Take Your Medecine

by Arianna Hart

  Jared laughed, “I was thinking it was great, that I’d never want to leave if I lived here.”

  “Really? You don’t strike me as the nature boy type.”

  “I’m not, but I like to be alone. I’m not too big on crowds. I like the trees, the view of the mountains.”

  “I guess they’re okay. I like living in the ‘burbs, I’d never make it in the city, that’s for sure. I don’t know if I could survive out here for long either though. I like living in my condo, I enjoy seeing other people, knowing if I get lonely I can just go out the door to see someone. I value my privacy, but I get pretty sick of my own company after a while.”

  “You didn’t seem the social butterfly to me,” Jared said.

  “I’m not really. I like to spend time with Samara, I like to interact with my patients, I like to go out for dinner every once in a while. I like to keep busy, I was wracking my brains trying to figure out what I was going to do with all my vacation time when you fell out of my car.”

  “I guess it’s a good thing I came along, I would hate to have you be bored.”

  “Now don’t get huffy. I just didn’t have any projects going that needed my attention. My brother is away for the summer and didn’t want me to visit and cramp his style, and I didn’t have any vacation plans. I couldn’t imagine spending three weeks with nothing concrete to do. It was just fortunate for you that you happened to get shot right before my vacation, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to coddle you like this.”

  “Must have been my lucky day to get shot when you had the time to treat me.”

  “It sure was. Now, why don’t we take a little walk through these woods? I want you to take it easy, but I think you should keep moving and build up your strength. It’s been a week, I should be able to take the staples out tomorrow.”

  “That would be good. They are starting to itch. Can’t we take them out today? I’m much better you know. It doesn’t hurt that much to move anymore.”

  “We’ll see, now get up because we’re going for a walk down the driveway and back.”

  Jared was surprised at how cautious Macayla was being; it was just a walk down the dirt driveway and back. By the time Jared got back to the house, he felt like he had climbed Mount Everest. He couldn’t believe how tired he was from just a little walk. He was ready to concede that maybe this time he wouldn’t be able to bounce back so easily. He must me getting old.

  “Well champ, how are you feeling?” Macayla asked trying to hide her grin.

  “How do you know so much about recovery? You deal with pregnant women!” Jared said to Macayla as she gave him some water and helped him to lie down on the couch.

  “Pregnant women have to recover too you know.”

  “Not from gun shot wounds.”

  “No, but women who have caesarian sections have major surgery and need more recovery time than your puny wound.”

  “I guess I never thought of that before. I just figured women have been having babies for hundreds of years, it couldn’t be that complicated.”

  “Fine, I’ll let you tell my next patient that.”

  “Don’t get testy, I’m beginning to have more empathy for anyone who feels like this for weeks and has to take care of newborn at the same time. I had Caitlyn for one night when she was four weeks old and she wore me out.”

  “They can do that, and Caitlyn was a good baby. You should see the ones with colic.”

  “No thanks, I’ll pass.”

  “Coward.”

  “You betcha,” Jared agreed

  Macayla laughed and went into the kitchen to start lunch. Jared would be hungry after his walk. She put on some beef stew and warmed up the biscuits from last night. If he was still hungry he could make a sandwich for himself; she was a doctor, not a maid.

  “Lunch will be ready in a few minutes,” Macayla said as she walked into the living room. Jared was sound asleep on the couch. Macayla smiled and laid a knit afghan over him. She decided she would wait until he woke up to have lunch with him; she wasn’t very hungry right now.

  She grabbed an apple and headed out the door. She wanted to explore the woods around them in greater detail now that the temperature had warmed up some. She walked back down the driveway and headed for the trail she had seen when she made the trip with Jared. Heading down it, she marveled at the bits of snow still hidden in clumps beneath the trees.

  She was considering the differences between southern and northern New England when she started to recognize the sounds of civilization. She heard people laughing, children playing, and pans clanking. She must have stumbled onto the trailer park Jared had told her about. She had only come maybe two miles from the house; she hadn’t realized it was so close. She couldn’t believe the resentment she felt at the intrusion of society into her isolated little world. That was so unlike her. She wasn’t a social whirlwind like some of the nurses she worked with, but neither was she a hermit. It didn’t make sense to resent the presence of other people.

  Well, no one said she had to go any closer to the park. Macayla was turning around and heading back towards the house when she caught sight of a couple fondling each other against a tree not fifteen feet from her. Her black sweater and dark jeans must have made her blend in with her surroundings so the couple didn’t know they had a witness. Macayla was trying to figure out a way to get by them without causing a scene when she picked up on what they were saying.

  “Come on Laura, I know you want it.” The stringy man said as he tried to slip his hand into the opening of the blonde’s shirt. The tight button down shirt was unbuttoned to about the navel; Macayla didn’t think he’d have a hard time missing his goal.

  “Maybe I do, and maybe I don’t Jake. Won’t your wife miss you?” the blonde asked rubbing her thigh against the man’s crotch.

  “Nah, she’s watching the kids at the playground. They won’t be back for hours. Plenty of time for you to live up to all those promises you gave me the other night at the dance.”

  “Oh you mean this,” the woman said as she unbuttoned the rest of her shirt and pushed her breasts out of the bra for the man to feast his eyes on. “And this,” she said as she unzipped his pants and played with his manhood.

  Macayla was frozen with mortification. She was horrified at what she was seeing, and didn’t know what to do. Here was a married man grabbing some woman’s breasts as she played with his penis.

  She was still in shock when the blonde turned her back on the man and pulled her skimpy skirt up to reveal her lack of underwear. In front of Macayla’s stunned eyes the blonde pressed her butt into his midsection. With a few adjustments, the man began pumping away at the mostly naked female.

  Macayla couldn’t believe what she was seeing, but didn’t want to see anymore. As carefully as she could, she snuck down the path and fled the scene of the adulterous couple.

  She was still fuming about it when she stomped into the house, and slammed the door.

  Jared, who was still napping on the couch, jumped up and was looked prepared for an attack when she stormed through the living room.

  “Creep! Brazen hussy! Two-timing slime-ball!” Macayla was stomping around the room looking for something to take her temper out on.

  “I’ll own up to creep, but there is no way I’ll accept brazen hussy or two-timing slime-ball. What did I do now?” Jared asked obviously confused.

  “What? Oh you, you didn’t do anything. It was that fake blonde, bare-chested, tramp that was on the path to the trailer park with her stringy, two-timing, low-life scum-bag that I’m mad about.”

  “Slow down, tell me what happened.”

  “I was going for an innocent walk in the woods so I could let you get some sleep. I took the path near the mailbox that I saw earlier with you. The path led straight to the trailer park.”

  “Probably because of the little convenience store they have there. It would be much more convenient than driving into town when you needed some milk.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, whe
n I realized it led to the trailer park, I started to turn back, I wasn’t in the mood for company. Well apparently neither where the two low-lifes I ran into on the way back. I turned around, and there they were, plain as day, fornicating in the woods! And he’s telling her not to worry about getting caught because his wife is with the kids at the playground! Of all the disgusting displays of human behavior, this had to have been one of the worst.”

  “Really, what did you do? Man, a guy takes a nap and look what he misses.”

  “Well, when I finally got my wits together I crept away, like I was the one who was doing something wrong. People like that make me sick. There they are, banging away at each other, and his wife is barely two hundred yards away. And you know what, even if they got caught, no one would even tell the wife. Everyone would be talking behind her back, but the only way she’d ever find out that she could be exposed to disease is if someone let something slip accidentally.”

  “You sound like you have some first hand experience with this.”

  “I have all sorts of experience with two-timing jerks. Not only in my practice do I see women who have been married for years suddenly finding themselves with a sexually transmitted disease, I almost married a cheating bastard eight years ago.”

  “You would have only been twenty years old, you were engaged?”

  “If you could call it that. I’m sure you don’t want to hear all the gory details.”

  “On the contrary, I’d like to hear everything.” Jared had a very stubborn look on his face. Macayla couldn’t figure out why he would want to hear the ancient history of her disastrous love life, but she knew that look; he wasn’t going to budge an inch until she told him everything he wanted to hear.

  “Fine, you asked for it. I went to college when I was barely seventeen years old. I was somewhat shy, I was always ahead of my class, so I didn’t really know anyone my age, and the ones I did tended to be intimidated by the fact I was a grade or two above them. I didn’t have a whole lot of social skills. Anyway, I went away to college, my mom wanted me to get the full college experience. She wanted me to join clubs and make friends and go out. She didn’t go to college, and she had this picture that it was like a slumber party with classes, she thought it would be good for me.”

  She paused to gather her thoughts.

  “It was awful. I’m short to begin with, I was a late bloomer developmentally, and I didn’t know how to make friends with people two and three years older than me. I was overwhelmed in classes by the talk of sex, it seemed like no matter what class I took, the discussions always led to sex. I didn’t know how to handle it. I pretty much immersed myself in my studies; I would stay at the library for hours to avoid my roommate who had revolving bedmates. When the library closed, the librarian insisted that I have a security guard walk me back to the dorm. Joe was usually on that shift and walked me back most nights. He was twenty-two years old, a former Marine; he was only doing campus security until he could get into the police academy. He was fascinated that my dad was a Fed. He was tall and good-looking, and he paid attention to me without overwhelming me.”

  She stopped again, now came the hard part. The part where she had to admit what a naïve idiot she was.

  “I think I see where this is heading, but go on,” Jared said, staring at her intently.

  “When he asked me out for coffee, I accepted, and we progressed from there. I didn’t know he had only been in the Marines for four months, and was discharged for ‘Medical Reasons’. Nor did I know that he purposely took the night shift knowing I’d be at the library and would need an escort back home. When I did find that out, it seemed very romantic to me. I didn’t see anything wrong with it. After my freshman year, I couldn’t wait to get back to school I missed him so much. We hadn’t done anything yet, I was only seventeen, and I think he was afraid of getting slapped with a statutory rape charge. Over the summer he had gotten fired from his job on campus for harassing a student. He said it was a set up by a girl who he turned down. I was fool enough to believe him. I had gotten a small apartment off campus; I told my mother it was so I could concentrate without all the noise in the dorm bothering me. It was really so I could be with Joe, he was banned from campus. He would sleep in my apartment while I was in classes, usually sleeping off a hangover, then would eat whatever I had in the place and complain that I didn’t give him enough attention. It bothered him that I had so many classes and that I spent so much time studying. When I would defend myself he would storm out of the apartment, and I would be left crying over him until he came back and I apologized to him.”

  “Apologized for what?”

  “Good question. I never knew. I just knew I didn’t want him to leave me. He was the focus of my life, well, he never got above school, but I didn’t do anything outside of class without him. I was never allowed to go anywhere without him. If I was late coming home from a class he would grill me about where I was, accuse me of cheating on him with some ‘college boy’. If I dared to defend myself he would get mad. If he was drinking, he would get crazy.”

  “Did he hit you?”

  “Not right away. I think if he had hit me in the beginning I would have left him, no matter what I felt for him. By the time the hitting started we had been together for two years, I had lost my virginity to him, we were talking about getting married. I felt like I invested so much time in him, I didn’t want to be wrong. I thought he would change. It’s the typical story. He isolated me from everyone who cared about me, making sure he was the only one near me, he demeaned me, mentally abused me, until the hitting was easier than the psychological abuse I had been dealing with for years. At least when he hit me, it was over with for a little while. He would always be repentant for a while. It was the only time I ever got flowers. Of course, it was always my fault, if I had just listened to him, been better in bed, gone shopping, wasn’t so smart mouthed. It didn’t matter the reason; I was always wrong, and he had to hit me.”

  “How did you get out of it? I know that many women don’t get out of abusive relationships easily.”

  “It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. We would break up from time to time, but I always went back. Even when I caught him sleeping with some tramp in my bed, in my apartment, that he was living in for free! I can’t believe how stupid I was!”

  “You were young and naïve, you weren’t stupid, and he took advantage of that.”

  “It amounts to the same thing. Well, to cut to the chase, I graduated a year a head of schedule, I was in the top of my class, and I received an award at my graduation. My mother was there, my brother was there, half my childhood neighborhood was there, but Joe wasn’t. He didn’t want to come to see me. That’s when I knew I didn’t mean squat to him. I went home and never called him again. The way we ended it was almost anticlimactic, we agreed to return each other’s stuff. I was moving out of the apartment anyway, so that was easy. We never had anything in joint accounts, at least I wasn’t that stupid. He had another poor idiot girl ready and waiting for him, so he didn’t care that I left. I was depressed, but ready to move on, then my mother got sick and there was Kevin to think about, medical school, bills to pay. I just didn’t have the time or the energy to think about him anymore.”

  “Did you ever hear from him again?”

  “He called once when I was doing my residency, looking to ‘talk’. I turned him down flat. He swore at me and said that I thought I was too good for him now that I was a big shot doctor. I agreed with him and hung up the phone. The next time he called it was to tell me I had better meet with him because he had some pictures I might be interested in seeing again. And if I wasn’t interested in seeing them, he was sure someone would be.”

  “What type of pictures?”

  “Oh, stupid pictures. You know, pictures of me in my underwear, dumb things you do when you are young and in love. I never thought those pictures would come back to haunt me, I had forgotten all about them actually.”

  “So what did you do?”


  Macayla could tell Jared was pissed off. There was practically steam coming out of his ears. He was very controlled about it, but she wasn’t fooled.

  “I told him I didn’t care if he blew them up and put them on billboards, I never wanted to see him again, and if a little humiliation was the price I had to pay to keep him out of my life, well that was fine with me. Then I told my supervisor about it. Luckily for me my supervisor was a woman who understood being young and foolish. When she got a package in the mail, she handed them to me without even looking at them, and that was the end of the story. For all I know he could have tried to publish them, but I figure most places won’t publish pictures like those without a disclaimer.”

  “Well there are plenty of places that don’t care about the legalities of things like that you know!” Jared shouted at her.

  “There is no need to get so upset about this Jared. I haven’t seen him in eight years, the pictures were a last ditch effort to get either money or another free ride, when it didn’t work, he left me alone. I hope I never see him again, and if I do, I know I can kick his butt. He’ll never use me for a punching bag again, nor will I ever let anyone use me as a doormat ever again. If nothing else, that relationship taught me how to stand up for myself. I’ll never go back to that insecure, non-confrontational, little wimp again. I am not afraid to argue with someone anymore.”

  “I’ll say. You know, I never would have believed you would let someone like that ruin your life, and continue to ruin it years later.”

  “What are you talking about? He isn’t ruining my life, I have a great life.”

  “When was the last time you went on a date?”

  “Three weeks ago.” Macayla said triumphantly. It was a hospital function, but she did go with one of the anesthesiologists from the practice next door.

  “And when was the last time you had sex?” Jared asked.

  “I don’t see as that’s any of your business,” Macayla said defensively.