Medicine Man (Page 62)

 His chest is moving up and down, just like mine. We’re breathing as one. Me and him. I bet the looks in our eyes match too because I’m cracked open in the way he is, as well.

It makes me realize what it is I’m seeing in his expression. It’s vulnerability. We’re both vulnerable. Flayed. Bare. Naked.

And we’re both broken, in this moment. Broken and melted.

My ice king is going to say it.

He’s going to say he loves me.

“I… I –”

His words get swallowed up by the ringing of the phone and I could scream with how cliché this is. How fucking cliché and unfortunate.

A cruel joke.

“Simon, don’t. Please.” I grip his bicep, but he shakes his head and leaves me there.

Although, he can’t get to his phone on time, and I hear a man’s voice when the machine picks up the call – Seriously, what era is this? Every fucking thing in this Victorian mansion is old-fashioned:

“Hey, man. Pick up your fucking cell phone. We need to talk about Claire. Two weeks are up.”

I come out of the bathroom and I wouldn’t have thought anything of it or the name Claire, if I hadn’t seen Simon transform right in front of me.

Going all tight and icy, standing by the desk, staring at the phone. It’s so startling, his change. So abrupt and so shocking, after seeing him unravel a thousand times.

My heart’s racing but for a very different reason now and something like dread makes a home in my stomach. “Simon –”

He whirls to face me. “Get out.”

“What?”

“Get. Out.”

“But –”

“Leave, Willow.”

I don’t.

How can I? After everything. After what he told me and what he was going to tell me.

His fury rises, rises and rises, until it spills over and he lashes out, “Willow, for once in your goddamn life, will you do as I say?”

I flinch at his voice. I’ve never seen him like this. So cold and so heated at the same time. All the lines on his body and face set in stone. It cracks my heart, right in the middle. Crushes it, beats it into a pulp.

As soon as I feel my eyes watering, I do as he says.

I leave, realizing that he never asked me his usual question: how many days.

One day.

Before The Goodbye.

And the man I’m in love with isn’t even looking at me.

It’s like the way he looked at me yesterday when I thought he was finally going to say something, acknowledge this thing between us, was it. He has used up all his intensity, all his passion, his heat in that one look and he doesn’t have anything left now.

He’s ice cold.

Or maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe he wasn’t even going to say anything. Maybe he never intended to say it, and whatever I’ve been feeling for the past few days is nothing but a delusion.

I’m delirious. In schizophrenic love.

With the man standing across the room. He’s the tallest man at my party – my going away party. He’s also the most aloof, tucked away in a corner. He’s not even eating cake.

Renn and the girls ordered a lime cake for me, specifically. And we’re all assembled in the rec room – patients, techs, nurses, therapists.

How ironic is it that it all started with a party? My eighteenth birthday party. We had a chocolate cake with fresh raspberries in the filling. The number of people who attended was bigger, but I didn’t know more than half of them, and they didn’t know me. They came because my family invited them, and maybe because they wanted free booze and cake.

On the Inside though, people do know me. Maybe some of them I haven’t talked to personally, but still. They know I’m one of them.

So far, Annie, Lisa, Roger, a few other patients, and a couple of nurses, along with Hunter and Beth, they all have come to wish me good luck for the life on the Outside.

Ellen from the reflections group has come to hug me and tell me how proud of me she is. Hers was the group where I confessed my lies and accepted the fact I do have suicidal ideation, and that I’m a fighter.

I’m the chosen one, you see.

We all are. We’re the ones who choose to fight. Every single day. Every single moment.

We don’t give up when thoughts get dark. We don’t give up when meds don’t work. We don’t give up when our inner demons overpower the demons on the outside.

We don’t give up. Period.

We choose to be more than our illness and yes, it’s hard. And it’s fucking unfair. But when is life ever fair? You make the best of what you’ve been dealt and we’re here because every single one of us wants to be the best that we can be.

Until six weeks ago, I never would’ve even thought of being here. But now, I don’t want to leave. It’s like I’m going to leave my family, a different, quirky family and all I want to do is break down and cry.

Will he come for me, if I do that? Will he look at me then, if I sob and wail?

Just the fact that I’m contemplating crying so he pays me some attention proves that I’m borderline psychotic.

But I do want to do that, psychotic or not. I do want to make a scene, start a commotion so he’ll come for me. Maybe even keep me here, locked up.

Because I want to know what happened.

What the fuck happened?

Everything was fine – well, everything was broken because he hadn’t confessed his feelings for me or given me any indication of what the future holds for us, but still, things were fine.

I thought we were making progress. Every time we talked; every time we fucked; every time he took care of me, it made me feel that we came that much closer. I thought he’d say something before I left. Or at least give me his phone number or some clue that he still wanted to be in touch with me on the Outside.

Anything.

But then one phone call about Claire and everything just shattered.

Like always, I’ve analyzed it to death and I think this must have something to do with his old job. I’ve always known something’s eating at him and this must be it. Well, besides the fact that his mom killed herself. No wonder he’s so cold and seemingly unemotional.

But that doesn’t stop my devastation. It doesn’t stop me from being sad and angry that I meant so little to him.

Before I can drown in my head, Josie finds me, and we chat for a little bit. She tells me again how proud she is of me and I tear up, thanking her.

 Then I remember something. “Oh hey, I, uh, forgot to thank you for the books.”

“What books?” She takes a bite of her cake.

“Harry Potter. I can’t believe you actually listened to me. Thank you for that. Though you didn’t have to get like, a hundred copies and dedicate an entire shelf to them. But you know, I’m not complaining.”

She’s frowning. “I didn’t do anything.”

“What?”

“I don’t handle books. Or stuff like that.”

“You must’ve said something to someone? To Beth?”

She shakes her head. “Nope. I didn’t say anything. Maybe you should talk to her. She and Dr. Martin, they’re the ones who handle stuff like that. Well, now it would be Dr. Blackwood.”

“Dr. B-Blackwood?” I ask in a squeaky voice.

“Yeah. Since Dr. Martin isn’t here right now.”

“Right.”

She smiles and turns away from me to talk to someone else. Or maybe it’s me who turns away. I can’t say.