Medicine Man (Page 65)

He’s trying to say something to me, probably calm me down. There are other people, too. They are saying things to me as well. But I can’t listen to them. I don’t want to.

I want Simon to tell me why he was lying.

Why is he breaking my heart? Why is he doing this to me? What have I done to deserve this?

A flashback grips me, then and throws me back into the past. The hospital room, my crying mom, the doctors. Everyone looking at me like there was something wrong with me. Everyone looking at me like I was an animal, needed to be put down.

But unlike that day, I’m not afraid of what’s to come.

In fact, I want it. I want the numbness. I want that sting. The needle. Let them put me down. Let them fucking do it.

I’m not a hysterical patient with no rational thought. I’m an insane, heartbroken girl in full possession of my mental faculties.

Let him fucking do it.

I won’t calm down, no matter what.

I flail my legs, my arms, until they don’t let me anymore. I scream harder and harder, until I feel my throat bleed. All through this, I stare tear-eyed at my tormentor, the man I love. The man who broke my heart.

And then, I feel a slight sting.

A sting I was waiting for. It brings sweet relief. And calm and peace.

Death.

Yes. Thank God.

I feel myself going into it, getting absorbed into the black mass. At the same time, I feel myself being caged in a set of arms. These are different from the ones holding me around my stomach.

I’d know those arms anywhere.

Simon.

He’s taken me in his arms as I’m dying. I smile, or try to, because I’m slipping.

I’ve thought a lot about death, and how I’ll die. I’ve made plans for it. But not once did I think that I’ll die in the arms of the man I love. It never occurred to me.

It actually seems like a good way to die. The best way to die.

To draw your last breath in his arms and to look at his face before you forever close your eyes and say your last words.

“You’re breaking my heart…”

“She’s stable,” Beth says, standing at my office door. “Sleeping.”

I look up from where I’m shoving files in my bag at my desk. I’m probably crushing the papers, ruining them beyond repair but I don’t really care.

This isn’t the worst thing I’ve ruined. And there are worse things that I can ruin.

“I want someone to monitor her all night. In case she wakes up,” I say, going back to my task.

She shouldn’t, however. She should sleep through the night with Trazadone. I hope she does.

I look around the scene of the crime. My office. Everything is straightened up. Staff here at Heartstone are pretty efficient. It makes me angry. Fucking furious that there isn’t any evidence of it. Any evidence of how I broke her heart.

Scratches on my neck and my jaw, a few on my biceps sting like she’s still digging her nails into my flesh, but they aren’t enough. Her blunt nails didn’t manage to break my skin and make me bleed. Like I made her bleed exactly seven days ago.

Where’s the justice in that? Where’s the justice in me going unpunished?

 “You know this is it, right?” Beth says, reminding me that she’s still here. “I can’t help you after this. People are talking about what happened here. I can’t stop it.”

“I’m not asking for help.”

“You’re going to lose this job. I don’t think even Joseph can convince the board –”

I stop what I’m doing and focus on her. “Do I look like I care about this job?”

“Do you care about her?” she asks, standing right across from me, on the other side of the desk, as if we’re in a stand-off.

My hands fist around the flap of the messenger bag. “What do you want, Beth?”

“I want you to admit it. I know you’ve been spending time with her. Do you think I don’t know, Simon?” She arches her eyebrows. “I know about frequent meetings. You haven’t taken such an interest in any other patient but her.”

“Then why haven’t you done anything about it? Why haven’t you stopped me? If it were someone else, you would’ve had this conversation long ago. Right?”

She nods. “Yes, I would have. I would’ve let them go. And if I thought they were taking advantage of one of my patients, I would’ve made sure that everybody knew about it, too.”

“So why didn’t you? Why didn’t you let me go?”

Smiling sadly, she says, “Because you weren’t taking advantage of her.”

“Yeah? How do you know that? You’ve heard the rumors, right?” I cross my arms across my chest. “They say I took advantage of Claire. They say that I slept with her and when she got clingy, I told her to change doctors. There’s a lawsuit against me, remember?”

She shakes her head, analyzing me. I fucking hate when she does that. Like I’m still that fourteen-year-old kid who’s just lost his mother.

“I know you didn’t do that.”

She’s right. I didn’t. But everybody else thinks so.

“How? How do you know that, Beth? Maybe I’ve been lying to you. Maybe I didn’t tell you the whole story.”

“Because, Simon, you’re your own worst critic. You’re the height of professionalism. You’re so hard on yourself,” she says, exasperated. “You’d never get involved with a patient. You wouldn’t even dream of it, and that’s because your dad married his patient. Your mother.”

I flinch.

I try to not think about it too much. I try to not think about how my bipolar mother was hopelessly in love with my dad. And how my dad was always too busy for her.

This is where they met, at Heartstone.

She was suffering from bipolar 1 disorder, which presents itself with full-blown manic episodes that last at least seven days. Depressive episodes occur as well. It’s easier for me to break-down her illness in technical terms rather than thinking of her as this unpredictable creature going through highs and lows, without her volition.

According to my mother, she fell in love with my dad right from the beginning. She fell in love with how calm and steady he was. How hard-working and sharp-minded. And how he always seemed to know what she was going to say before she even said it.

It always makes me wonder if my mother was making it up. She was fond of stories. Because how the fuck was it that the man who knew her so well, didn’t figure out that she needed him in her life? How could he leave her alone and save the world, when his wife was fucking dying for him?

How the fuck did he not know that his absence was hurting her to the point that she ended up killing herself?

“That’s what drives you, doesn’t it, Simon?” Beth pulls me out of my head. “Being better than your dad. So yes, I know. Everyone who knows you, knows that you could never have done something like that.”

Despite myself, I’m relieved that Beth knows. I never had to tell her; she believed me right from the beginning.

Like her. The snow princess. The bravest girl I know.

But it doesn’t matter. I don’t care about the rumors, but I do care about what happened to Claire.

Because it is my fault.

“What’s your point, Beth?” I ask.

“Do you love her? Do you love Willow?”

I clench my teeth as anger and an unnatural fear grips me. “I am not my father.”