Suicide Med (5 page)

With the first anatomy exam looming in the near future, I try to take my mind off things with a trip to the Southside Mall. My excuse is that I need plates. I only bought two, and I managed to drop one of them yesterday, and it shattered into a million pieces. Rachel walked in on me about two seconds after I did it, and she just shook her head at me in disgust.

The Southside Mall is small, even for a dinky mall in Connecticut.
It’s two floors, with a handful of clothing shops, a drug store, and a food court with only like four restaurants. It’s not exactly a fun place to hang out, but considering how boring this town is, it’s the best we’ve got. Way back when, it seemed like a great idea to go to med school somewhere boring to make sure my social life didn’t distract me. Well, no worries there.

Seth doesn’t seem to be having the same problem as me.
I called him last night and the phone nearly went to voicemail before he picked up. He seemed to be in the middle of a sentence.

“Hello?” he said.

“Hi, it’s me.”

“Heather?”

Somehow “it’s me” hadn’t been enough of an identifier. I tried not to be hurt.

“Yeah.
Uh, how are you doing?”

“Really good,” S
eth said, sounding like he meant it. And then I heard a burst of laughter in the background. Seth and I can’t seem to have any private conversations anymore.

“Are you…
in the middle of something?” I asked.

“Well, sort of,” Seth admitted.
“Me and the guys were going to go out for some beers. But… I don’t have to go…”

“No, you should go if you want.”

“You sure?”

I admit
it, I didn’t want him to go. Not really. I wanted him to stay home and talk to me. But I didn’t want to be controlling to the point where his friends were making whip sounds around him. So I told him to go.

And he went.
He didn’t even argue with me. He didn’t tell me I had to hang up first then go back and forth five or six rounds while both of us refused to hang up the phone. He seemed like he couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.

But screw it.
I’m not going to think about him. I’m going to focus on getting plates.

I end up buying the best plates you can buy at the local mall drug store.
They’re $1.99 each, which is perfect because I am seriously broke. I splurge and buy three of them. Not that I think there’s a chance I will ever be dining with two other people. I’d be lucky to have the company of one person at this point.

With my plates securely bundled in a plastic bag, I decide to head to the food court.
Someone was mentioning they had decent gourmet pretzels here. I have so few joys in life these days and I love pretzels. Thank God I don’t have a scale in my room.

On my way to the food court, I pass by the escalators and notice a flash of bright red hair.
I look up and see none other than Abe, carrying a plastic bag of his own as he rides down on the moving stairs. I wave to him, and his face lights up as he waves back. He starts gesturing something to me which I can’t make out. I shrug helplessly at him. He gestures more emphatically, which distracts him so much that he doesn’t notice he’s at the bottom of the escalator, and he trips and falls flat on his face.

Abe is so big that it feels like the entire mall shakes when he lands on the ground.
It’s like a small earthquake. I rush over to make sure he’s all right. A crowd of people have surrounded him, but they don’t seem to be doing much more than gawking.

“Are you okay?” I ask him.

Abe looks up at me and his face is nearly as red as his hair.

“I think so,” he mumbles.

I reach for the plastic bag Abe dropped and retrieve it for him. I can’t help but notice it’s filled with underwear, but I don’t comment as I hand it over since I don’t want to humiliate him further.

“What were you trying to tell me?” I ask him, as he gets awkwardly to his feet.

“To wait for me,” he admits, grinning sheepishly.

“Oh.”
I laugh. “Okay, well, you definitely got me to wait.”

“Score,” Abe says
then winces as he takes a step. I raise my eyebrows at him, but he just shakes his head at me. “I’m fine.”

“
I was thinking about getting a pretzel,” I say. “Want to come?”

Abe nods eagerly.
“I love pretzels.”

We make our way to the pretzel stand, Abe’s limp becoming somewhat less pronounced as we walk.
I guess he’s okay—I don’t need to drive him to the ER for X-rays or anything. But he looks distinctly relieved when we get to the pretzel stand.

“What do you want?” the
bored-looking lady manning the pretzel stand asks me.

“A pretzel,” I say.

Duh.

She rolls her eyes at me. “What
kind
?”

Apparently, there are like five thousand different kinds of pretzels you can get.
I finally select the cinnamon sugar one, and Abe gets a salt-studded pretzel. As the lady rings up our total, Abe quickly plunks a five-dollar bill on the counter, shoving away my attempt to pay.

“Hey,” I say.
“I have money.”

“You can pay next time we get pretzels,” he promises.

He smiles when he says that and I think about coming here again with Abe to get pretzels. That wouldn’t be so bad. Abe is really nice—maybe my only friend so far in this place.

Abe makes a pit stop at the
soda machine and I grab us a table. While I’m waiting for him, I quickly pull out my phone and check my email, nervous for any news about our upcoming exam. There’s only one email from school though, and it’s from that shrink lady, Patrice.

Dear students,

The stress of school and exams is upon us.
I encourage each of you to make an appointment with me to discuss your fears and anxieties. My office is always open to you.

Patrice

“We got an email from Patrice,” I tell Abe as he plops down heavily in the seat next to mine.
“She wants us to come see her.”

Abe crinkles his nose as he puts down two bottles of Coke on the table.
He slides one of them over to me and I inhale sharply.

“Not
diet?” I ask.

“You don’t need
diet,” he says.

I shake my head.
“You’re being nice, but I really do.”

“Heather,” Abe says
, patting his gut. “Look at
me
. You don’t need diet.”

I laugh and unscrew the cap from the soda bottle.
He’s wrong, but I’m really thirsty right now. Anyway, I can tell Abe is a lot more physically fit than I am. He may have a gut, but I can tell there’s a solid layer of muscle underneath.

As I drink, he glances in my plastic bag.
“Did you buy plates?” he asks.

“Uh huh,” I say.

“They’re really small,” he notes.

I look in the bag.
Now that he mentions it, they
are
kind of small. Oh well.

“They’re
platelets
,” I say.

Abe busts out laughing at that one.

“So,” I say, “are you going to make an appointment with Patrice?”

Abe shakes his head. “Nah. I think I’m mentally pretty healthy.”

“Me too,” I say, even though I’m not entirely sure that’s true.

“I guess it’s good they have her though,” Abe says. “Especially after, you know, what happened.”

I stare at him.
With all the studying, I never got around to checking out Rachel’s story about the yearly suicides. In all honesty, I was hoping she just made it up and didn’t want to know the truth. But Abe is different—he doesn’t lie to me. Now I wish I had done that web search.

“So it’s true?” I ask him.
“There have been… suicides?”

Abe looks very uncomfortable all of a sudden.
“Well, yeah.”

“I didn’t know about it,” I confess.

“Oh,” he mumbles, taking a bite of his pretzel.
“Well, it’s not, you know, something people like to advertise at the interviews, I guess.”

I swallow a big hunk of pretzel and taste cinnamon still stuck to my teeth.
“So what happened?”

“You really want to know?”

“I’m asking, right?”

Abe sighs and runs a hand through his short red hair.
“For the last six years, every year there’s been one student who has…well, killed himself. Or herself.”

“Geez,” I breathe.
“Like, how?”

He shakes his head.
“I don’t know every story. One jumped off the roof of the hospital. One swallowed a bottle of sedatives. One guy jumped into the Southside River, I think. And then last year, this guy… he had a gun and he shot his girlfriend, then shot himself.”

I clasp my hand over my mouth.
“Oh my God.”

“Apparently, Patrice was here last year, so lot of good she did them,” Abe says.
He glances up at my face then adds, “Sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”

“I asked you,” I point out.

“Yeah, well…” He sighs. “Let’s talk about something else. Something more pleasant.”

“Like our upcoming exam?”
My stomach churns just saying the words.

Abe smiles crookedly.
“Yeah. How’s studying going?”

“It’s going.”

He takes a swig of Coke. “Listen, I’m getting burned out on studying alone. Do you want to meet in the histology labs tomorrow and go over stuff?”

In college, Seth always used to quiz me on information and it really helped me.
I didn’t think I’d find anyone here to do that with me, but it seems like Abe is ready and willing. And he’s really nice. Forget Rachel—maybe Abe can be my new BFF. Even though he’s a
boy
.

“Yeah, o
kay,” I say. “But make it the library, okay?”

A lot of people study at the histology labs, and I gave it a try last week.
Except when I walked in there, one of my classmates was sitting there all alone with his books open and his pants completely unzipped. I got the hell out of there ASAP.

“The library works for me,” Abe says and beams at me.

I smile back at him, and then all of a sudden, I feel my head start to spin. For one crazy second, I get this horrible vision, but it just seems so vivid and real, almost like it’s really happening:

I am
lying in a bed, and Abe is standing over me, his gentle features twisted into a grimace, holding a butcher knife in his right hand...

Slowly, he brings the knife down upon my body and my eyes fly open just i
n time to see the blade enter my gut…

There’s blood everywhere: on the sheets, on the floor, on my hands.
And Abe’s lips curl into a twisted smile…

And
then, as suddenly as it came, the image vanishes. And all I can see is Abe smiling pleasantly across the table at me.

Man, I really have to lay off the sugar.

I may not be great at anatomy, but I have become a Master of Procrastination (MoP).

I was all right at procrastinating in college.
I mean, I always managed to get on Facebook a few times during the course of any study session. But this year, I’ve really stepped it up. It seems like every time I really need to study, I end up becoming desperately curious what all my former friends from high school are up to. And then I try to figure out what that song in my head is. And take a few online quizzes. And read about a hundred Tweets.

So instead of studying when I get back from my outing to the mall, I decide this is a perfect time to look up the details of the grisly murder-suicide that allegedly took place at my school last year.
Rachel isn’t around, so it’s perfect timing.

The information is
so easy to find, I’m slightly embarrassed that it took me this long. All I have to type in is “Southside Medical School” and “murder-suicide.” Pops right up. How is it possible that I didn’t know about this?

So here’s the story:

Apparently, Mary Chin and Jared Peterson were first-year students who were also dating. They were both good students, not failing any classes or having any sort of social problems. Since our lectures are transcribed, nobody made much of it when they didn’t show up for class one morning, but then Mary’s mother became worried when she couldn’t reach her by phone.

The police surmised that Jared had shot Mary in the head, then bu
ried the gun in his own mouth and pulled the trigger. They both died instantly.

There’s a quote from Dr. Conlon that’s repeated in several of the online articles: “Mary was a wonderful student and a wonderful person.
She had so much potential. This is a great tragedy.”

So much potential.

Isn’t that what Dr. Conlon said about me?
Does he think I’m like the girl who was murdered last year? Or does our professor just go around telling everyone that they’ve got oodles of potential?

The icing on the cake is that the whole thing took place in the Southside dorm—the very place where I’m living right now.
For all I know, Mary and Jared died in this very room.

I look down at the carpeting.
It’s dark brown and looks brand new—suspiciously new. Was it changed to get rid of the bloodstains?

A door slams and I nearly jump out of my skin.
I quickly minimize the window on my laptop seconds before Rachel strolls into our bedroom. I can’t say exactly why, but I don’t want her to know I was reading about the murder-suicide. Mostly, I’m afraid she’ll say something to make me feel worse about it than I already do.

Without asking if it’s okay, Rachel lays out her yoga mat on the floor, and starts playing some music that is probably supposed to be soothing, but it just gets on my nerves.
Besides, I’m studying (kind of). I know listening to classical music is supposed to make you study better or something, but I can’t concentrate with music playing, and anyway, this isn’t classical music.

“I’m trying to study,” I say to her.

She’s already on her hands and knees on the mat.
“So study. Who’s stopping you?”

I can’t imagine Rachel would understand, considering I’ve yet to see her actually crack open a book.
“You know,” I say. “We’ve got our first exam coming up soon in anatomy.”

“You’re kidding.”
Rachel straightens out her legs and spine so that her body makes a triangle with the floor.

I don’t get it.
I’d say she’s got a photographic memory or something like that, but it’s clear from lab that Rachel has no clue what’s going on. Isn’t she worried about failing?

“Let me tell you a story, Heather,” Rachel says, straightening up.

“Okay…” I say.
I hope this story doesn’t involve a murder or suicide.

“A man was being chased by a deadly tiger,” Rachel begins.

Okay…

“
He runs but soon comes to the edge of a high clif
f
,” Rachel continues,
“
Desperate to save himself,he climbs down a vine and dangles over the fatal ledge. Bu
t
he soon realizes that his weight is too much for the vine—”

“Maybe he was snacking too much while studying,” I joke.

Rachel glares at me and ignores my interruption. “
Anyway
, the man realizes that his weight is too much for the vine and in a few minutes, it will probably break and he’ll fall to his death.” She pauses dramatically. I brace myself for the gory details. “Then he spots a strawberry hanging from the vine. He reaches out and picks the strawberry, and he eats it. And you know what?”

“What?” I ask.

“It’s the best strawberry he’s ever tasted,” Rachel says.

What?
What in hell does that mean? What does that story have to do with
anything
?

“I don’t get it,” I finally say.

“No,” Rachel murmurs. “I wouldn’t imagine you would.”

Then she goes back to her yoga without offering further explanation.

Maybe I should try yoga. Maybe if I did some meditation and stretching, I’d stop worrying about the exam too, and just waste my time telling stupid stories about strawberries and tigers.

Since Rachel clearly has no intention of turning off her music, I grab a few of my books and head out into our
living area. It’s been furnished for us, but very sparsely. We’ve got a loveseat that’s decorated with flowers and is so old that a puff of dust rises out of it every time I sit on it. Somehow I always imagine insects swarming under the surface of the cushions. We’ve also got a little “dining table,” which is nothing but a tiny square wooden table flanked by a couple of metal chairs. I sit on one of these chairs, but it has a bum leg and shifts every time I move. I try the other chair, which creaks so threateningly that I get scared and move back to the gimpy chair.

Sighing, I pull my cell phone out of my pocket and call Seth.
This time he answers after only two rings. “’Lo?”

“Hey, it’s me,” I say.

“Hi, me,” he says. I can hear him smiling at the other line and I smile back. Maybe my life isn’t completely awful if he’s in it.

“What are you up to?” I ask him.

“Not much. You?”

“Just trying to study, but Rachel’s being loud.”
I hesitate. “Seth, did you know that there have been a bunch of suicides at Southside?”

“Yeah, of course,” he says.
“Suicide Med. Everyone knows that.”

Everyone but stupid me.

“Why didn’t you
tell
me?”

“I thought you knew,” Seth says.
“Everyone knows. How could you not know?”

“But…” I want to make this his fault somehow, at least partially.
“Weren’t you worried about me going to a school where a bunch of students died?”

“No,” Seth says.
“I mean, they killed themselves. You’re not going to do that.”

I might,
I almost say. But he’s right—I wouldn’t. “Well, there was that murder-suicide last year.”

“Yeah, but the killer is dead now,” he points out.
“It’s not like there’s some crazy serial killer stalking the campus. These are all, like, independent events.”

Somehow I think of what Rachel said, about how every single year since Dr. Conlon’s been at Southside, a student has died.
That’s definitely a coincidence though.

“It’s just a little disturbing, that’s all,” I say.

“I guess so,” Seth says, not sounding like he means it.

I hear a flush in the background.
I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it in horror.

“Seth,” I gasp.
“Were you on the toilet?”

He pauses,
then I hear him say: “Yeah.”

I groan.
“Seriously, Seth? You picked up the phone while on the toilet? Number one or number two?” Before he can answer, I say, “Wait, forget it. I don’t want to know.”

“Look, Heather,” he says.
“The other night you were
crying
because I didn’t answer my phone. So I figured, you know, I better pick up.”

“Not on the toilet!”

He sighs. “What do you want from me, Heather?”

I get this jab of pain in the pit of my stomach.
What do I want from him? I want him to be my boyfriend. I want him to care about me. And not just because I tell him to.

“Nothing,” I say quietly and the chair creaks beneath me.