Suicide Med (28 page)

I’m worried things might be a little awkward after our talk in Matt’s office, but he calls me the next evening, sounding relatively cheerful. Heather is in the room with me, so I press my cell phone tightly against my ear so that there’s no chance of my professor’s voice being overheard. Maybe I’m being paranoid, but I’m pretty sure you can’t be too cautious when you’re screwing the professor.

“Hey,
Rach,” Matt says. “Do you feel like coming over and doing some studying?”

Half the time when he says
that, he means sex. The other half of the time, he actually means studying. I can never tell by his voice which is which.

“Sure,” I
agree.

I
close my anatomy text, get up off my bed, and pull my coat off the chair in front of my desk. Heather raises her light brown eyebrows.

“Where you headed?”
she asks.

“Nowhere,” I
mutter.

“Who
was that on the phone?”

“Nobody…”
I clear my throat. “Just going out to study.”

“Then why aren’t you bringing any books?”

I feel a rush of blood come into my cheeks. “Um, I’m going to, uh…”

“Oh, come on,
Rachel!” Heather gushes, nearly bouncing on her mattress. “Tell me who it is! Please? Is it Johnny Chang? Chris Johnson?”

Yeah right, like I’m going to tell Heather anything when she’s acting like a complete child.
It’s bad enough that Lauren might know. Anyway, it’s not like she’s been honest with
me
.

“Tell me why you broke up with Abe.”

That stops Heather in her tracks. She sighs, “Fine, go have fun with your prince.”

I
take the now familiar ten-mile drive to Matt’s apartment, weaving through the back roads. As I made the final turn on the wooded path to his one-story townhouse, I notice that I’ve started humming the new Rihanna song. Oh great. Matt’s turning me into freaking
Heather
.

I
pull into the driveway and park behind Matt’s car—a large white Lincoln Continental. Considering he’s the youngest professor I’d ever slept with, I find it amusing that he drives a car that looks like it’s owned by an eighty year old. In a lot of ways, Matt acts very much like an old man. It’s something I always tease him about.

Matt yanks
the door open almost before I even have a chance to knock. I can’t help but suppress a smile.

“Happy to see me?”
I ask, closing the door behind me as I enter the house.

“You have no idea,” he says
as he pushes me against a wall and starts kissing me.

As I
press against him, I feel him wince slightly. Ever since I found those painkillers in his medicine cabinet, I’m acutely aware of him showing any signs of pain. I hate the idea of him being in pain.

“Are you okay?” I
ask him, pulling away from his embrace.

“Huh?”
He raises his black eyebrows at me. “What do you mean?”

“You flinched,” I
point out.

“Oh.”
He shrugs. “I messed up my left rotator cuff. I overuse my left arm because my right doesn’t work. What are you gonna do, right?” He shrugs again. “By the way, can you name the four tendons that make up the rotator cuff? You should have started that dissection two days ago.”

I
shake my head.

“I’ll give you a hint,” he says.
“The mnemonic is SITS.”

“Matt,” I
sigh, “I was really just hoping that we could… spend some time together without talking about anatomy. I mean, the final isn’t for a while, right?”

Matt seems
almost taken aback by my request. “Oh, uh…” he stammers. He shakes his head then grins at me. “Yeah, of course. I’d really like that.

_____

About two hours later, we’re both exhausted and
as we lie in bed holding hands, I make the executive decision that we should order pizza. Matt nods soberly.

“Yes, I think we’re definitely too tired to cook,” he says.
He grabs for his cell phone. “Toppings?”

“Hawaiian, what else?”
I say.

“That’s my girl,” Matt says with a grin.

He’s the only other person I know who loves ham and pineapple on a pizza as much as I do.
Okay, I know cheese pizza isn’t vegan. And the ham part is
really
not vegan. But he’s been nice enough not to comment on that fact.

We lie in bed a bit longer then Matt decides he’s too sweaty and wants to take a shower.
I’ve suggested showering with him in the past, but he’s rejected my idea, saying he’s too worried about slipping and breaking his neck. (See? He really is an old man.) So I lie in bed, playing games on my phone, until I hear the doorbell ring.

I knock on the door to the bathroom and stick my head in, “Pizza’s here.
I’ll go get it.”

Matt sticks his head out from behind the curtain.
His black hair is plastered to his scalp and he has water in his eyelashes. He looks pretty sexy, actually.

“My wallet’s on the kitchen counter,” he says.

I roll my eyes. “I think I can afford a small pizza.”

“I want to pay,” he insists.

“You don’t have to pay.”

“Rachel,” he says.
“If there isn’t ten dollars missing from my wallet when I get out of the shower, I’m going to fail you in anatomy.”

I stick my tongue out at him and slam the bathroom door closed.
I throw on one of Matt’s T-shirts, figuring it’s big enough to conceal most of me and that way I don’t have to get dressed. Then I take ten dollars from my own wallet (I don’t believe his threats) and throw open the door for the pizza guy.

Except it’s not the pizza guy.

It’s Patrice.

Oh shit.

She’s clutching this Tupperware container, and her face goes completely white when she sees me standing there. She nearly drops the Tupperware, but manages to hold onto it at the last second. But she’s clearly speechless. She just stares at me, her mouth hanging open.

I try to think of an excuse—some reason why I might be here.
I mean, it’s not totally ridiculous that a student might be at a professor’s apartment. Maybe we’re having an extra tutoring session.

Except I’m having a little more trouble thinking up an explanation for why I’d be wearing his shirt.

Well, maybe I came over here for a tutoring session.
Then, while in the middle of the session, I spilled some red fruit punch on my clothes. And of course, Matt offered to wash and dry them for me, and in the meantime, he gave me his shirt to wear.

Yes, I can see how it looks, Patrice, but this is actually completely innocent.

Of course, we’re still just staring at each other when Matt limps into the living room. His hair is still damp from the shower, and he’s dressed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts. This is getting harder and harder to fit into my little makeshift excuse.

“You got the pizza,
Rach?” Matt asks me. It takes him like another half-second to realize who’s standing at the door. His eyes go wide and he looks like he might fall on his face. He grabs onto the couch to support himself, and says, “Oh shit.”

“Matt,” Patrice manages. She glares at me and pushes her way into the house. “What’s going on here?”

Well, I think that
’s pretty obvious at this point.

“You said you were
sick
,” Patrice hisses. She shakes the Tupperware in his face. “I brought you some soup.”

“Oh,” he says weakly.
“Thanks.”

“I can’t believe you, Matt!” she murmurs loudly.
“How could you
do
this? Especially with
her
!”

Especially with me?
What does
that
mean?

“Rachel,” Matt says in a pained voice.
“I think… maybe you better go.”

I get a sick feeling in my stomach.
I go back to Matt’s bedroom, where I put my clothes back on. I can hear her scolding him in the living room, although I can only make out some of the words.

“… you of all people,
Matt, I really can’t believe… so stupid and irresponsible… could lose your job…
obviously
she’s playing you… not like she’s so pretty you couldn’t possibly resist…”

I hate Patrice so much.

I come back out into the living room, where Matt is now sitting on the couch with a glazed look on his face. Patrice is just glaring at me. I don’t even say goodbye as I hurry out the front door. On the way to my car, I see the pizza delivery truck pulling up.

_____

I cry the whole way home.

The more I think about it, the more I’m certain that Patrice is in love with Matt.
She came over with soup for him when she thought he was sick, for God’s sake. And that’s why she was so angry with me. Not because she thought Matt was compromising his morals or jeopardizing his job or anything. But because
she
wanted him.

Patrice is going to blow the whistle on us.
The whole school is going to find out about me and Matt. He’s going to lose his job. And I’m going to get kicked out of school.

But wait, maybe not.
If she’s really so in love with him, maybe she won’t do that to him. Maybe she’ll protect our secret. But if she does, it will be on the condition that he ends things immediately with me.

I just can’t bear the thought of that.

When I get home, I park in front of the dorm but I don’t go inside. I don’t want Heather to see me like this. Instead, I rest my head on the steering wheel and sob loudly. Goddamn Patrice. I can’t believe that just happened.

I’m wiping snot from my nose with the back of my sleeve when my phone buzzes.
I reach for it and my heart leaps when I see Matt’s number.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Hey,” he says quietly. He doesn’t sound happy.

I swallow, trying not to let on that I’ve been crying.
“Is Patrice still there?”

“No, she’s gone,” he says.

“Okay,” I say carefully. “So, um… is she going to… tell on us?”

He’s quiet for a moment.
“No,” he finally says. “She isn’t. She just believes very strongly that we should end things. And… she made some good points. Really good points.”

I can only guess what Patrice must have said based on the little I overheard from the bedroom.
Apparently, I’m a treacherous vixen who’s playing him for a grade.

“How about you?”
I squeak. “Do you think we should end things?”

Matt sighs.
“Rachel, come on. Look, I’m crazy about you, but… we could both get in so much trouble. Is it really worth it?”

He’s crazy about me.
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Yes,” I say. “It’s worth it.”

There’s a long pause on the other line.
Finally, he sighs. “This has got to be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”

I bite m
y lip. “Does that mean I can come back over?”

“Well, I can’t eat this whole damn pizza by myself, can I?”

At that moment, I almost say it.
I love you, Matt.
The words are on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite push them out.

Matt warns me that we have to be extra careful now that Patrice knows about us, and maybe I shouldn’t come over so often, but he quickly seems to throw caution back to the wind. After a few weeks, I’ve practically moved in with him. I’m at his house more and more, and he doesn’t seem to mind one bit.

My routine is that straight after anatomy lab, I go back to my apartment to shower then go straight to Matt’s house.
He actually told me that I don’t need to bother with the shower—he barely notices the smell of formaldehyde anymore.

“I’ve eaten my lunch in that lab,” he
admits to me. “What really bothers me is the damn body mist you guys always spray on yourselves to cover up the smell.”

But as much as I hate to admit it to Heather, I don’t feel comfortable not showering after lab, especially if there’s going to be sexy time.

Okay, here’s my confession: I don’t love anatomy lab.

My grades are definitely better and I sort of know what I’m doing in lab these days.
But the truth is, I just don’t enjoy it. I still sort of dread anatomy labs and feel relieved when each one has ended.

Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to make a great surgeon.
Maybe I need to rethink that.

Matt, on the other hand,
would have made an incredible surgeon. Not only does he have an encyclopedic knowledge of the human body, he truly loves anatomy and learning about the way the human body works. Even though he’s a great professor, I feel like it’s a loss to the world of surgery that he decided to give up on finishing medical school.

“You never regret not becoming a surgeon?” I
ask him one day, while lying in bed.

He shrugs
. “There are a lot of things a person can do with their life. It’s only natural to sometimes wonder what it would have been like if I has chosen another path. But I’m happy with what I do and that’s what matters.” He squints at me, “And how about you? Do you ever regret giving up your life to go to medical school?”

I
make a face. “I’m not giving up my life.”

“Don’t be naïve,” he says.
“Medicine has already become your life and you’ve only just started. Just wait till you’ve got a pager attached to your belt and you’re spending Christmas Eve in the emergency room.”

“Sounds like fun,” I
say with a smile.
Not.

“I can see you being a great doctor,” he says earnestly.
“But you have to know why you’re here. Why you
want
to be a doctor. The real reason.”

The reason I went to med school is almost too embarrassing to admit.
Then again, I trust Matt. I want to be honest with him.

“I
didn’t want to be like my mother,” I say. “She just stayed at home with the kids, never had a career or a life of her own. Never earned a dollar on her own. It was so… pathetic.” I sigh. “So you figured me out, I’m just like all those other girls who don’t want to end up like their mothers. I guess I figured a surgeon is about as far away from a homemaker as you can get.”

Matt laughs
, “Rach, trust me: you are in no way like any other girl. None that I’ve ever met before, anyway.”

I
rest my head against Matt’s shoulder. It’s so nice to lie here with him. All those times with those other professors—it feels like some sort of nightmare. Whatever happens between us, I know I’ll never, ever do that again. Now that I know what it’s like to be with someone I really like, I can’t go back. It’s pretty amazing.

“You’re
quiet all of a sudden,” he comments.

“I’m just… happy,” I
say.

And for the first time in my life, I
realize it’s true. I didn’t even realize how miserable and alone I felt before Matt came into my life. I press my face into his shoulder, the one where he messed up his rotator cuff, and I murmur, “I love you.”

I look up at Matt’s face and see a change come over him.
He looks down at me, and for the first time, he also looks truly happy.

“I love you too, Rachel,” he says.

And then something happens that ruins everything.