Suicide Med

by Freida McFadden

  After about two weeks of nothing but sex and anatomy lessons, I decide I’ve had enough. As we’re lying in bed together under the covers, my body cuddled against his, I say, “I’m going to make you dinner tonight.”

  Matt shakes his head.

  “You shouldn’t,” he says. “There’s a quiz tomorrow. I can order in some food and I’ll help you study. You really need to become more familiar with swallowing.”

  At first, I think he’s making a joke. But he isn’t. He actually means that I need to learn more about the cranial nerves involved with swallowing, not… well, you know.

  “Mmm…” is all I say.

  I’m hoping that will be a cue to let it go, but apparently not.

  “What cranial nerves are involved in the oral phase of swallowing?” Matt presses me.

  I sigh and pull away from him, propping myself up on one elbow.

  “Matt, this is really not what I want to think about right now.”

  He smiles sheepishly, “Sorry. I just want you to do well. I mean, this is my class. I ought to be able to help you a little bit.”

  “Well, you refused to help me,” I point out. “You have your morals and all…”

  I try to sound teasing, but I can’t help but be irritated by his continued refusal to alter my grade.

  “I just don’t think you need to go through your life this way,” he says. “You’re an extremely bright girl, Rachel. You just need to focus a little bit.”

  Oh no, another infamous Matt Conlon Pep Talk. Yes, he is amazing in bed, but sometimes he acts like he’s my father or something. I’m beginning to seriously worry that if we start talking, I’ll realize he’s more like my parents than he is like me.

  “You don’t know what it’s like,” I say. “Medical school is very intimidating.”

  “I don’t know what it’s like?” he snorts. “Watch it. You’re talking to a med school dropout, baby.”

  I stare at him. Is he serious? I think he is. “You went to med school?”

  “Yeah,” he says. At first, it looks like he’s going to tell me more, but then his blue eyes cloud over. “So, um, you want to get dinner?”

  Geez, it’s impossible to get this guy to open up. “Why did you drop out of med school?” I ask him.

  He’s quiet for a second. He’s not wearing his glasses and it makes him look so much more vulnerable somehow. Younger.

  “You really want to know?”

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  He ducks his head down and uses his left hand to part his black hair with his fingers. And that’s when I see it, a thick scar running practically through the entire length of his skull. Obviously it’s an old scar, long since healed up.

  “What happened?” I breathe.

  “I got shot in the head,” he says. “That’s what happened.”

  I stare at him. “Seriously? Oh my God.”

  “It was my roommate first year,” Matt explains. He rests his head on the pillow and stares up at the ceiling, his eyes glassy. “Kurt. Kurt Morton. I’ll never forget that name for as long as I live.”

  “Your roommate shot you?” I gasp.

  I’m seeing Heather in a new light. She may be annoying, but at least she’s not homicidal.

  “I was more surprised than you are, believe me,” Matt says. “We weren’t exactly friends, and I didn’t even realize he was flunking out. One night I woke up at like two in the morning and he was just standing there in the middle of the room, holding a gun. He started babbling about… how he couldn’t cut it in med school, and how he resented me.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t even think he was serious until he pointed that gun at me. At my head. And then…”

  Matt gets really quiet for a minute, just staring at the ceiling. I somehow sense I ought to keep my mouth shut, so I just stroke his chest with my fingers.

  “He killed himself after he shot me,” Matt says. “That’s the first thing I remember them telling me after it happened, like two weeks later. Also, they told me I was lucky. But when you can’t move half your body, you really don’t feel lucky.”

  “My God,” I say. “That’s… unbelievable. So you decided not to go back to med school after that?”

  He’s quiet again. Long enough that I figure out myself that it probably wasn’t entirely his own decision not to go back. That maybe getting shot in the head affected his ability to perform to the rigorous standards of medical school. After all, the bullet clearly did a lot more than just graze him.

  “Matt…” I murmur into his neck.

  “It’s okay,” he says quickly. He tries to smile, but it comes out crooked. “It all worked out in the end. I’d probably be a surgeon now if I never got shot. Probably working a hundred hours a week, divorced with some kids I’d never see. I’m happier this way.”

  I know he’s lying though. Matt is a lot of things—he’s really smart, he’s a great teacher, he’s adorable, and he’s fantastic in bed. But I’m pretty sure he’s not happy.

  _____

  It’s not so easy for me to keep my relationship with Matt a secret.

  Considering how competitive my classmates are, it’s imperative that nobody finds out about us. But it just seems like it must be so obvious. Every time he comes over to help me during lab, I imagine everyone in our group must realize we’re sleeping together.

  And also, between you and me, it’s all I can do to keep from jumping him during lab. He’s just so cute and smart and patient. His patience is probably the sexiest thing about him. He gets asked some truly dumb questions and still manages to keep that patient smile on his face.

  I wish I could tell someone about me and Matt. At times like these, I’d give anything for a friend. My mother calls me at regular intervals, but I most definitely can’t tell her that I’m banging my anatomy professor. She still is perplexed about my lack of a love life. Her latest theory is that I’m a lesbian.

  “I’d still love you,” she insists. Then she adds, “Just don’t make out with any girls in my home.”

  I wonder what would be worse: telling her I’m in love with another woman or telling her the truth.

  And of course, I definitely can’t talk to Heather about it. Not that anyone can talk to Heather these days—all she does is gush about Abe now that her other boyfriend is out of the picture.

  “Abe is the sweetest guy I’ve ever met,” Heather sighs. “He’s always trying to make me happy. And buying me flowers.”

  Abe goes seriously overboard with the flowers—he’s turned our room into a freaking botanical garden. It’s ridiculous. I make a mental note to tell Matt to never buy me flowers. I just don’t see the point of giving a girl a dead plant.

  “So that’s love?” I say. “Lots of flowers.”

  “You just don’t understand,” Heather sniffs. “I can’t explain it.”

  “Whatever you say, Heather…”

  “Haven’t you ever been in love?” Heather asks.

  No, I can’t tell her about Matt. Besides, I’m not really in love with Matt. Yeah, we have great sex. And he’s a really good teacher. But that is about it. And of course, I’m sure he feels the same way about me. Well, pretty sure.

  Anyway, Matt may not love me, but he definitely cares very passionately about my doing well in his class. There are times when I want to beg him, “Matt, please stop teaching me anatomy for just like five minutes!”

  I had thought Matt kept a globe on his coffee table, but when we were learning about extraocular movements, I discovered the globe was actually a model of a human eyeball. There are red-painted muscles attaching to the eye, which are controlled by different cranial nerves.

  “This is the lateral rectus muscle,” Matt says, pointing to one of the muscles on the side of the eye. “It’s the only extraocular muscle that’s controlled by the abducens nerve. And see, when I pull it, the eye looks laterally.”

  “Matt, that eye is really creeping me out,” I say.

  “Really?” he frowns in confusion. “Why?”<
br />
  He really doesn’t get why it’s weird to have a giant plastic eyeball on your coffee table. And to be honest, I kind of love that about him. But I don’t love him. Like I said, it’s just sex.

  Chapter 48

  I wouldn’t say Matt is moody exactly. He doesn’t sulk or get angry or anything like that—he just gets very quiet sometimes and I know he’s upset about something.

  I knew Matt was in a bad mood when he snapped at Mason during lab. Mason is the biggest suck up in the planet and he looked plainly shocked when his professor jumped on him for asking a simple question. Usually I’d never side with Mason, but he was just asking how our cadaver died. I thought it was pretty reasonable.

  That night, I drive to Matt’s house to spend a little time with him. When he kisses me at the door, I taste wine on his breath.

  “Got started without me?” I ask him.

  Matt nods. “Yeah, the bottle’s on the kitchen table. Can I pour you a glass?”

  “Definitely.”

  He pours me a glass of red wine, then another one for himself. I can tell how tense he is by the way he gulps it down. He’s not much of a drinker in general.

  I rub his shoulder. “You okay?”

  “Rough day,” he sighs. “Some reporter called me this morning, doing a story about the suicides. He was very persistent. I told him to go to hell, but it gave me a headache that wouldn’t go away.” He smiles wryly. “Not that I don’t get my share of regular headaches since getting shot in the head.”

  “I think Mason was really upset that you snapped at him,” I can’t help but point out.

  He looks confused for a minute. “Did I?”

  I nod. “He asked you how the cadaver died.”

  “Oh, right.” Matt rubs his face. His cheeks are starting to glow slightly from the alcohol—he’s definitely a lightweight. “A couple of years ago, a student found out the name of their cadaver and he took it upon himself to visit the guy’s widow. What a mess. Ever since then, I get a little jumpy when someone tries to find out any information about the cadavers.”

  “I doubt Mason would do that,” I say. “He was just, you know, intellectually curious.” I hesitate. “How did our cadaver die anyway? Do you know?”

  Matt drains the last of his glass. “Pulmonary embolism.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Threw a blood clot to his lungs,” Matt explains.

  Wow. There are things that can kill you that I still don’t even know exist.

  “Okay,” I say. “Enough cadaver talk. Let’s relax on the couch. How about a movie?”

  “Sure,” he says, his shoulders unclenching slightly. “I’ve got a collection of DVDs under the TV. Just pick something out.”

  Matt makes his way over to the couch while I pull out his case of DVDs and start flipping through them. It doesn’t really matter what we watch, since it’s pretty certain we’ll start making out after about ten minutes. But I’m curious what kind of movies he owns.

  And it’s just as bad as I feared.

  “Christ,” I say. “This is the dorkiest movie collection I’ve ever seen. Star Trek… Star Wars… Stargate… do you own any movies that don’t have the word ‘star’ in the title?”

  “Why would I?” Matt retorts with a grin.

  I point to one of the DVDs. “Star Wars Holiday Special? What the hell is that?”

  “Oh my God, it’s great,” Matt says. “We should definitely watch that. It’s basically Christmas in the home of Chewbacca, except they call it Life Day. Most of the beginning is in Wookiee. No subtitles, but you get the basic idea.”

  I just shake my head at him.

  Since Matt’s taste in movies is completely hopeless, we decide to turn on the news. I settle down next to him on the couch, and immediately he tenses up again.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “What?” I say.

  “You’re on my right side,” he says.

  I frown. “Huh?”

  “Maybe you never noticed,” he mumbles. “But I always sit with you on my left side.” He adds sheepishly, “I feel like I can’t make a move with my right arm. And I can’t see as well on my right side. It just… it makes me uncomfortable.”

  I had no clue. He must have been doing it very surreptitiously. Anyway, I get up and move to his left side, but he still looks tense.

  “Matt,” I say, rubbing his arm. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

  He looks at me for a minute, then drops his eyes. “Honestly? Sometimes I really have no idea why you want to be with me.”

  I can’t believe he’d say that to me. I mean, he’s the brilliant professor. I’m nothing. Okay, yes, I’m young. But so what? I’m just a loser who has no friends and cheated my way through college.

  But I don’t say that. I just start kissing him, and that’s when he finally starts to relax. As for the television, it may as well have been playing in Wookiee for all we’d notice.

  Chapter 49

  Our second midterm comes way, way too fast.

  I know I’m at an advantage, what with all the private tutoring with the anatomy professor. But I’m still nervous as all hell. If I screw up, I screw up. Matt has made it painfully clear that he won’t change my grade.

  “You wouldn’t really want me to, would you?” he says to me.

  “No, of course not,” I lie.

  I would. Come on, of course I would.

  Matt wants to live in some sort of fantasyland where I’ve changed all my corrupt ways, and now I’d never cheat in a million years. But that’s just not true. If he offered me an A, I’d take it. I wouldn’t even have to think twice.

  The night before the exam, Matt stays up late quizzing me in bed. We have this bowl of grapes and if I get three right answers in a row, he feeds me a grape. I don’t even like grapes that much, but I think it’s really hot when he feeds it to me. I like how he holds it just out of reach of my mouth, waiting for that final right answer.

  “You earned this,” he says, with mock seriousness as he pops the last grape in the bowl in my mouth.

  I swallow the grape then stick my tongue out at him. He laughs and kisses me.

  “Seriously,” he says. “You’re going to do great tomorrow. I know it.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I mumble, rubbing my eyes. I yawn. “Oh my God, I’m so tired. What time is it?”

  “It’s one in the morning,” Matt notes, looking surprised. “Wow, I didn’t realize it was so late.”

  “Damn,” I say. “I better head home.”

  I drag myself out of bed, still rubbing my eyes. Matt has a concerned look on his face.

  “Maybe you should spend the night here,” he suggests. “I don’t want you to fall asleep at the wheel.”

  “I’ll be fine,” I assure him.

  I’ve started to pull on my jeans when I feel Matt’s arms wrap around my waist.

  “Please stay, Rachel.”

  Okay, so I stay. It’s not that big a deal. We take separate cars the next morning, so it’s not like anyone is going to find out. And it’s just so nice to spend the night snuggled against Matt’s warm body.

  _____

  Maybe it’s my imagination, but the crowd outside the anatomy lab looks even more nervous than last time.

  I have a clipboard and paper to write down my answers to the practical, and I camp out outside the lab like the rest of my classmates. Just like I’m any regular student who isn’t sleeping with the professor. And just like everyone else, I’m really anxious. Hell, I’m scared shitless.

  Because this time, I tried. If I tried that hard and still fail, well…

  “Here we are again,” Heather says, nudging me in the shoulder. “Nervous?”

  I try to pass off a casual shrug, “It’s just an exam.”

  “What’s with Mason?” Heather asks.

  I look off in the corner and see that Mason Howard is all by himself, his back pressed against the wall, staring off into the distance. Most of the class has been pulling of
f all night study sessions lately, but Mason looks truly awful. His face is unshaven, his clothes are rumpled, and he has this strange, haunted look in his eyes.

  “Hey,” Heather says, “do you want to hear the latest gossip? Apparently, Ginny and Mason are hooking up. How weird is that?”

  Very weird. I can’t imagine Mason hooking up with sweet, quiet little Ginny, but then again, I’m probably pretty low on the list of candidates to be hooking up with the professor. There are much, much hotter girls in the class than me.

  “By the way,” Heather says, a small smile playing across her lips, “where were you last night, young lady?”

  My mouth goes dry.

  “I… I spent the night at school, studying.”

  “Whatever you say,” Heather laughs.

  Eventually, the students are herded into the lab. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this scared about a test. If I fail, that’s it—I fail. But the worst part is that if I fail, Matt will be so incredibly disappointed. He seems to believe I have it in me to be some kind of anatomy genius and I don’t want to let him down. I don’t want him to realize the truth: I’m really just not all that smart.

  I position myself in front of one of the cadavers and try my best to steady my hand holding the pen. I can’t believe how badly I’m shaking. I look over at Matt, who is at the front of the room. Our eyes meet and he mouths to me, “You’ll be fine.”

  And it really does make me feel better. It’s nice that he believes in me, even if he may be completely wrong.

  “All right, folks,” Matt addresses the class, “you know the drill by now. Good luck to everyone and you may begin.”

  _____

  Matt cooks me a celebratory dinner that night, even though it’s not clear that there’s anything to celebrate. He planned the dinner like a week ago, saying he was that certain I’d do well.

  As for me, I’m not nearly that confident. That midterm was freaking hard. I can’t stop analyzing every question in my head and wondering if I got the right answer.

  When Matt answers the door for me, I’m practically ready to faint. I try to gauge how I did by the look on his face, but it’s hard to tell. “Did you grade my test yet?” I finally ask.