Third Degree (33 page)

And just like that, the lightness I’d felt in Dr. James’s office is gone. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. I drop my pink sheet of paper and run from that room as fast as possible. I keep running, down two flights of stairs, down another hallway, toward the ER doors, which will lead me to the outside stairs and the elevated train. I can’t wait to get on the “L.”

“Isabel!” I hear Dad shout, but I keep going. I can’t breathe. I need air. “Isabel!”

He jumps in front of me, taking hold of my shoulders. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

I didn’t even feel myself begin crying, but tears are streaking down my face. I try to take a breath but can’t. I lean over, resting my hands on my knees. “I can’t … he’s in a coma. He’s in a coma and I …”

“Who’s in a coma?” Dad asks, with such urgency in his voice that I panic even more. He leads me over to a chair in the waiting room and forces me to sit down. “Who is in a coma, honey?”

“Clay Culver,” I manage to say, wiping away more tears. “I never called him Clay Culver. I knew his name and I never called him by his name.”

I can feel Dad’s confusion, but he’s a doctor so he’s focused on the fact that I’m hyperventilating, and he’s ignoring the looming questions. As my breathing grows more and more ragged, his panicked voice becomes more distant and little black sparkles dance in front of my eyes. I’ve never fainted in my entire life. Not once. But I know it’s about to happen and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

Lucky for me, my dad also recognizes the early signs and catches me before my head hits the tile floor in the waiting room.

I wake up in an ER bed, my sweater lying on a chair beside me. The panic is gone. My limbs are like Jell-O and numb. Everything is numb.

Don’t feel it. Don’t let yourself feel it. You’ll die if you feel like that again. You’ll suffocate to death
. The words play over and over inside my head. I’m nearly positive they’ve been playing for whatever length of time I’ve been unconscious.

The curtain around my little ER bed flies open, and Dad and Marshall stand in front of me, looking all kinds of worried. They’re feeling.
Don’t give in to it. Don’t let the feelings pull you under
.

“Good, you’re awake,” Dad says at the same time Marshall practically falls over with relief and says, “Thank God. What happened? Did you forget to eat? Low blood sugar?”

The mention of blood sugar brings Clay Culver back to my thoughts, and the stab is so painful I have to close my eyes and force in a shaky breath.
Don’t feel it. Don’t feel it
. I open my eyes again and shake my head before swinging my legs off the end of the bed. “I’m fine.” I turn to Marshall. “Can you please take me home?”

Marshall blinks, then comes to life again. “Yeah … yeah, okay. Of course.”

I hop off the bed and wriggle out of the grip Marshall has around my shoulders.
Don’t feel it. Don’t let him in
.

“Honey,” Dad says before I have a chance to get away.
He knows. He knows who Clay Culver is
. “You did nothing wrong. He skipped insulin doses, drank alcohol, took Ecstasy. You did
nothing
wrong.”

I inhale and turn around to face my dad. “I killed him. I told him he was fine. I told him he wasn’t dying, but he was dying! People die from diabetes. That’s what I should have said. It was my job to consider psychological state in his diagnosis. I killed him.”
Stop it. Stop feeling. Stop
.

Dad’s face twists with several different emotions, and finally he looks over my shoulder, addressing Marshall. “I’ll take her home. You can go. I probably shouldn’t have told you what happened.”

“Dad, I’m fine. Marshall is taking me home. To Mom’s house.” I turn and head for the doors, hoping Marshall will follow me.

He does. But when he tries to wrap an arm around my shoulders, the ice around me begins to chip and I start to panic all over again. I step sideways out of his reach and keep my eyes forward. He sighs but gives me the space I need. He’s driving an old Dodge Caravan that he most likely borrowed from his mother. I climb into the passenger seat and use every bit of my mental power to concentrate on one thought:
Don’t feel it. Don’t let yourself feel it. You’ll die if you feel like that again. You’ll suffocate to death
, again and again, ignoring everything Marshall says to me during the nearly twenty-five-minute ride.

Instead of taking me to my house, he pulls up to a red-brick house about half the size of mine. He puts the van in park but leaves the ignition running. “This is where I live. It’s about three minutes from you. Isn’t that crazy? All this time we’ve lived so close and we had to go to school two hours away from here to meet.”

I swallow the lump forming in my throat and turn my gaze to the windshield again. “Marshall, I really would like to go home. Please.”

“Yeah, sure,” he says, nodding and putting the minivan back into drive. When he pulls up to my house—the
FOR SALE
sign still resting in the yard—he not only shifts to park but pulls the keys out of the ignition.

I wrap my fingers around his keys and guide them back to where they had been. “I don’t want you to come in.”

He sucks in a breath, hiding the hurt on his face. “Izzy … just let me walk you inside. Maybe—”

“No.” I shake my head furiously. “Please. Just go.”

He reaches over me and I think he’s about to open the door to let me out, but instead he covers the handle with his palm. And I’m forced to inhale his scent, to think about how he makes me feel …

Don’t feel it. Don’t feel anything
.

“I asked you to go away and leave me alone before, too,” he says, his voice low and right next to my ear. “Imagine if you had listened. You don’t need to be alone; you need someone to be here for you. And I’m willing to do that. All you have to do is let me.”

“This is different,” I say.

“No, it’s not.”

Marshall lifts his hand from the door handle and touches my cheek. My hands start to shake, fear and pain engulfing me. I’m drowning in it. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t let him inside me like this. I jerk away from his touch and squeeze my hands into tiny fists.

“This is your fault,” I snap. “You did this to me! You made me say that I wanted more with you … and … and I don’t. That’s the last thing I need.”

My heart is slamming again my chest. It’s such a relief to throw these emotions at something.
At someone
. I don’t want them anymore.

Marshall’s expression shifts from shocked to hard.

“You don’t,” he repeats, his voice cold and distant. “What
do
you want, then?”

I squeeze my eyes shut, desperate to feel that rush of relief again. “I want to be a fucking surgeon. And to not have to worry about you all the time.
You
made me feel like this!
You
made me feel sorry for you!”

Silence falls between us, my last words vibrating through the confines of this vehicle. I suck in a breath, guilt bubbling up like bile in my throat. “I’m sorry … Marshall, I didn’t meant that—”

“No.” He shakes his head, staring out the windshield, his knuckles now white from gripping the steering wheel. “You’re right. I don’t need this, either. I don’t need to spend my time with someone who’s clearly fucked up enough to get off on other people’s diseases.”

I don’t want to feel anything, but these words—his words—feel like everything. My breaths are coming jagged and forced.

“It was going to happen anyway,” he adds. “Maybe it’s better that it’s right now.”

“Maybe,” I agree, but some part of me is screaming inside my head,
Nooooo!
“Bye, Marshall.”

I reach for the handle, fling open the door, and head up the walkway. My ears are on high alert, and I don’t hear him drive off right away. I don’t know how long he sits out in front of my house, though, because I close all the blinds, dig through my parents’ medicine cabinet, take three sleeping pills, and climb into my bed, pulling the covers over my head.

Before I fall asleep, I send Marshall a text. I need to shed my guilt.
I just want to be a doctor
, I write.
I want to focus on work and not let all this other stuff in. It’s not really about you. I’m sorry I blamed you. I didn’t mean that
.

Even though I want to stay numb, a few tears and a giant stab of pain hit me during the minutes it takes for the sleeping pills to kick in. If it weren’t for Marshall, Clay Culver’s forthcoming death wouldn’t affect me like this. I’d have a handle on myself. I’d be in control. Before I fainted, I’d never felt such a loss of control in my entire life.

And I might have lied to Marshall. I’m not even positive I can be a doctor anymore. Maybe it’s too hard. Maybe I need a lab full of rodents in my life instead of real people. Real
people complicate things. Real people die. Real people can be killed by other people.

Chapter 26

@IsabelJenkinsMD:
Ppl shed about 600,000 particles of skin per hour. Even our skin is destined to invade other people’s lives. It’s everywhere.

Monday morning at 6:00 a.m., my mom finally forces herself into my room by removing the doorknob. I think she had expected to find me passed out, dirty, and starving to death because her mouth begins to form words and then hangs open in silence when she sees me.

My room is immaculate. I’m immaculate. And fed. I have boxes of protein bars, a water bottle with a filter, a bathroom with a sink. I’m seated on the floor, fully dressed, my hair wet from the shower I just took, and pages and pages of printed medical history lie in neat stacks all around me. Stress for me equals cleaning and organization and projects—anything busy to keep me from thinking too much.

“It’s Monday,” she says, like this should mean something significant. “You may have decided not to go back to school—at least I assume you’ve decided that, seeing as you haven’t left your room since Friday—but I’m sure Marshall is safely is his dorm, a full two hours away. You can come out now.”

“If I’d needed to leave the room, I would have.” I bend over and read a page in front of me, highlighting two sentences near the bottom. “And I didn’t intentionally want to drive him away. It’s just easier like this.”

At least that’s what I’m telling myself. Up until Saturday night, I kept reading the texts he sent me:

Izzy, I think you’re wrong. It isn’t easier this way. Not for me. I’m sure it isn’t for you. Please talk to me
.

Then the one that caused the screen to blur in front of my eyes:

I miss you
.

After reading that one, I felt so much. Too much. Everything. I threw my phone against the wall, sighing with relief when the message shattered to pieces. That way I couldn’t keep reading it over and over again until I jumped in my car and drove to his house. Unfortunately, I now know the whereabouts of Marshall’s residence, thanks to him.

“He’s a nice kid, Izzy,” Mom says. “He doesn’t deserve to be dropped like that.”

“First of all …” I keep my voice calm and steady, my hand continuing its work with the highlighter. “You knew Marshall for like five seconds when he was what? Fifteen? Sixteen? And second, he knows me. He knows that I care about him but that I suck at relationships. He knows
that he didn’t do anything wrong. He knows that I have some shit to work out. We never made any promises to each other—not like marriage—so quit acting like you understand when clearly you don’t.”

Her mouth forms a thin line. “Fine.”

It almost sounds true when I sell it like that. I almost believe it myself. Not that he doesn’t know those things about me—he does—but my feelings are way more conflicted (as Dr. Winifred James, Ph.D., would say) than I make them out to be.

But my poor mother. She’s got enough shit to deal with right now. She doesn’t need her nineteen-year-old daughter turning back into the bratty fifteen-year-old I used to be.

“I’m sorry.” I glance up at her for a second, holding her gaze. “I appreciate your concern, but I’m not ready to talk about it with you, okay?”

“Okay.” She takes a few more steps inside my room, bending a little to see what the papers are all about. “What is this stuff?”

“Patient charts.”

“Hmm,” is all she says. “Your dad is off tomorrow and volunteered to go collect your things from NIU, but I think you should do this yourself. Or go back. Finish the semester.”

I stare at her again, my heart pounding. I can’t even fathom facing Marshall right now. Or Kelsey. Or our room. She’ll get to have a single for the rest of the semester with no extra charge because I’ve already paid my share. She can have Shirtless Carson over every night and they can be shirtless together. “I’ll call Dad and take care of it.”
And I’ll tell him yes, please go get my stuff because I’m a complete wimp
.

“That boy isn’t dead yet, you know.” Mom kneels all the way down and gathers my wet hair, twisting it gently into a knot at the base of my neck—something she used to do when I was younger to keep my hair from soaking the back of my shirt. I inhale slowly, resisting the urge to cry or talk about what I’m feeling, because I need to not be feeling at all. “People wake up from comas all the time.”