Suicide Med (2 page)

“Look to your left and look to your right.”

My eyes lift when I hear the words of our Dean of Students
at Southside Medical School, Dr. Marvin Bushnell. He’s one of those men with a huge, Santa Claus-esque belly who sweats just with the effort of speaking. He’s been talking to us for about five minutes and he’s already got a shiny forehead and huge pit stains. But he barrels on, totally oblivious to the amount of fluid his pores are secreting.

I obligingly look to my left because it’s clear everyone else in the auditorium is doing it.
Two seats over is a male student with a messy brown ponytail and a ratty leather jacket that smells of cigarettes and possibly some other illegal substance. I can understand not dressing up in a suit and tie for your first day of medical school, but I’d think at least you’d want to
shower
.

And now for the look to the right: that one is my new roommate, Rachel Bingham.
Rachel is not looking left or right. Rachel is rolling her eyes quite dramatically.

I had this fantasy in my head that my med school roommate and I would become BFFs and we’d braid each other’s hair and have pillow fights, et cetera.
So far, I’m 99% sure Rachel hates me. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but it’s something about the way she’s looked at me since she arrived a week ago in our shared suite, her stringy brown hair falling in her face, ripped jeans held together by the grace of God, and only a single suitcase to her name. Of course, you can save a little bit of room in packing if you don’t bring along any bras, a decision that I’m pretty sure Rachel has opted for.

I turn my attention back to
Dr. Bushnell, who is about one passionate speech away from a serious cardiac event.

“In four years,” he says to the hushed crowd, “both of these people will be physicians.”

Well,
duh
.

Rachel snorts audibly now.
I try to flash a friendly smile in her direction, but she’s having none of that. She rewards me with another eye-roll and I focus my attention back at the dean. Fine, Rachel won’t be my friend. I’ll find another friend in the class.

Probably.

“It’s not true anyway,” Rachel hisses in my direction.

I raise my eyebrows at her.
I’m so pleased she’s talking to me that I don’t even care that she’s speaking over the dean on our first day of medical school.

“What isn’t true?” I ask.

“We won’t all be doctors,” she says. She tucks her dark brown hair behind her ear so that I can actually get my first good look at her deep brown eyes.

“We won’t?”

Rachel laughs. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

Her lips curl into a slightly evil grin. I think my roommate may actually be genuinely evil. Are people really evil in real life? Or just in comic books?

“In every class,” she says, “ten people flu
nk and need to repeat the year. Five drop out, never to return. And of course, every year there’s always one…”

Now she pauses and draws a
n ominous line across her thin white neck with a well-chewed fingernail.

“One
what
?” I prompt her.

Rachel frowns at me.
“You
really
don’t know?”

“Know
what
?”

Rachel shakes her head.
“Why do you think the school is nicknamed Suicide Med?”

I did
not
know that.

She can’t be serious.
She’s just messing with me. She’s just pissed off that I left too many bottles of moisturizer in our bathroom. (I have really dry skin.)

Dean Bushnell is saying something that I completely missed and I hear a round of applause.
I need to start actually paying attention and quit my doomed attempts to befriend my roommate. The dean shifts away from the podium and another man walks up to take his place. This man is far younger than the dean, maybe in his late thirties, but he carries an old man quad cane in his right hand and walks with a pronounced limp.

“Hello,” the man says, pushing his spectacles up the bridge of his nose with his forefinger.
I can’t help but notice he’s wearing a bowtie. Who wears a bowtie in everyday life? “I’m Matt Conlon, your anatomy professor.”

Right—Dr. Conlon.
When I interviewed here at Southside, the first years had been singing praise about this guy. “Dorky but really fun,” they’d said. “He’s the best thing about first year.”

Up on the stage, Dr. Conlon is now gesturing wildly as he describes how totally awesome anatomy is.

“The human body makes perfect sense,” he explains.
“It’s the most perfectly constructed machine in the world. And after you finish my class, you’re going to understand how that machine works, inside and out. And you’re going to realize how amazing it is.”

I don’t even need to look at Rachel to know that she’s rolling her eyes.

“
Thank you for letting me act as your guide on this incredible journey,” Dr. Conlon says, and he gives a little bow.

Really, he
bows
. God, could this guy be any dorkier?

Following Dr. Conlon are
a string of other professors: an elderly guy with a monotonic voice who will be teaching us biochemistry, a wild-haired female epidemiology professor, and a short dapper man who will be jointly teaching physiology and histology. Lastly, a thin forty-ish woman wearing a sharp blue dress suit steps up to the podium.

“My name is Dr. Patrice Winters,” she says.
“But you can call me Patrice. I’ve been acting as the school’s wellness counselor for the last two years.”

Have you ever met a person who you just disliked instantly?
For me, that’s Patrice. I don’t know what it is about her exactly. Maybe it’s the way her make-up is applied so perfectly and not even a single hair in her pixie cut is out of place. Maybe it’s the way she talks to us, like we’re a bunch of children who need to be told what to do. Maybe it’s her voice, which somehow grates on my very soul.

“Whatever happens to you,” she says,
“I’m here for you. My doors are always open. No matter what’s going on in your life, I want to be there for you. Just think of me as a big sister.”

Rachel leans in toward me now and whispers, “You know why they hired her, don’t you?”

I’m afraid to hear the answer to this one. “Why?”

“They don’t want any more of us offing ourselves,” she says.
She shrugs. “It doesn’t seem to matter though. Every year for the last six years, someone has done it.” She hesitates, then adds, “Well, except for last year.”

I stare at Rachel.
“So… last year was okay?”

Rachel inhales sharply
, shaking her head like she can’t believe anyone could be so clueless. “You really don’t know, do you?”

I shake my head.

“Last year there were two of them,” she says. “A murder-suicide.” She fashions her thumb and forefinger into a mock gun, aims it at me, then aims it at her temple. “Boom, boom,” she says.

_____

Rachel is messing with me—she has to be.

If Southside had a student die every single year, it would be big news. A murder-suicide would be even bigger news. I’d definitely know about it. It wouldn’t be possible not to know about it.

Of course, my boyfriend Seth always teases me about how oblivious I am.
Maybe Rachel’s telling the truth.

As I wait on
the slow-moving cafeteria line to get lunch during our break from orientation, I pull out my phone to do a quick internet search. It should be easy enough to verify Rachel’s story. And then I can put my mind at ease. Or else start to panic. One or the other.

Unfortunately, the connection is horrible in here, and my phone is complaining that it can’t access the internet.
I’m debating if I should move closer to a window when I feel a horrible weight land on my foot, crushing the delicate bones that Dr. Conlon has not yet had a chance to teach me about. I gasp in pain and my phone crashes to the floor as I instinctively grab at my foot.

What the hell
was
that?

That’s when I notice a
frightening bear-like creature looming over me. Actually, it turns out to be a human being, but he’s roughly the size of a bear. The foot that he used to crush mine with is practically the size of a tennis racket. This guy is big in all directions.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” the bear cries.
“Are you all right?”

No, I am
not
all right. My goddamn foot is broken, you stupid bear. Well, maybe not broken. But definitely badly bruised.

Still, I manage to nod, and look up at his face, which is nowhere near as scary as the rest of him.
The bear has a shock of red hair that’s disheveled despite being very short, and freckles pouring over either end of the bridge of his nose.

“I’m really sorry,” the bear says again.
He rescues my phone from the floor and hands it to me gingerly. It seems to be intact, thank God. “I didn’t realize anyone was behind me.” He hesitates. “I’m Abe.”

“Heather,” I say.
I release my broken foot just long enough to grab his outstretched hand. Thankfully, he doesn’t crush my hand in his when he shakes it. I hate it when men do that, and it’s pretty clear Abe could easily demolish my hand if he got the inclination to do so.

“You’re a first year?” he asks.

No, I just hang out at med school orientations for kicks.

“Yep,” I say.

“Neat,” Abe says, then appears to have run out of things to say. He rubs his gigantic hands together, clears his throat, and awkwardly turns back to the lunch line to examine his food options. It’s going to be either arroz con pollo or fish. And the fish is scary looking. So chicken and rice it is.

_____

Somehow I end up at the worst lunch table ever.
I’d prefer to be eating by myself, but apparently being in med school is like reverting to high school, and as I walk off the line with my plate of food, I suddenly grow desperately afraid of being the loser who has to eat all alone. So I grudgingly join Rachel at a circular table, along with an intense-looking boy with big protruding eyes, and an owlish Asian girl. As I sit down, I see a shadow fall over me and I discover that the bear has trailed me to my seat. Clearly, he’s smarter than the average bear.

“Can I join you?” Abe asks, hovering over me, clearly
uncertain if I’m too polite to refuse.

I nod, and everyone has to shove over to allow
a large gap of space for this giant person. Once we’re seated, the intense boy introduces himself as Glenn and the owlish girl says her name is Lauren.

“That looks disgusting,” Rachel says
, eying my plate of dried out chicken coated with a layer of yellow rice.

It sort of does.
But I don’t think it’s any worse than Rachel’s own plate of uncooked carrots, cucumber, bean sprouts, and a weird-smelling white sauce. Abe (who has chosen both the chicken
and
the fish for lunch) seems to agree, because he stares at her food in absolute horror.

“Is that your whole lunch?”
he says.

Rachel juts out her chin.
“Yes. I am a vegan.”

Abe blinks.
“Is that like a vegetarian?”

Before Rachel can answer, Glenn says, “No, it’s some weird religious thing.”

Rachel rolls her eyes. “
No
. It means I don’t eat any food items that come from animals.”

Abe still appears baffled.
“You mean, like, their fur?”

I can’t help it—I start giggling into my palms.
It’s nice that for once, I’m not the object of Rachel’s wrath.

“No,” Rachel says, her voice low and angry.
“Like, I don’t eat dairy or meat.”

“Wow,” Abe breathes.
“You mean you don’t eat eggs?”

Rachel shakes her head.

“What about butter?” he presses her.

“No.”

“Ice cream?”

“No.”

“Cheese?”

“No.”

Abe bites his lip. “Cream cheese?”

“
No
.”

Abe is shaking his head, looking mildly traumatized.
I have to say, I’m with Abe on this one. I don’t think I could live without cream cheese or ice cream.

I grab my phone from my purse, and surreptitiously check if Seth has sent me any text messages.
He’s starting his first day of med school today too, and we promised to keep in contact. I sent him a couple of texts first thing in the morning, but I haven’t heard a thing from him so far. But I’m sure he’s getting around to it—he’s just busy.