Unethical (5 page)

She looked up from the movie, and her brows pressed together as she surveyed my face. “Everything all right?”

“I think I’m coming down with something. Can I take a rain check for tonight?”

What was wrong with me? Passing up a date with a sweet, attractive girl, and for what?

Nothing.

Chapter Five

Payton

Twenty-four hours had passed since the crappiest day of my Drexler University history, and I was still stewing about Jules’s date. Only two things could give me a much-needed mood boost—coffee and chocolate. Four blocks from my apartment was this cute little coffee shop, Coffee Addicts Anonymous, with mismatched furniture and indie rock music. Best friend dating my ex? Might as well gorge myself into a caffeine coma.

I made my way down the street, the crisp October air caressing my face. Coffee Addicts Anonymous came into view, the Victorian style building sticking out between two newly built law offices.

A bell dinged as I entered the shop.

The smiling barista with glossy chestnut curls looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t remember from where. Her chocolate-chip brown eyes assessed me, probably thinking the same. Except she had a better memory.

“Payton Cooper. It’s been forever.” I cringed at her use of my father’s last name and recognized her high-pitched voice immediately. Suzie Crawford. All-American athlete from my high school. We hung out during cross-country practice and creative writing, but she had been way too busy with her millions of sports to hang out with anyone outside of school.

“Hey, Suzie. How’ve you been?”

“Oh, good. You know, trying to pay my way through college.” She motioned at her surroundings, which included a tip jar filled with a few dollar bills and some loose change. “I only got a partial scholarship for track.”

“I know what you mean. I had to come back here because my scholarship ran out in Florida. Too expensive for out-of-state tuition.”

“No doubt. How’s your dad?” Her question had the same nonchalance any seasoned barista would use to ask a customer what flavor they wanted in their latte. No big deal.

My breath hitched. I expected this question to pop up some time or another, but it still caught me off guard. “Fine.”

I didn’t
really
know how Dad was doing. I hadn’t seen him in two years. I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing him; not after what he did to my mom. The last I saw him, he was handcuffed, being shoved into a patrol car. He’d mouthed “I’m sorry,” and then he was gone.

“He was always so nice. I was hoping he’d be released soon.”

Not me. Let him rot in jail. I swallowed past the hard lump in my throat and pushed back the tears that threatened to make an appearance.

Along with playing God with people’s lives, my dad had coached track. He’d specialized in long distance running and hurdles. Neither of those skills made up for being a murdering asshole, though. The trial had to be coming up sometime soon, the letters from his lawyer becoming more frequent. I hadn’t bothered to open them, though. I didn’t want anything to do with that man.

“Yep.” My lips made a popping sound when I enunciated the
p
.

She gave a stiff smile, her hands poised on the cash register. “What’ll it be?”

I rattled off my order of a non-fat, two pump vanilla latte and sat in the corner of the shop, hidden from the register. No amount of chocolate-covered coffee beans could save this day from the downward spiral.

How could I live here when I kept running into the people I wanted to avoid? Stupid scholarships. It was almost worth the mountain of debt to go back to Florida and live in peace. As long as I could keep my dad a secret until I got accepted into med school, I’d survive. No one would take me seriously otherwise.

Jules strolled into the coffee shop as I slurped down half my latte. She had her hair pulled back into a high ponytail that stretched the skin on her forehead taut. Her caked-on makeup gave her face an airbrushed quality, and I barely noticed the little patch of acne on her chin that she had complained about this morning.

Every ounce of me wanted to be pissed at her, to stomp my feet, sneak lard into her food, and maybe stick her toothbrush in the toilet a few times—but I couldn’t. She’d been nothing but nice to me, and she had no clue that Blake and I had a thing—a thing where I thought we were going to get married and spend the rest of our lives together.
Yeah, that thing.

Stupid me.

“Hey, bitch.” She dropped her bag onto the chair next to mine and gave me a hug.

“Hey, skank.” It was like we had been friends for two years, not a couple months. Something about her just made me feel comfortable. When I’d answered her Craigslist ad for a roommate in July and found out she was also a junior focusing on pre-med, it was meant to be.

“Did you bring your organic chemistry book? I’m totally freaking out about the test next week.”

“Yeah.” I pulled the book out of my bag. Jules took it and snagged a chocolate-covered coffee bean off the table. She plopped it in her mouth and gave me one of those innocent grins that my little cousin always gave to get out of trouble.

“How was the library? Meet any hotties there?” She waggled her eyebrows and flipped through the textbook, opening it to the chapter that’d been assigned to help review for our test.

I so didn’t want to talk about yesterday. I pretty much pouted the whole time and barely got any studying done. Not even chemical equations could take my mind off of the possibility of Blake and Jules shacking up.

“It was okay. Went home early. Wasn’t feeling well.”

She nodded. “Right there with you. I was holding in a fart the whole time I was with Blake. So horrible.”

I snorted—
God, I needed to work on that
—and took a sip of my latte. Her shameless honesty just made me love her even more. Damn her. Why did she have to be so nice? It made being mad at her that much harder.

“I don’t think he noticed. He seemed really distracted. Anyway…” She chewed on her bottom lip and looked at something above my head, spacing out into the distance. She shook her head, and her eyes came back into focus. “Did you hear about that new junior internship position at the hospital? Whoever gets it will be working with all of the doctors on the admissions board for the med school here.”

I stopped mid chew and gaped. The half-chewed coffee bean teetered on the edge of my lip, and I maneuvered it back into my mouth and swallowed. “No, I didn’t. Are you applying?”

“I don’t have time. But I figured I’d let you know just in case you wanted to.”

“How’d you find out about this?”

“Blake told me. He’s applying for it. It closes in a few days, and they’ll decide in a couple weeks.”

Just what I needed. Meeting the doctors on the admissions board would give me a better shot at getting into the program. Unless I totally bombed the MCAT, I could safely assume I’d be admitted to other med schools, but Drexler was by far my top choice and the cheapest on the west coast. Blake was applying, too? No. Big. Deal.

Move over, Mr. Tequila. I’m getting this damn internship if it kills me.

I cringed as my application slid into the box that hung on the wall next to Dr. Centafont’s office door. The white packet disappeared into the black void of the box. So final.

The skin on the back of my neck prickled as I tried to remember if I put my name on the application, the same self-doubt that plagued me when I sent a check in the mail. I always second-guessed whether I signed and dated it, and many envelopes fell victim as a result.

And now came the worst part of all. The waiting game. I had the patience of a coupon clipper elbowing people to get to the sock bin on Black Friday. I’d need to stock up on chocolate-covered coffee beans from the bulk-food section at the supermarket in order to make it through these next two weeks.

Taking a deep breath, I turned away from Dr. Centafont’s office and walked down the hallway toward the main entrance of Keller. Students milled about, waiting for the eight a.m. lecture to dismiss.

I glanced at my phone. Since I had ten minutes to spare before class, I made my way to the Starbucks cart in the Memorial Union right across the street.

With a non-fat vanilla latte in tow, I trudged back up the steps of Keller and entered the main floor lecture hall. My breath caught as I glanced at the projector screen.

Seeing my dad blown up on the big screen never lost its shock value. He wore a blue suit with a black tie and sat at what I assumed to be the witness stand. I wasn’t there for the initial hearing to determine bail—which he didn’t get. I couldn’t handle seeing my world shattered into any more tiny pieces. Instead, I’d hidden out in Florida, ignoring his calls and deleting his voicemails, until finally he stopped calling.

Famous Doctors in History: When they take it too far
blazed in bold black letters underneath my dad’s picture.

I stood in the middle of the aisle, frozen. People passed around me, and I finally snapped out of my daze when a guy bumped me with his shoulder. My whole body prickled, and bile rose in my throat. No. I could not blow chunks in class. I had to suck it up and be the better person. I wasn’t a murderer; he was.

Why was Dr. Centafont so hung up on my dad? Sure, he was the most recent doctor to cross the ethical line, but there were tons of other doctors who’d done some pretty sketchy shit in the past. This seemed almost personal, but as far as I knew, Dr. Centafont didn’t know my dad.

I did my yoga breathing as I walked down the aisle and shimmied past Blake, Jules, and Andrew’s legs to get to my seat.

An audible groan escaped my lips as I tossed my backpack onto the ground. It hit the seat in front of me, and the girl occupying it turned and glared.

“Sorry.”

Her lip curled into an unattractive sneer. “Whatever.” She flipped her hair and turned back around. I made a face at her, because I was super mature like that, and dug my spiral out of my notebook.

I took my newly appointed permanent seat next to Andrew and let out a loud sigh.

He smiled, and a few of the knots in my stomach loosened. “How are you?”

“Great.” I plastered on a smile that I was sure screamed Ted Bundy and Jack the Ripper all rolled into one. I opened a fresh sheet of paper in my spiral, wrote the date at the top of the page, and waited for my impending doom. Okay, so I was being a tad bit dramatic, but this was justified, him being my father and all.

“Today we are going to have a discussion on doctors who have pushed the ethical limits.” Dr. Centafont motioned to the screen. “As you see, some can take it too far, but is it ever okay to stray from the societal norm to help a patient?” His words were innocent enough, but the tone in which he addressed the class made it apparent there was only one correct answer to this question. Definitely not the answer my father chose when he was faced with this decision.

A person in the front row coughed. Three girls shifted in their chairs, and the girl who turned around when I bumped her seat earlier adjusted her ponytail. I scowled at her again for good measure.

The skin on my scalp tingled, and an annoying ring resonated in my ears as my flight impulse shot into uncharted territory. Without any brown paper bags conveniently laying around to hyperventilate into, I chugged my piping hot latte. The liquid scorched a trail from my tongue and cooled down somewhere between my esophagus and small intestine. Even though my singed taste buds protested, I kept drinking, needing something to keep me from having a total meltdown in front of the whole class.

It took a full minute of Dr. Centafont staring down the class for the first brave soul to raise her hand. He pointed to the girl and motioned for her to speak.

“I think, in some cases, straying from the norm can be a good thing. But in terms of Dr. Cooper’s use of assisted suicide, no.” It was a girl who, from day one, asked a ton of questions, always interrupting the flow of Dr. Centafont’s lecture. Why did she have to bring up my dad? There were tons of other effed up doctors—ones whom I didn’t share DNA with.

Deep-seeded resentment of everything pertaining to this class and my father gurgled in my stomach—or that might have been the latte I had just guzzled. Her nasally voice echoed in the auditorium, and I gripped both of my armrests to combat the urge to chuck my empty coffee cup at her.

Dr. Centafont rubbed his chin, and the muscles in his jaw flexed. “Why do you say that?”

“Well.” Her response was more hesitant this time. “I don’t think anyone should be able to end someone else’s life if they don’t have to.”

Great.
Another person joining the Dr. Cooper, Spawn of Satan camp.

The old leather cushion creaked as I slid down in my seat. I grabbed my phone and pulled up a social media app. No way could I listen to this debate, not when it involved both of my parents. I scribbled jagged lines down the left column of my paper as I scrolled through people’s party photos and status updates.

“Very good.” You could almost hear the purr in his voice as he praised her.

Blake didn’t bother to raise his hand. “What if someone’s in a lot of pain? Like terminal cancer or something. I think that’s justifiable. Better for the whole family.”

Every muscle in my body tensed.

He did not just go there. The blood coursing through my veins seared every nerve ending, and my emotional stability took a nosedive. I didn’t even notice the pencil in my hand until it snapped in half and dropped to the ground. I looked down, focusing on the yellow dust embedded in my skin. A piece of lead stuck out of the middle of my palm. This should hurt, right? But it was numb compared to the gaping hole where my heart used to be.

I shifted in my seat and glared at him, three seats to my right. He turned his head, and his lips carved into a frown.

Oh, heck no. Did he—yes, he felt bad for me.

Did he really think he could make up for his shit by sticking up for my dad? He didn’t know how wrong he was. How wrong my dad was for taking my mother’s life.

He should have thought about that when he ditched me for Ryan when I needed him most. At least then we’d be on the same page.

I squelched the impulse to yell this at him, seeing as that might be a little awkward in front of forty other people, but I sent mental morning stars flying his way.

“I don’t know about that,” Nasally Voice Girl chimed in. “What if the family doesn’t get closure from this? They might regret this decision later.”