Suicide Med (7 page)

I swear to God, every day the cadaver smells a little worse.

Mason agrees
to do most of the genital dissection today. I just can’t bring myself to cut a penis in half. As I watch Mason rip open the scrotum, I look away and wince.

“What are
you
so upset about?” Mason asks. “This is more painful for me than it is for you.”

I peer down at his dissection.
“Why is the penis all black? Nobody else’s penis is black.”

“Abe’s is,” Mason says with a grin.

Abe does not look amused.

At the end of every lab, we go through a ritual of spritzing the body with water, cleaning up the little bits of flesh and fat that have accumulated on the table, and then covering the body up with plastic.
I know, being a med student is glamorous. It’s basically housekeeping and not particularly fun or a great learning experience, which is why Rachel and Mason generally hightail it before it’s clean up time.

Technically, cleaning up
isn’t a five-person job, and Abe, Ginny, and I can handle it just fine, but it’s the principle of the thing. Mason and Rachel ought to help, at least some days. We’re not their maids.

Rachel, although not my favorite
person in the world, seems less at fault. She just doesn’t care about lab. She doesn’t even show up at least half the time, and when she does, she mostly seems like she’s barely paying attention.

But Mason is there every day.
And every day, he leaves ten minutes before clean-up time. Like clockwork. He knows exactly what he’s doing.

“Where is he always
running off to anyway?” I ask Abe, as we pass the spray bottle back and forth to get both sides of the body.

Abe shrugs.
“The library, I guess. All he ever does is study.”

“He could take ten minutes to help us, couldn’t he?” I grumble.

“I don’t mind so much,” good-natured Abe says as he gives Frank’s face a healthy spritz. “Hey, you want to go to the library and study after this?”

“
Sure,” I say. I hesitate and glance over at Ginny, who is over by the sinks. “Do you want to invite Ginny?”

Abe frowns.
“Why?”

“
I just thought it might be nice,” I say.

Before he
can reply, Ginny finishes washing her hands and heads out of the lab. Oh well. I’ll have to play matchmaker another day.

The sinks in the lab are essentially a deep, giant trough.
I turn the water on as hot as it can go and soap myself up so high up my arms that I’m practically showering in it. I know now even the strong anti-bacterial soap won’t block out the smell. I bought a vanilla-scented body spray to apply after the lab, but now the smell of vanilla just reminds me of dead bodies.

In addition to anatomy, we’re also taking biochemistry, so
when we get to the library, Abe and I decide to take a break from studying anatomy in order to study biochem since we have a quiz coming up in that class. It’s a sad day when studying biochemistry is considered a
break
. But the class is so much easier than anatomy that it really does sort of seem like a break.

Abe was
a biochemistry major in college, so this stuff is really just review for him. I wish I could say that I majored in something sensible like biochem, or even biology or chemistry. Instead, I majored in
English
, the most useless thing I could think of apparently. People told me that you should take classes in college that you’ll never get to take again for the rest of your life, stuff you’ll really enjoy. And I did, in all honesty, enjoy being an English major with my premed minor. But right at this moment, it feels like an awful decision.

Abe sits across from me at our usual table, sipping from a gigantic thermos of coffee.
I’ve definitely stepped up my coffee consumption lately, but I’d venture to say that Abe has developed a problem. He is
always
drinking coffee. Any minute, he’s going to start levitating.

“Okay,” Abe says.
“What are the phases of the Kreb’s cycle?”

The
Kreb’s Cycle, a.k.a. the citric acid cycle, a.k.a. what’s ruining my life today, is a component of the metabolic pathway through which people make energy. But they don’t call it energy—they call it ATP. Which stands for…something.

I close my eyes and try to focus: “Pyruvate goes to acetyl-CoA goes to citrate goes to
aconitate…”

“
Cis
-aconitate,” Abe corrects me.

I groan.
“I hate the Kreb’s cycle.”

Abe takes another long sip of coffee.
“Yeah, I’ve memorized it like five times now. Never sticks.”

He takes another sip, tilting his head slightly to drain as much coffee as he can.

“You need to lay off the coffee, Abe,” I say.

“Look who’s talking,” he snorts, gesturing at my own Styrofoam cup.
“When I said we were dissecting out the fascia lata yesterday, you asked if I said fascia
latte
, and you almost started salivating.”

“No, you’re way worse
,” I say. “I think you’re developing a tremor.”

Abe holds out his left hand and we both lean in to inspect it.
I definitely notice him shaking a bit.

“Well,” he says, “there goes my career in surgery.”

“You want to be a surgeon?” I ask in surprise. Abe doesn’t seem like the surgeon type—he’s too nice.

“Hell no,” he says as he takes another sip.

“What do you want to be?” I ask him.

“Maybe an ophthalmologist,” he mumbles, looking slightly embarrassed.

It’s hard to imagine Abe as an eye doctor. Eyes are so small and delicate—sort of the opposite of what he is. He looks like he’d end up squishing some eyeballs accidentally.

Now that we’ve already moved off topic, I’m well into procrastination mode.
I nudge Abe’s foot with my own under the table.

“Hey,” I say.

He grins at me. “Hey yourself,” he says.

“I want to ask you something,” I begin.
“And I want you to tell me the truth, okay?”

Abe’s eyes widen and his smile falters slightly.
“Okay…”

“What do you think of Ginny?”

He blinks at me. “Who?”

Okay, that is definitely not the response I was looking for.

“You know.
Ginny, our lab partner?”

“Oh.”
Abe still seems a little befuddled. “Uh, she’s… okay. I mean, she seems to know her stuff, I guess. Why? What did she do?”

“Nothing,” I say quickly.
“I just think… she’s sort of cute, don’t you think so?”

Abe blinks a few more times.
When he speaks again, his voice is slow, careful. “Um, she’s all right. I guess.”

Why’s he being so weird about this?
Unless…

A sudden revelation hits me.

“Oh my God,” I gasp.
“Are you
gay
?”

I shouldn’t have said it like that.
What’s wrong with me? Now Abe is just staring at me and probably thinking that I’m judging him, even though I’m definitely not. He just really didn’t
seem
gay to me, but really, what do I know?

“I don’t care if you are,” I say quickly.
“I mean, I am definitely not anti-gay. I’ve had lots of gay friends. I think it’s a crime that you can’t get married in any state that—”

“
God. Please stop, Heather,” Abe cuts me off. He’s shaking his head. “I’m not gay. At all.”

“Oh.”
And now I feel like an idiot. “I’m sorry, I just thought that you and Ginny… well, you know…”

“I’m not interested in Ginny,” he says quietly.

There’s a long silence between us that gets broken only by Abe taking another long sip of coffee.

“
Kreb’s cycle?” I say.

He nods.

A few years ago somebody died here.

I’m standing directly over Southside River.
There’s a bridge that runs across the river, hovering about twenty feet overhead. When I look down, I can see the water rushing below my feet. The story, according to a newspaper article that I dug up, is that a few years ago, a student hurled himself into the river. Well, he stabbed himself and then threw himself in. As you can imagine, he didn’t survive.

I can’t imagine feeling that way, so depressed that it seems like the only option is to end it all.
I heard he was failing anatomy. So I could very well be in his shoes in the near future. The very near future.

But I wouldn’t do this to myself.
I mean, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t.

Of course, I wonder if that student would’ve imagined he’d be up here when the year first started.

I look down again into the swirling water of the river below my feet. A wave of nausea washes over me and I cling to the rail of the bridge. The water seems so black and foreboding. And cold. I can’t help but imagine my body being submerged in that dark icy water, the water filling my lungs.

Drowning slowly.

A noise startles me out of my thoughts. My head jerks up and I see a car pulling up beside the bridge. It’s that white Lincoln Continental, the one that spooked me in the parking lot the other day when I was walking with Abe. I’ve seen it a few times since then parked in front of the hospital, and it’s always been empty so I’ve never figured out who belonged to. But now I can see the face of the driver clearly through the windshield.

It’s my anatomy professor, Dr. Conlon.

What is
he
doing here?

I don’t know what it is, but there’s something odd about the look on my professors face.
There’s a dark expression in his eyes that sends shivers down my spine. I realize that he can’t see me, that the branches of a nearby tree are obscuring his view of me. And suddenly, I’m seized by the desperate urge to get the hell out of here before he realizes that I’m standing here. That my life might depend on it.

Slowly, quietly, I back away.
And I don’t feel safe again until I’m back in my car with the engine running.

Our first anatomy exam is today.
I didn’t sleep at all last night.

I meant to sleep.
Believe me, it wasn’t my intention at the beginning of the night to stay awake for twenty-four hours straight and leave myself feeling like I’m about to collapse.

I went to the library yesterday after spending several hours in the lab, going over anatomy.
Abe insisted that I leave with him at midnight, and I did it only because I knew he wouldn’t go until I did. But when I got back to my room, I continued studying. My room looks like an anatomy tornado hit. Every time I even contemplated closing my textbooks, it just seemed like there was too much that I didn’t know. By four in the morning, it just felt pointless to try to sleep.

I’m pretty tired.

At eight a.m., I change into my green scrubs and join the large group of my classmates in front of the anatomy lab, waiting for the practical portion of the exam to begin. I can almost see the nervous energy radiating from the group. I showered this morning, but it’s obvious many of my classmates didn’t bother. We’re a pretty scruffy group.

You could probably fill a small lake with the amount of coffee we’ve had to drink this morning.
Several dozen of us are clutching identical white Styrofoam cups. This is my fourth cup in the last two hours, and I’m starting to have palpitations. And there’s a very real chance I might wet my pants.

“Hey,
Heather.” It’s Phil, the boy with the messy ponytail that I’d spied on the first day. “You nervous?”

Obviou
sly.

“I’m just really tired from
staying up all night,” I say.

Phil reaches into his pocket and produces
a small container filled with tiny white pills.

“Want one?” he asks
.

I
can’t even conceal my horror. Oh my God. He’s offering me
drugs
. I feel like I’m in an afterschool special. Well, I’ve learned something from those specials. I’m going to Just Say No!

“Um, are those…?”

“Mint-flavored caffeine tablets,” Phil says. “Got ‘em at the gift shop.”

“Oh,” I
say. Damn. Now I’m never going to get to prove I can stay strong in the face of peer pressure. “No, thanks.”

“Are you sure?” Phil asks
. “It’s like drinking a cup of coffee, but you don’t have to pee!”

I
shake my head and wander off in search of Abe. Instead, I find Rachel leaning against the wall, her long dark brown hair hanging loose around her shoulders and obscuring the lettering on her T-shirt. She’s tapping her toes against the floor impatiently, and every few minutes she lets out an irritated sigh.

Mason i
s standing next to Rachel, looking fresh as a daisy. He’s also staring so blatantly at her chest that I can’t help but say something.

“What are you looking at?” I bark at him.

Boy, I’m irritable today.

Mason lifts his eyes and looks at me in surprise.

“I’m trying to read her T-shirt.”

Oh. I guess that could be true.

Rachel smiles at him.
“It says, ‘I am the doctor my mother wanted me to marry.’”

Mason starts to laugh.
He looks Rachel straight in the eyes and says, “Not yet you’re not.”

The
doors to the anatomy lab open and the students file in like we’re on some kind of death march. The first part of the exam is the practical, where various structures on different cadavers are tagged with pins and the students are given a sheet of paper and clipboard on which to record their findings. I have to confess, the clipboard makes me feel very professional.

I
whip out my lucky pen, a black ballpoint with rubber handgrip that I’ve been using since college. I used my lucky pen for every big exam in college, and on the one occasion I had forgotten the pen, during an exam on electricity and magnetism, I had gotten a big fat F.

I ch
oose my own cadaver as my starting point, and uncap my lucky pen. Our cadaver’s insides are nearly perfect, thanks to Mason’s immaculate dissections and the fact that Frank was inexplicably healthy when he died. I clutch my clipboard to my chest, trying to stop shaking, although it’s hard after all that coffee. My breaths are coming too quickly and my fingertips start to tingle. I think I’m hyperventilating. I need a paper bag or something.

“Are you okay,
Heather?” Abe has materialized at my side, looking concerned.

I
look him over and am relieved that his short red hair seems as disheveled as the rest of my classmates and he has familiar dark circles under his eyes.

“I’m fine,”
I reply.

And I mean it.
Now that Abe is standing next to me, I feel about 100% better. There’s something about his presence that really calms me down. Don’t laugh, but I sometimes feel like he’s my guardian angel.

Dr. Conlon limps
to the front of the room. All eyes are on him, waiting for his instructions. He smiles, his blue eyes twinkling, “Why does everyone look so nervous?”

Nobody laughs
. Just start the exam, you asshole.

Dr. Conlon scans the room, looking around.
He nods at a student wearing a baseball cap near the front of the room.

“No hats with brims,” he tells the student.
He adds apologetically, “Cheating hazard.”

Geez, I didn’t realize cheating was such a big problem.
Doesn’t seem like it would be worth the risk.

The student turns his hat around so that the brim faces the other way.
The boy behind him raises his hand, “Now
I
can see the answers. Should I move?”

The class laughs, but Dr. Conlon doesn’t think it’s quite as funny.
He ends up confiscating the hat.

With the hat issue resolved, Dr. Conlon
clears his throat: “As I went over with you before, you’ve got one minute to identify each pinned structure and one minute for each X-ray. When the time is up, I’ll call out ‘next station.’” He looks around the room. “And don’t worry, the test really isn’t that hard. Any questions?”

No hands go
up.

He ho
lds up a stopwatch in his left hand, “Okay, then begin!”

I
look down at the first structure to identify. It’s my own cadaver that I’ve been working on for a month, so I feel confident I should know the answer. The pin is secured into a blood vessel that seems to be running into the back of the heart. Or is it the front of the heart? I suddenly feel disoriented. If only I could pick it up and examine it… but no touching is allowed on the exam.

I think it’s t
he pulmonary vein. I’m like 90% sure.

Maybe
80% sure.

I
poise my lucky pen over the sheet of paper on my clipboard, printing the words “pulmonary vein,” but nothing showed up on the paper. I try again, but all I can see is the indentation of the words I had tried to write.

My
lucky pen is out of ink.

You have
got
to be kidding me.

The clock is ticking.
I have less than twenty seconds left at this station. I shake the pen, trying to coax the last bits of ink into the point. I only need the pen to last for about fifty or so words. You can do it, pen! Please, pen! Don’t let me down…

“
Psst… hey.” Abe is nudging me. I look at him and he’s holding out a pen to me. “I always bring a spare.

Like I said,
Abe’s my guardian angel.

I
nod gratefully at him and take the pen. I scribble down my answer just as Dr. Conlon calls out, “Next station!”

_____

I think I’m going to be sick.

The second the exam is over, I run upstairs to a ladies’ room that nobody ever uses, and lean over a toilet. My stomach is churning and I fully expect to see the bagel I forced down this morning regurgitated before my eyes—but nothing comes. I lean forward, gagging. I want to throw up. It’s the only way to get rid of this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Finally, I give up and collapse
onto the bathroom floor, not even caring about the mysterious yellow puddle right next to me. I lean my head against the door to the stall and let out a really dramatic sob. I don’t care anymore who hears me. It’s not like I’ll be in medical school much longer after that performance.

In case you haven’t guessed, the exam was
a bona fide disaster. Dr. Conlon called the test “easy.” Easy? The test could have been written in Ancient Hebrew and I probably would have scored equally well. Even my lucky pen (now in the trash, having betrayed me) couldn’t have rescued me from that train wreck.

But maybe Dr. Conlon
was right. Probably the test really was easy and I’m just too stupid to cut it in med school.

More and more, I’m beginning to think that’s the case.

I don’t even know how long I sit on that filthy bathroom floor wallowing in self-pity, replaying all the events that led up to my stupid stupid decision to go to med school. I should have known when I took the MCATs and had to leave to pee four times during the exam that I didn’t have the stamina for med school. The fact that I had admired the hell out of my childhood pediatrician Dr. Marsha Stoltz-Humberg, with kind eyes and the smiley face sticker on her white coat, wasn’t enough of a reason to put myself through this.

When
I finally struggle to my feet, the first thing I do is stumble over to the bathroom mirror. I look awful. There are purple circles under my mildly bloodshot eyes, and my dirty blond hair is everywhere. I make a half-hearted attempt to clean myself up, but really, what’s the point?

As
I stumble out of the bathroom, I call Seth’s number on my cell phone. I lean against the wall outside the bathroom, waiting for him to pick up. I’ve nearly given up when I hear him answer. “Hello?”

I
hear the usual ruckus in the background and wait for him to go into another room to get some privacy, like he sometimes does. But the sounds continue and I realize he’s not going to do that. Fine.

“Seth,
” I sniffle. “I failed my exam,”

“What exam?”

What exam?
Even though I didn’t call him last night, I’ve been talking about this test nonstop for the last two weeks. It was how I started and ended every sentence. I’m fairly sure I ended my last conversation with him with the words,
I hope I don’t fail my anatomy exam.
And somehow he
forgot
?

“My anatomy exam,”
I say.

Okay, fine, he’s got a lot
on his mind too. And from the sound of it, he’s in the middle of some kind of party or something.

“Oh, are you sure?”
There’s someone laughing in the background. A girl.

“Pretty sure,”
I say.

“Well, you didn’t really study tha
t much for it, did you?” he says.

I
can only stare at the phone. He’s not even surprised that I screwed up my exam. It sounds like he
expected
me to fail. Seth has always been a source of great comfort to me, but now I wish I could punch him in the face. What the hell happened to us?

“I have to go,” I spit into the phone.
In other words, I’ve got to hang up before I say something I’ll regret.

“Ok
ay…” Seth, the smart boy, seems to sense he said something dumb. Again, I hear laughter in the room. “Are you going to be all right, Heather?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,”
I say, and click the phone off before my voice can betray me.

I
stare down at the dead phone. I have never felt so alone in my entire life. Med school was such a mistake.

“Oh sh
it… what happened?”

I
jump in surprise at the voice traveling down the hall and immediately try to hide my red, splotchy face. But then I lift my eyes and see who it is. It’s just Abe. Thank God.

“I’m okay,”
I mumble, looking away from him.

“I was looking everywhere for you,” he says a little breathlessly.
He halts in front of me and his green eyes widen slightly when he sees my face, but he doesn’t comment. “You really hid yourself well. I thought I was going to have to call in a SWAT team.”

I force a tiny smile.
“Yeah.”

Abe shifts between his feet, looking a little uncomfortable.
I want to tell him that I almost definitely failed the exam, but the truth is, I don’t want him to think I’m dumb. I don’t want him to know I bombed an “easy” test.

“Hey,” Abe says.
“That test was pretty hard, huh?”