Suicide Med (13 page)

All the studying pays off. The day before the anatomy exam grades are announced to be posted, Dr. Conlon calls me into his office. I can’t imagine what my anatomy professor wants to tell me, but I know it can’t be bad news—I know I kicked ass on the anatomy exam.

Dr. Conlon
is pulling a book out of one of his shelves when I come in. He tosses the book onto his desk then grabs his cane and limps back to his seat. His cane nearly snags his desk in the process and he plops down into his chair.

Dr. Conlon is a loser.
I hate to say it, but yeah. He just is. The cane and the limp aren’t even half of it.

I mean, the man wears bowties.
Enough said.

“Sit down, Dr. Howard,” Dr. Conlon says to me, a stern look on
his face.

I don’t like it that he calls us all “doctor.”
It’s patronizing. But I’m not going to say anything. Anyway, I sit down in front of his desk.

“May I ask you a question?” Dr. Conlon says.

I nod, intrigued.

Dr. Conlon does
n’t just ask me one question, but lets loose with a rapid fire of difficult anatomy questions. He asks about the gut anastomoses, the innervation of the muscles in the pelvic floor, and a bunch of stuff that’s ridiculously obscure. He doesn’t even tell me if I’m right or not. By the end, I have to admit, I’m struggling to keep my composure. These questions are
hard
.

Finally, after the
fifteenth question in a row, I interrupt him: “Listen, what’s this about?”

Dr. Conlon reaches
into his desk and pulls out some stapled papers that I recognize as my exam. He tosses it down on the table.

“I’ve never seen anyone get a perfect score on the practical exam before,”
he says. “I had to make sure you weren’t cheating.”

“And?”

“You know your shit, Howard. I’m impressed.”

I
smile.

“What field are you interested in, Dr. Howard?” he asks me.

“Plastics,” I reply without hesitation.

Dr. Conlon nods.
“I have a good friend at UCSF in the plastics department. If you keep this up, I’d be happy to write him a letter on your behalf. Or even give him a call.”

I feign surprise.
But of course, I knew about Conlon’s connections to plastics at UCSF. It’s one of the best programs in the country—makes me curse the fact that I’m not a California native. The reason I’m here at Southside is because of Dr. Conlon and what he can do for me. I’ll rotate over there and impress the hell out of them, of course, but a letter would be gold.

“Thank you, sir,” I say.

Dr. Conlon smiles. “Keep up the good work.”

Ev
erything is falling into place.

It’s two a.m. on a Thursday night. And I’m at the library.

I got here a little late because I had to finally do my laundry.
Buying new underwear was getting old. There was so much laundry, I had to use every available washer to get it done. I really hate doing laundry. The second I get married, I am done doing laundry.

I look across the table at Ginny.
She’s going through some flashcards she made for biochem. I watch her biting her lip as she tucks her short dark hair behind her tiny ear. That girl is dedicated all right—it’s so sexy.

Ginny must have sensed
me looking at her, because she glances up expectantly. I’m going to brag here: we’ve had sex maybe a couple dozen times now. We do it either in the locker room or the med student lounge. The lounge is more comfortable because it’s got a couch, but the risk of getting caught is higher so we usually just go to the locker room.

We’ve got a whole system going—if we’re up for it, we tap a yellow highlighter on the table five times.
I’ve initiated more than she has, but she’s definitely done her fair share of highlighter-tapping. It’s gotten so that every time I hear someone tapping their pen in class, I start to get excited.

The sex is usually fast.
It’s a little embarrassing, to be honest, but Ginny hasn’t called me on it yet. Anyway, it’s good—really, really good. The truth is, I think about Ginny a lot. All the freaking time. Right now I’m trying to focus on the cranial nerves, but I keep looking up at her instead. I wonder if she’s up for a study break.

Ginny
cranes her neck to look at the textbook I’m reading, which is Dr. Conlon’s book. She crinkles her nose.

“You highlight a lot,” she comments.

“Yeah. So?”

“You highlighted every sentence on that page,” she points out.

I glance down at t
he page in front of me.

“Not every sentence,” I protest.

“There is literally one sentence that you didn’t highlight,” she says.

Okay, fine.
She’s right.

“Highlighting helps me focus,” I say.

I have five different colors of highlights, which I use for different levels of importance of the information on the page. Yellow is the critical stuff.

Ginny closes her textbook and yawns.
I sneak a glance at her own highlighter, hoping for a few taps signaling she’s in the mood. But no luck. Damn. I guess I’m going to have to go at it alone when I get home.

“Leaving?” I ask her.

She rubs her eyes. “Maybe I’ll put in another hour with Frank.”

That’s one
other thing I really like about Ginny. She isn’t scared to be in the anatomy lab alone at midnight.

“Hey, Mason,” she says.
“You ever get curious about Frank?”

“Yeah, sure,” I admit.

In the last two months,
I had probably spent more time with Frank than any other person in my life. It seems strange that I know nothing about the man, other than that he might have been a cop. Not even his real name.

“I wonder how
he died,” Ginny says thoughtfully. “Almost everyone else knows how their cadaver died, but I just can’t figure it out with Frank. He’s got a great heart, perfect lungs, perfect kidneys, no liver cirrhosis…”

Actually, that’s
been bothering me as well. Frank is in mint condition. I’m no pathologist (and never will be… ugh), but usually there’s at least some signs that an organ is failing. Hearts often became enlarged when they’re struggling, lungs turn black, livers grow firm… but Frank has none of those problems. His death is a complete mystery.

I wonder if we’ll ever find out how he died.

_____

When I get home that night, I find Abe sitting on the futon, clicking through the late night television channels. Abe’s eyes are bloodshot and he looks awful. He barely glances at me as I walk in.

“Hey, Hulk
,” I greet him. “Where’s Heather?”

I’ve gotten used to the sight of them snuggled up on our futon.
It almost doesn’t make me want to vomit anymore.

“Heather is going to leave me,” Abe says
in a flat voice.

So much for sleep.
I drop my books on the floor and push aside some dirty white tube socks to sit down next to Abe. We’re both slobs. “What happened?”

“I should never have been with her i
n the first place,” Abe mutters. “I mean, she’s way out of my league…”

Abe either has the worst self-esteem ever, or else he’s looking at Heather through a pair of eternal beer goggles.
She’s not
that
hot, seriously. And Abe’s a really good guy. He’s easygoing, smart, affable, and even sometimes makes an effort to clean our bathroom, especially when Heather is around. And I don’t think he’s awful looking or anything, not that I’m able to judge that kind of thing. I’ve got to make him see there are other possibilities.

“Cheer up,” I say. “In less than two years, we’ll be working in the hospital and you’ll have more cute nurses flirting with you than you know what to do with.”

Abe barely
seems to be listening. He stares ahead at the television, his eyes unfocused.

“I’m going to
keep her,” he says. “No matter what I have to do, I’m not going to let her get away.”

“Okay…”
There’s a disturbing desperation in Abe’s voice.
No matter what I have to do.
What the hell does that mean? “Look, you should get some sleep.”

“Can’t,” Abe mutters
, changing the channel absently. On the nature channel, a lion is ripping apart a young zebra. Okay then.

If there
is one thing I’m
not
, it’s a future psychiatrist. Abe’s problems are his own. Whatever stupid shit Abe intends to do on Heather’s behalf, that’s his business. I have too much of my own work to do.

_____

Dr. Conlon’s morning lecture
is on the extraocular muscles. The muscles that allow the eye to move are controlled by three pairs of cranial nerves: the oculomotor nerve, the trochlear nerve, and the abducens. The mechanism is pretty complicated and weakness of any one of these nerves causes the affected eye to deviate in a way that would cause vision to double.

I
have to admit that Dr. Conlon is a damn good lecturer. The eye is a very complicated organ and there are a lot of dumb people in my class. But by the end of the lecture, everyone seems to get it.

When we’re in lab an hour later, even
Rachel seems well-versed in the extraocular nerves. She recites them to Dr. Conlon proudly as her nipples poke through her T-shirt. And he seems really excited she got it right. Or excited by her nipples. Either way.

“
And where’s the rest of your group?” he asks.

It’s just me, Rachel, and Ginny today.
Abe and Heather aren’t around—they’re probably somewhere making out or something.

“I have no idea,” I say to Dr. Conlon, and then I add, “Guess they have something better to do.”

Dr. Conlon just shakes his head.

“By the way,” I say.
There’s something that’s been on my mind and I’ve got to ask him about it. “I was just wondering… do you know what happened to our cadaver? Like, how he died?”

Dr. Conlon raises his black eyebrows.
“Excuse me?”

“Well, he just seems so healthy…”
I laugh, but somehow it comes out a little strangled. “I mean, aside from being dead.”

I’d always thought of Dr. Conlon as being really good-natured, but his blue eyes suddenly get really dark behind his spectacles.

“That’s confidential, Mason,” he snaps at me.

I just stare at him. It was an innocent question and his response was… well, pretty surprising.

“Sorry,” I stammer.

Without another word, Dr. Conlon grips the handle of his cane and limps away from our table. He seemed so furious all of a sudden. What the hell was that all about?

Almost like
he’s hiding something, isn’t it?

I
shake my head, wondering where that thought came from. I’m definitely overworked and not sleeping nearly enough. But I can’t shake the feeling that something is very wrong about this whole situation.

“How much weight have you lost, Mason?”

I
’m flipping through the pages of my anatomy textbook as I sit on the bed in my room. My mother called me and immediately started grilling me on whether I’m taking care of myself. She’s right—I’m not eating enough and what I eat is crap. But what can I do? I’m sure as hell not going to start cooking myself healthy meals every night. It’s cafeteria food or else Ramen Noodles. Or if I’m feeling really motivated, I’ll crack open a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

“I’m fine, Mom,”
I say.

“Come home
this weekend,” she says. “Have a home-cooked meal.”

I
don’t point out that any “home-cooked meal” is in fact cooked by the housekeeper. For years, my father and I have been complimenting my mother on Olivia’s food. My mother would routinely burn toast.

“I guess so,” I
say.

Thanksgiving break isn’t for a few more weeks, and
some real food would be amazing. I could probably spare a couple of hours of studying for that.

“You can bring your girl
friend if you’d like,” she adds in a sly voice. “We’d love to meet her, darling.”

My moth
er has always taken too big an interest in my personal life. She misses my college girlfriend Holly. I really think my mother would have married Holly herself if she could have.

“I don’t have a girlfriend, Mom,”
I try to tell her.

“You?” she snorts
. “Of course you do.”

I
don’t know what to say to that.

After giving it some thought,
I decide to invite Ginny to come. She’s not my girlfriend, but I can’t imagine asking anyone else. But I’m really into her these days, and it wouldn’t be painful to spend a whole night together.

I
ask Ginny during anatomy lab when it’s just the two of us.

“Your
parents’
house?” Ginny asks, genuinely surprised.

Chr
ist, it’s not like I gave her a freaking engagement ring.

I feel my face get hot and I quickly
play it down.

“I just want a friend with me to help get me through the evening,”
I explain quickly. “Come on, aren’t you a little bit curious?”

“A little bit,” Ginny admits
with a smile. “What should I wear?”

I
pick Ginny up at five o’clock on Saturday night and my parents are a forty-five-minute drive away. I told her to dress casual. She’s wearing a skirt that is short but could be shorter. I like that I can see some cleavage poking out of her neckline. And when she leans forward, I catch a glimpse of a lacy black bra strap. So freaking hot.

“Wow,”
I say.

Ginny’s olive skin colors
slightly, which is even sexier. “What?”

“You look… really nice,”
I say.

Really,
I can’t stop looking at her. I mean, I always think she’s attractive, but
damn
.

And that’s when I decide: tonight, after we leave my parents’ house, I’m going to ask Ginny out on a real date.
No strings attached sex is fun, but it’s not enough anymore. I probably sound like a tool saying this, but I want Ginny to be my girlfriend. I’m going to talk her into it somehow. I can be very persuasive.

If she shoots me down like Janet, it will kill me.

“I love your car,” Ginny says as she climbs into the passenger’s seat. She sweeps her dark hair off her olive shoulders as she looked down at the gears. “You drive a stick?”

“Yep.”

“I’m impressed. Sticks are cool.”

She thinks I’m cool.
Score one for Howard.

At first, I tune in to the radio, but we end up talking so much that I just turn it off.
Mostly, we talk about school and our classmates. Ginny knows all the gossip, which makes me feel really out of the loop. I’ve been studying too much, I guess.

Then again, there’s really no
such thing as too much studying, right?

We get to my parents’
house just before six. I still have my keys to the front door, but I figure the polite thing to do is to ring the bell. My mother would never forgive me if I just busted into the house with company, not giving any warning.

My
mother responds to the bell herself. She gets this huge smile on her face when she sees us, although she doesn’t hug me. We’re not a family that does lots of hugs, which is fine by me. My mom looks about ten years younger than last time I saw her—all those lines on her forehead are gone. Botox, I’m almost positive. Not that I’d ask.

“Hello, darling,” Mom coos.
She turns to Ginny, “And this must be Virginia. How nice to meet you.”

“Ginny,” she says, fiddling with her shirt collar.

As we walk inside, I can smell dinner. It smells really amazing. So much better than the cafeteria crap. I glance over at Ginny and see she looks pale.

“What’s wrong?”
I whisper.

“
This place is
huge
,” she whispers back. “When I lived at home, I shared a bedroom with my two sisters.”

I always just thought of my parents’ house as
just home, but now that Ginny pointed it out, I guess she’s right. The foyer opens up into an impressive living room, with three leather couches and the latest model in large-screen television sets. On the far corner of the room is a fireplace that is now burning bright orange flames. A wide, carpeted staircase leads up to the second of three stories that make up the house.

I can see a little crease form between Ginny’s brows, and instinctively, I
fling my arm around her shoulders. She stares up at me in total surprise—I’ve never done anything like that before. But she doesn’t push me away, so I count that as a win.

“Virginia,” my
mother gushes, “I absolutely
must
give you a tour of the house.”

“Um… okay…” Ginny says.

“Mason,” my mother says, “would you be a dear and take your and Virginia’s coats in the den?”

As my
mother drags away my date, I wander in the direction of the den. As expected, my father is sitting in a reclining chair, reading
The New England Journal of Medicine
. Dad’s black hair is now threaded with gray as is his beard, but his dark eyes still scare the shit out of me. I instinctively straighten my posture as I carefully arrange the coats on an empty sofa.

My
father looks up at the sound and peers at me over the rim of his reading glasses.

“
Mason,” he says in a deep, rumbling voice several octaves lower than mine. “I’m glad you were able to make it.”

I
nod.

“How is school going?” my father asks.
“At the top of your class, I assume.”

I
nod again. “Yes, sir.”

“Of course,” my father says.
“You’re my son, aren’t you?”

My father
stands up and I straighten my spine further, but I’m still not as tall as he is. He’s six foot one and I’m not even quite six feet. It kills me that I didn’t even hit six feet. And when I stare at people, they don’t cower in fear. They just smile at me, and maybe ask me if I want to go on a date with their granddaughter.

I’m nothing like my dad.
And I bet that disappoints the hell out of him.

“Well, I’m going to get washed up for dinner,” my father says, as
he brushes off his pants. “I’ll see you at the dinner table, Mason.”

“Yes, sir,” I
say, letting out a breath as my father leaves the room.

I
lag behind in the den. This one room feels like a castle compared to my dorm back at school. It’s nice to be able to walk across the room without bumping into furniture or tripping over Abe’s dirty laundry.

I
cross the room and find myself at my father’s desk. It’s a large mahogany piece that cost a small fortune—I’m no stranger to expensive furniture, but I actually gasped when I saw the price tag on it when it was delivered last year. I sit down at the desk, wondering when I’ll have enough money to afford a den of my own that looks like this. I still have four years of medical school ahead of me, then a long, low-paying residency. My parents lend me a lot of money, but they wouldn’t be willing to bankroll me if I wanted to buy a house.

I
try to open the desk drawer, but it’s locked. Typical of my father. I feel around under the drawer and immediately touch the outline of the key that is taped to the bottom of the drawer. My father is still using the same hiding places.

Open the drawer.

I hear the command loud and clear, as if someone is speaking to me, right in my ear. A deep male voice that I can’t identify. I look around the room, but nobody is there.

Huh.
That’s weird.

Open the drawer,
Mason.

“Hello?” I
say aloud. Someone definitely said something that time. I
heard
it. I glance over and see that the door to the room is closed. I’m alone.

The television?
Could it be the television? I walk over to the set and examine it for a second, but it is definitely not turned on. The stereo is off too. And besides, they said
my name
.

W
here the hell did that voice come from?

I
go back over to the desk and examine the drawer. When I was younger, it used to be a game to unlock my father’s desk drawers without him knowing about it. There was never anything interesting in the drawers back then. Usually I just found some boring bills, and once I found a copy of their mortgage, with numbers so high that it made me dizzy. I’m probably a little bit old now to be digging around in my father’s desk drawer. Still, I find myself pushing the key into the lock.

I
don’t know what I had expected to find. But I hadn’t expected to find a .357 Magnum.

I pick up the gun and a handful of bullets roll to the front of the drawer.
I know how to shoot. My dad firmly believes in the right to bear arms and had taken me to a range for shooting practice when I was younger. We even went hunting once, but we didn’t kill anything, probably because I was so loud that I scared all the animals away. This gun feels lighter than the ones I had held before, easily concealable in one’s pocket. But still really powerful.

Take the gun.

The sound of the command startles me and I nearly drop the gun on the floor. I blink my eyes, desperately looking around the room.

“Who’s there?”
I snap.

The room
is empty.

I
take a deep breath and study the gun in my hand. My father keeps it around for protection, but I know the house is already alarmed up the wazoo. There’s no way anyone is getting into this fortress, and even if someone did, isn’t there some statistic that showed that you’re more likely to accidentally shoot a family member than a burglar? Or something like that.

I’m
certain now that nobody else is in the room. But this voice is real. I heard it loud and clear. And it seems to somehow know something I don’t.

“Why do I need it?” I
say aloud.

No answer.

Well, what did I expect? To have a conversation about firearms with some invisible person?

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m going to need this gun.

I take a deep breath, then scoop out the bullets and lock the desk drawer.
I place the gun and the bullets in the pocket of my coat that’s lying on the sofa. Then I leave the room to join my family for dinner.

_____

“
This looks delicious, Mom,” I say as I dig into the lemon pepper chicken cooked by Olivia, the housekeeper.

“Delicious, Elise,” my
father echoes.

I
look over at Ginny, waiting for her to offer a compliment, but she just frowns. Finally, she says, “The cook did a great job.”

I
almost smack myself in the head. How could she have said that?

“Do you cook much, Virginia?” my mother asks her.

Ginny is toying with her food, shifting her mashed potatoes into a little pile. “I used to. For my father. But now I live alone. I mostly eat TV dinners.”

As Ginn
y finally takes a bite of her mashed potatoes, I want to yell at her,
Elbows off the table!
I don’t know why I care so much. When I’m at school, I eat with my elbows on the table about 100% of the time, and Abe eats with his
feet
on the table most of the time. But right now, I’m seeing Ginny through my parents’ eyes. And they’re not impressed.