Suicide Med

by Freida McFadden

  Sometimes anatomy just feels completely hopeless. I stare at my anatomy lab manual for hours and feel like I don’t absorb a word of it. It may as well be in another language. At some point, I realized I was just wasting time and shoved my lab manual under the bed.

  Dr. Conlon says to me one day in lab, “Tell me the branches of the celiac trunk.”

  I peer down into our cadaver, down at the celiac trunk branching off into… okay, truthfully, I don’t really know. I look up at Abe, across the table, who is mouthing something at me. Too bad I can’t read lips.

  “The hepatic artery?” I guess.

  Dr. Conlon shakes his head at me and I recognize the disappointment in his blue eyes. I watch as he leans his cane against the table and pulls one of our blue gloves onto his left hand. I hadn’t noticed it before, but our professor’s right hand doesn’t seem to be fully functional. His fingers are curled up and it takes him a few awkward attempts to get the glove in place. But once he does, he picks out a pair of forceps with his left hand and grasps a blood vessel.

  “What’s this artery called?” he asks me.

  When I don’t answer, he looks over at Abe. Abe hangs his head as he replies somewhat grudgingly, “The splenic artery.”

  “Right,” Dr. Conlon says. He focuses his gaze back on me. “Are you reading the lab manual?”

  You know you’re in trouble when your professor says that to you.

  “No, I’m not,” I confess. “I… I don’t really get much out of it.”

  “That’s not too surprising if you don’t read it,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s making a joke or not. He’s definitely not smiling when he adds, “You have a lot of potential, Heather. Don’t waste it.”

  He’s stopped calling me Dr. McKinley. That’s kind of depressing.

  His words ring in my ears an hour later, as I dig through the pelvis, searching for an elusive nerve. The rest of my lab group is absent, and only Mason is across from me. Usually, Mason is up to his elbows in the cadaver, but right now he’s just watching me. It’s a little bit disturbing.

  “What are you doing?” he finally asks me.

  I put down my scalpel and straighten up. He’s blinking his pretty hazel eyes at me. His eyelashes are very long—I’m almost jealous.

  “I’m trying to dissect out a nerve,” I say.

  “Which nerve?”

  “The ipsilateral nerve,” I say. “But I can’t find it.”

  Mason stares at me a second, then bursts out laughing. I mean, really laughing. So hard that he manages to squeeze out a few tears, and has to wipe them away with the back of his forearm. There’s a part of me that always sort of wants to punch him in the face, but right now I really, really want to punch him in the face.

  “What’s so funny?” I say through my teeth.

  “Heather,” he snorts. “The word ‘ipsilateral’ just means ‘on the same side as.’ It’s not the name of an actual nerve.”

  I think I’m going to cry.

  Mason’s eyes soften when he sees my face.

  “It’s okay,” he says. “Look, you didn’t wreck anything. I’ll help you. That’s the femoral triangle, right?”

  I look down at the body. I have no idea.

  Mason picks up the scalpel I abandoned and takes over my dissection like he’s been doing it for a million years.

  _____

  For the rest of lab, I feel like I’m just holding back tears. I let Mason do the entire dissection because we all know it will be faster that way, and it means I can get home sooner and start crying. I need to have a good cry.

  As I drive home, I say a silent prayer that Rachel won’t be in the room when I get there. I can’t cry in front of Rachel. I wish I had a roommate that would comfort me when I’m feeling sad, but that’s obviously not going to happen. I don’t know what Rachel would do if I cried in front of her. But probably nothing that will make me feel any better.

  Thankfully, she’s out somewhere as usual. I sit down on my bed cross-legged and brace myself. But somehow the tears don’t come. I’m blinking my eyes, trying to squeeze them out, but somehow it’s not working. What’s wrong with me? I’m even failing at crying now.

  I pick up my phone and call Seth. I hold my breath, waiting to hear his voice on the other line, but after six rings, I realize that’s not going to happen. His voicemail picks up and instructs me to leave a message.

  And that’s when I start to cry, “Seth, please call me back. I really need to talk to you.”

  I bury my face in my hands, sobbing. Why am I so bad at medical school? Maybe this whole thing was a huge mistake. Nobody else in my lab group is struggling. It’s just me. I’m the only one. Plus I have no friends.

  I dial Seth’s number again. No answer. Where are you, Seth?

  I pick up my shoe from the floor and hurl it at the wall as hard as I can. It leaves behind a little shoe-sized spot of dirt. The whole thing doesn’t make me feel any better, just crazier.

  I just feel so hopeless right now.

  I end up leaving about three more tearful messages for Seth, then hating myself for having done it. I am definitely playing the part of the nutty, clingy girlfriend.

  About thirty minutes and a dozen wet tissues later, my phone buzzes with Miley’s voice. It’s Seth.

  “Christ, Heather,” he says. I’d like to say he sounds worried, but there’s also an air of irritation in his voice. “What’s going on?”

  “I just…” I bite my lip. “I wanted to talk to you.”

  “You wanted to talk to me?” Seth sounds baffled. “I have twenty-three missed calls and a whole bunch of messages. Is that, like, normal behavior?”

  I squeeze a half-used tissue in my fist. “I was feeling sad.”

  “Christ, Heather,” he says again.

  He’s right—I was being crazy. But isn’t part of being in a relationship that the other person understands when you’re not at your best? Seth is being pretty much the opposite of understanding. And right now, he’s the only person I have to confide in. He used to love me, but now he sounds like he doesn’t even like me very much.

  It seems like pretty much every aspect of my life is falling apart.

  Chapter 5

  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,” Seth 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, okay,” 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 in 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.

  Chapter 6

  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.