Suicide Med

by Freida McFadden

  “So you’re having a fight?”

  “No, it’s over,” I assure her. “I did something… pretty unforgivable.”

  “You cheated on him,” Ginny says, nodding with understanding.

  “No, it’s not that…”

  And that’s when I realize something:

  I didn’t do anything wrong.

  Okay, technically, I did. I stole an exam. But I did it for honorable reasons. The worst thing I’ve done is that I wasn’t honest with Matt about why I did what I did. He deserves to know the truth before he decides to dump me. Honestly, I owe it to him.

  “Ginny,” I say. “I have to run out for a few minutes. Can you watch my stuff?”

  Ginny looks confused but nods in approval. I leave behind my books and coat, and I run out of the library. I hurry up the stairs, past the anatomy labs, over the Matt’s office. It’s dumb, because of course, he’ll never be here. But I have to try.

  Just as I get to Matt’s office, I see the door opening and the prongs of his cane peeking out. I race over then pause doubled over, trying to catch my breath.

  “Matt,” I gasp.

  He looks up at me. There’s no affection in his blue eyes.

  “What is it, Rachel? I’ve been stuck here all night rewriting the exam.”

  Well, at least he seems more angry than hurt right now.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I ask.

  “There’s nothing to say,” he mutters.

  “Please.”

  Finally, he nods. He backs up to give me room to enter. He gestures toward the seat and I sat down, while he plops down in his own chair. He crosses his arms and glares across the desk at me.

  I had been working on a brave little speech as I ran over here. Something about how I gave in to the blackmailer to save his career and only did it because I care about him so much, and if he couldn’t understand that, then maybe we weren’t meant to be together. But he keeps looking at me with that hurt and angry expression, and the second I open my mouth to speak, everything I planned to say suddenly flies out of my head.

  And then I’m crying. Huge, ugly tears are gushing down my cheeks. My shoulders start shaking with wracking sobs. I don’t think I’ve ever cried so hard in my whole goddamn life. I wipe my eyes, trying to keep up with the rapid flow of tears, but I can’t.

  “Rachel,” I hear him saying, “Rachel, please stop crying…”

  “I… I can’t!” I sob. “I miss you.” I sniffle and hiccup. “I know you don’t believe me, but I only stole that exam because someone was going to tell on us.”

  He frowns. “What are you talking about?”

  “I got a note,” I say. I wish I’d brought the note. Oh well. “It said that if I didn’t put the exam in Locker 282, everyone would find out about the two of us. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he mutters.

  “It’s true!”

  He’s quiet for a minute. The only sounds in the room are the whir of the heater and my persistent sobs. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to stop. They’ll put me in the Guinness Book of World Records for crying.

  Finally, I hear him sigh loudly. “I don’t know what to believe anymore…”

  I look up at him and wipe my eyes. “It’s true,” I insist again, trying to keep my voice from shaking. “I swear it’s true. I swear on my life.”

  Finally, Matt stands up and hobbles around the desk. He touches my shoulder gently and I look up at him. I feel really unattractive with my swollen eyes and runny nose.

  “Look, Rachel,” he says, “I do believe you, but… it doesn’t really matter. We’re wrong for each other. For starters, I’m your professor and I’m also a lot older than you. Maybe we had some fun together, but that’s it.”

  “It was a lot more than that for me,” I whisper.

  Matt pulls a tissue from a box on his desk and gently wipes my cheeks. The gesture is so tender that I start to cry harder.

  “Yeah,” he says, “it was more than that for me too.”

  It probably can’t ever “work out” with Matt, but I don’t care anymore. I just want to be with him right now—that’s all that matters. I stand up and fall into his arms, and he clings to me like he’s missed me as much as I missed him. When we kiss, I feel like I can’t bear to ever be apart from him again.

  “Matt,” I murmur, “I do love you. I really do.”

  “I love you too, Rach,” he says, and I gasp as his mouth settled on the connection between my neck and my shoulder.

  That’s when we hear a knock at the door.

  “Shit,” Matt mutters. He looks at the door, willing the person to go away. No such luck—there’s a second, more urgent knock. “Shit,” he says again. Then louder, “Who’s there?”

  “It’s Mason Howard.”

  Mason? What the hell is he doing here in the middle of the night on a Saturday?

  “I’ll get rid of him,” Matt promises. He runs his hand through his short black hair to comb it out slightly. “Although it probably wouldn’t look too good for you to be seen here, huh?” He glances around his office, “Do you think you can make yourself out of sight for a few minutes?”

  I scan the room.

  “The desk,” I say. I approach Matt’s large mahogany desk and lower myself onto my knees. My body fits perfectly into the nook underneath the desk and I’m completely undetectable. Well, as long as nobody’s looking for me.

  The floor of Matt’s office is cold and hard, tiled with off-white squares. Many of the other offices have carpeting, but Matt told me he’s worried about snagging his foot. I feel the bones of my hips digging uncomfortably into the floor as I hear Matt opening the door for Mason. I shift, hoping Matt will get rid of him quickly.

  The door slams closed and Matt slides into his chair, being careful not to ram into me in my hiding place. I strain to listen, but the desk is somehow filtering out the sounds. I can only make out hushed voices. I’m only able to clearly hear one sentence, spoken by Mason.

  “Is that the excuse you’re using?”

  Oh my God. Is Mason the blackmailer? He really doesn’t seem like the type, although he’s certainly very competitive. I mean, it’s definitely not out of the realm of possibility. And God knows, he’s been acting weird lately.

  I perk my ears up, trying to hear what’s going on through the thick wood of the desk, when I hear a fist slam into the desk above me. I nearly jump out of my skin and I hug my knees to my chest. What the hell is going on up there?

  I tug on Matt’s pants, but he doesn’t acknowledge me. I have no idea what to do. I want to come out, but that would look really suspicious. It’s bad enough I’m in Matt’s office late on a Saturday night, but I don’t think I could possibly explain why I’d be hiding under the desk. I can’t. If I come out, we’re so busted.

  “Tell me how you killed him!”

  I can just barely make out Mason’s words, but that’s what it sounds like. Except that makes no sense. Matt didn’t kill anyone, that I know for a fact. I must have heard him wrong.

  That’s when I hear the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard in my life: a soft click.

  I don’t know what it is. But I’ve never heard anything quite like it and suddenly I know with absolute certainty that there’s something terrible going on in this room.

  I’ve got to come out. Whatever is going on, I’ve got to stop it.

  Except then I see Matt’s left hand underneath the desk. He’s making some kind of sign at me. He’s pointing emphatically at the ground. It’s pretty clear he wants me to stay hidden.

  Okay, one more minute. One more minute and I’m coming out.

  Just when I can’t stand it another second, I hear Matt’s sorrowful voice, loud and clear.

  “I’m really sorry,” he says.

  And then I hear the explosion and Matt’s legs jolt with the impact.

  I have to clamp my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. Even though I’ve never heard a gun go off before
except for in television or the movies, I know instinctively what it is. For some reason, Mason has a gun. And for some reason, he has fired it.

  And now it’s very quiet in the room. It’s so quiet that I can hear my own heart thudding in my chest. And another sound: Mason whimpering. If Matt got shot, wouldn’t he yell? Curse? Something? I tug on Matt’s pants leg, but he ignores me again. I wait for him to gesture at me again, but he doesn’t. And then I see his left hand, hanging limply off the side of the chair.

  Oh no. Oh God…

  “Shut-up!” Mason screams.

  At first I think he must have seen me and is screaming at me, but I know I’m well hidden. For a moment, I delude myself that he’s screaming at Matt, but the silence in the room makes that seem unlikely.

  I want to come out, but something stops me. I remember how fervently Matt had pointed at the ground, signaling to me that I needed to stay hidden. He did that for a reason. I need to stay down here—my life may depend on it.

  So I wait.

  After what seems like an eternity, I hear the door to the office open and the footsteps of someone walking out then shutting the door behind him. Mason is gone, or so it seems. I wait hopefully to hear Matt’s voice, for him to tell me that everything is okay and it’s safe to come out. But it’s getting pretty damn obvious that isn’t going to happen.

  Gingerly, I crawl out from underneath the desk. My knees ache from being bent in that position for so long. I grab the top of the desk to steady myself as I rise to my feet, but my fingers slide right off the surface. The desk is wet. I look at my fingers and see the dark red substance on them.

  That’s when I see Matt slumped forward in his chair, right in front of me. For half a second, I’m able to kid myself that he’s just unconscious. But when I see the blood coming from the back of his head, I know that isn’t the case. I cover my mouth, smearing blood across my lips, trying to keep from passing out.

  I’m still nearly four years away from being a doctor, but it doesn’t take any advanced degree to know that Matt Conlon is dead.

  I bend down in front of his body, and lie my head down on his lap. I cry for the millionth time this week, this time knowing that he won’t be able to comfort me. I reach for his limp hand and hold it in mine. How can it end this way? It isn’t fair…

  As I sob into his slacks, I hear Matt’s voice speaking. But the voice is coming from within my head: What are you doing, Rachel? I tried to save you! Get the hell out of here!

  I lift my head from his lap. It’s true—Matt made an effort in the last few minutes of his life to make sure I stayed hidden. He saved my life. But if Mason comes back, he can still shoot me. I’m sure he’s got more bullets in that gun.

  I’ve got to get out of here.

  I rise to my feet, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. I take one last look at Matt. His head is leaning forward as if he is resting and his arms are hanging off the sides of his chair. His blue eyes are cracked open, staring into nothing. There are only slight flecks of blood on the front of his shirt—the wall behind him has taken most of the brunt. I mouth the words “I love you” then open the door to his office.

  I expect Mason to jump out at me with his gun when I come out of the office, but to my relief the hallway is clear. But my next step isn’t entirely clear to me. I’ve got to find someone to help me, to report what’s been done. And I’ve got to do it before Mason finds me.

  I start heading in the direction of the parking lot, knowing there will be a security guard by the exit. I keep close to the walls, so as not to be seen. As much as I’m terrified of running into Mason, I’m also a little scared of what the security guard will do to me. I just came out of an office where my anatomy professor has been shot. My fingerprints are all over the room, probably in his blood. How in hell am I going to explain what I was doing there?

  Oh God, what if they think I killed him?

  After a few minutes, I round a corner and the vending machines come into sight. And there’s someone standing there, deciding what snack to buy. I wish my problems were as simple as Doritos versus Cheetos. As I near the machines, I realize that the girl is Ginny. Thank God. Ginny looks up at the approaching footsteps and her eyes go wide when she sees me.

  “Oh my God,” she gasps.

  “What?” I say.

  That’s when I look down and realize that my T-shirt is smeared with fresh blood. It’s on my hands and probably on my face as well. I don’t know what to say to the horrified Ginny. What can I possibly say that will explain all this blood? Except for the truth, of course.

  It’s time to come clean. Time to confess to everything that has happened between Matt and me. And I don’t even care anymore. All I can think of is the fact that I loved him and he’s dead. It doesn’t matter who knows about the two of us or if I get kicked out of med school. I loved him. That’s all that matters.

  “Ginny,” I say in a low voice, “something terrible has happened. We have to get help right away.”

  Part 5: Ginny

  Chapter 57

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

  It’s a ridiculous exercise, but I do it anyway. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to check out my classmates, and now I’ve got one. I look around and scope out the competition.

  I’m pretty underwhelmed.

  Everyone talks about how talented and brilliant med students are. Nobody in this room looks particularly talented or brilliant though. For the most part, they look like a bunch of kids. Most of them are dressed in jeans and T-shirts with dumb slogans on them. One girl has the word “sweet” written entirely in glitter across her chest. I’m sure she’s going to be a stellar physician.

  People ask me all the time if I’m still in high school, but I’m actually twenty-six years old, older than most of my classmates. In college, I worked as a waitress to help pay my tuition and then took on a second job as a nanny (for a spoiled three-year-old brat) when Dad got sick and needed help paying bills. You think it’s easy to be pre-med while working two part-time jobs? It isn’t. I ended up having to take a bunch of post-bachelor’s classes just to finish my pre-med requirements.

  I also took care of my father. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease when I was in high school, and he declined pretty fast. Lots of people live for decades with Parkinson’s, but my father wasn’t so lucky. By the time I was in college, he had to give up his job, and I moved back home to help my mother take care of him. It all went on my shoulders.

  Dad hated how much I had to give up for him. I’m his youngest daughter, and he came to this country from Russia in his twenties and worked hard his whole life in minimum wage jobs so I could have every opportunity available to me. He kept saying to me, “Ginny, don’t worry about me. Go become a doctor. I’ll be fine.”

  But he wasn’t fine. Soon after I graduated from college, he started having difficulty swallowing. Shortly after, he developed pneumonia and was admitted to the local hospital. He never came out.

  For a long time after he died, I was angry. At pretty much everyone. I was angry at the doctors that took far too long to diagnose him, even though in retrospect, his tremors were a dead giveaway. I was angry at the hospital that gave him the wrong antibiotics for his aspiration pneumonia, and then talked my mother into withdrawing care when he lay in the ICU.

  And my mother—I don’t even want to get into how angry I was at her.

  But I got over it. My father wanted me to be a great doctor. That was his dream for me. And wherever he is right now, I want him to see me achieve my dream and graduate from medical school. And not just graduate. I intend to be at the very top of my class.

  And honestly, as I look around at my classmates, that goal doesn’t seem too unreasonable.

  _____

  Anatomy is the center of first year. If you ace anatomy, you ace the year.

  One of the key components to acing anatomy is supposedly Dr. Conlon’s book, Anatomy Inside Secrets. That’s what all the upperclassmen t
old me. So early on the morning of orientation, I go to the hospital bookstore to buy myself a copy.

  It seems like a lot of people had the same idea as me. There’s an entire shelf dedicated to Dr. Conlon’s book, and now about half of those copies have been sold. I pick off a fresh copy of the book, flipping through diagrams of the human body, mnemonics, and something called “Conlon’s Law of Finger Flexion,” whatever that is.

  It’s pretty obvious that our professor is a bit of a dork, what with the bowtie and all.

  There are at least a dozen copies left on the shelf, and I’m suddenly seized by the urge to buy them all so that nobody else can have them. Obviously the bookstore would order more copies, but at least this way I’d have a head start for the first lab.

  Of course, I don’t do it. Mostly because this book isn’t cheap and I can’t afford twelve copies. I can barely afford the books I need.

  Instead, I pull out the stack of paperback texts, and load them into my arms. Conlon’s book isn’t that thick, but the stack is fairly heavy. I glance around to make sure nobody’s watching, then I relocate the stack to a little nook behind a life-sized skeleton. For good measure, I toss a Southside Med sweatshirt on top of them.

  I check once more to make sure nobody saw me before I get in line to purchase my copy of Anatomy Inside Secrets. As I hand over my credit card, another student I vaguely recognize enters the store. He sees my purchase and smiles.

  “I’m about to buy the same thing,” he comments.

  “Oh, sorry,” I say regretfully. “I just bought the last copy.”

  _____

  It’s not too hard to shine in anatomy lab when put side by side with my lab partners. For the most part, they’re all disasters. Heather McKinley—a total airhead. It baffles me that she’s here when it took me years to finish my requirements to earn a spot in the class. Abe Kaufman seems intelligent enough, but also appears more focused on Heather than on studying. Rachel Bingham talks big, but I can tell that she’s struggling to master the material. And then there’s Mason Howard.