my plan to confront Abe, but as I walk up the stairs, it occurs to me that I’ve never successfully talked anybody into anything in my life. I’m a complete pushover. That’s why I always try to bring friends with me shopping, so the saleslady won’t talk me into buying half the store. How am I going to be strong enough to force Abe to tell me what is obviously a really big secret?

And then there’
s the other side of the coin. If he does confess, maybe I won’t want to hear it. Whatever it is that he’s hiding from me, it’s bad. Really bad.

I knock on the door
to Abe and Mason’s apartment, but nobody answers. I knock again with the same result. On a whim, I try the doorknob and it turns.

Someone is definitely here—I see the light on inside the bathroom and hear noises coming from inside.
I venture into the common area, intending to knock on the bathroom door, but then something I see on the wooden floor takes my breath away:

It’s a butcher knife.

I stare at it, gripped with an odd feeling of déjà vu. This is the same knife Abe was holding in that strange vision I’d had months ago—the one where he was stabbing me to death. How does he even
have
a knife like this? And what the hell is it doing on the floor?

Or maybe I don’t want to know the answer to those questions.
Maybe I should do like Patrice told me and get the hell out before it’s too late.

The door to the bathroom swings open and Abe’s hulking frame stands before me.
For one moment, I am gripped with paralyzing fear—if Abe got it in his head to hurt me, he could
destroy
me. He could rip me limb from limb if he wanted—he wouldn’t even need the knife to do it. There’s nothing I could do to stop him.

But Abe doesn’t seem to have any intention of harming me.
He looks from me to the knife and his face turns pale.

“Heather,” he murmurs.
“I can explain…”

I’m sure he can.
But will he?

Abe crosses the room and wraps his arms around me.
It feels so good to be in his arms again. I’m instantly ready to forgive him and also hand over all my credit card numbers.

“I’m so sorry,
Heather,” he whispers into my hair.

He
doesn’t even care that my hair smells like formaldehyde.

No!
Abe is
not
cuddling his way out of this! I have to be strong. I push him away and hold him at arm’s length.

“Mason isn’t home, is he?”
I say.

Abe sha
kes his head. “We’re all alone,” he says. He still had his hand on my arm, leaving sweaty imprints on my white blouse. “Heather,” he says, “there’s something I need to tell you.”

I
freeze. This is it.

I
compose myself, brush my hair from my face, and turn to look at him. Whatever it is, I will accept it. I’ve decided. “Yes?”

“Heather
…” He takes a deep breath. “I love you.”

What?

“No, goddamn it!” I cry, before I can stop myself. “No! You are not going to get away with not explaining what happened yesterday just by telling me you love me! I won’t let you.”

“But I
do
love you…”

“What’s going on, Abe?”
I demand with a burst of resolve that surprises me. “I want an answer right now.”

His eyes fill
with tears. I’ve never seen a guy cry before, certainly never over
me
.

“I love you too,”
I say, in a voice that I hope is gentle but firm. “But I can’t spend another day with you without hearing the truth.”

Abe collapses
onto the futon with a resounding thump and buries his face in his palms. I want to reach out and stroke his red hair, but I hold back. He has to know that I mean business.

“What’s it going to be, Abe?”
I say. “Are you going to tell me or… or do you want me to leave?”

Abe lifts his eyes to meet mine
. “You’ll leave me either way,” he says.

“Look to your left. Now look to your right.”

Christ, this is stupid.

I’m not into the whole “motivational speech” crap. I know Dean Bushnell is trying to get us all psyched up. But this is just dumb.

Besides, he’s wrong.
Not everyone in this room is going to be a doctor. Some of them are going to drop out. Some will flunk out (probably that girl two seats over with the bullring through her nose). And if the last six years are any indication, at least one of them is going to be dead.

Not me though.

I’m going to graduate in four years with the highest honors and I’m going to land myself the best residency in the whole freaking country. Wait and see.

I look o
ver at my roommate Abe. I’ve been secretly calling The Incredible Hulk in my head. No kidding, slap a little green paint on the guy, and he’d be a dead ringer. Minus the temper though. Abe is too freaking mild-mannered to be in med school. He’s a good roommate though—he’s a slob like me.

Abe’s really taking in the dean’s inspiring words
. I can see his jaw hanging open, awed by the whole experience. He’s going to be one of those touchy-feely doctors, you can just tell. When he rotates in the hospital, everyone will write on his evals that he has a great “bedside manner.”

Nobody’s going to say I’ve got a great bedside manner.
I’ll be shocked if a few of the residents I work with don’t write down that I’m a huge asshole or something. But who cares? They’re going to love me on my surgery rotation and that’s all that matters. That’s what I was born to do.

My
father is a cardiothoracic surgeon. Dr. Walter Howard is the head of cardiothoracic surgery at Yale, and probably one of the most respected surgeons in the country. I used to want to do what he was doing, but he told me don’t bother. Angioplasty is killing his field. When I graduated college, Dad took me aside and said, “Plastics, son. That’s where the money is.”

I
t’s plastic surgery or bust.

_____

When I
was about six, my mom brought me to this crazy fancy dinner to honor my dad.

My dad is tall, really tall.
Practically a giant—that’s what it felt like anyway. Back then, he had this black beard that scared the shit out of me for some reason. When he gave his speech, I listened as hard as I could because I thought his black eyes would maybe shoot laser beams at me if I didn’t.

“Mommy,” I whispered. “What’s it mean that Daddy is a pioneer?”

I
n school, they said pioneers settled middle America. I was pretty sure my dad hadn’t done that. But it was possible.

“It means he’s done surgeries that nobody’s ever done before,” my mother whispered back.
She added, “He’s a great man.”

Then
everyone in the room stood up and wouldn’t stop applauding for my dad for at least five minutes.

When I visited my grandparents on my father’s side, they
wouldn’t shut up about my father. They would drag out a box that was as old and dusty as they were, filled with perfect test papers and report cards with rows of straight A’s. They saved
everything
.

“Did Dad ever get less than an A in school?” I asked as I wiped the dust off a thirty-year-old transcript
and sneezed loudly.

“I think Walter got a B in gym once,” my grandmother recalled.
“But everyone got a B in gym that semester.” She added, “That gym teacher was a little soft in the head.”

Sometimes my
mother would bore me with the story of how she met my father. I never listened but over the years, the details sunk in. Elise Howard, née Elise Mason, was a year out of college and working at an art gallery, although her studio apartment was largely funded by—guess who—her rich parents. My dad was an attending surgeon then, almost a decade older than my mom, and he approached her at a gallery function and asked for her number. They started dating and he actually proposed only a few months later.

“Sometimes you just know,” Mom
would sigh.

Bullshit.
The truth was, and I’m going to be blunt here, my mother was really hot back then. I saw the photos. My dad always used to go around saying she’s the prettiest woman in the room. All my friends in high school used to call her a MILF.

My dad, on the other hand, isn’t what you’d call a handsome guy.
But he’s as intimidating as all hell. He probably just cocked his finger at my mom and she came running.

I go
t straight A’s in high school. Even in freaking gym. Yeah, I worked my ass off. I had plenty of friends and even occasional girlfriends, and I ran track and played soccer, but most of my time was spent studying.

And then I bombed the SATs.
Or that’s what it felt like when I saw my father’s face. I didn’t get a perfect 1600—I was ten points short.

“It’s an all right score,” my father
said with a shrug.

The word “asshole” was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t say it.
I
was the one who had messed up. My dad got a perfect score on
his
SATs.

I hung my head and mumbled, “Sorry, sir.”

I was valedictorian of my high school class. My speech was about the path to success, as if anyone in my shitty high school had a chance at success besides me. My dad liked the speech—or at least, he was nodding a lot. I believed in my words. I was going to be a huge success someday.

I got a perfect score on the MCATs to get into med school, by the way.

Ever since I decided on going to Southside Med, people have been asking me: why not Yale? Southside is a good school, but Yale is Ivy and I had connections there (not that I’d have needed them to gain admission). There’s no comparison. People acted like I’d lost my mind.

Even my father was
pissed off that I picked Southside over Yale.

But I had a really good reason for not going to Yale.
At Yale, everyone would have assumed that I got in because my dad is a big cheese there, not on my own merit. And on every rotation, everyone would be comparing me with the Great Dr. Howard. I’d never have a chance to get out from under his shadow.

Southside is perfect for me.
When I look around at my classmates, I know that I can really stand out here. I can be in the honor society and impress the hell out of all the professors. I won’t be one of a huge crowd of overachievers at Yale or one of the other Ivies. Plastic surgery is one of the most competitive residencies to get into, and being number one in my class is a great way to get there. If I succeed, if I become a plastic surgeon, maybe someday I’ll have a house that is bigger than my father’s and a wife that is hotter than my mom. Maybe someday they’ll have a dinner honoring the Great Dr. Mason Howard.