Page 55 of The Devil Takes
I didn’t care that holding onto him was tearing me apart.
Maybe somewhere, wherever he was—or wasn’t—he was feeling the effects of our bond, too. Maybe he felt sick to his stomach. Maybe he ached for me the way I ached for him.
“And what if it doesn’t?” I asked, my words choked. “What if the bond doesn’t dissolve?”
Dr. Reynolds was silent for what felt like an eternity, her eyes overwhelmed with sadness. Pity. “You will die.”
Ah.
Somehow…the idea of death didn’t seem quite so scary anymore.
I knew nothingness. I knew pain. I knew what it felt like to be separated from the other half of my soul. Death?…no. Death was not the worst-case scenario.
“There’s nothing else you can do?” I confirmed, one last time.
“I’m sorry.” Reynolds checked the chart again, pursing her lips, like she was searching for answers we both knew weren’t there. “I’ll let you process all this while I run a few more tests. I don’t think we’re going to find anything different, but I’d like to be sure before I send you away.”
I nodded numbly, docile as I let her do what she needed to do.
By the time I’d been poked with needles, prodded, and inspected, she pulled back with a frown. Even when I’d gotten my physical before being approved for the omega dorm, no one had drawn my blood, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when she spoke.
“I have more bad news, unfortunately.” More bad news? Oh goodie. “Are you taking any suppressants right now?”
I knew I should lie. But she could probably see on my chart that I’d been picking up my prescription like clockwork. Her question was a courtesy. Nothing more.
“Sometimes,” I shrugged, trying to recall the last time I’d taken them. It was hilarious, actually, how I’d religiously popped pills pretty much my entire life, but the moment Haden had slipped away keeping my instincts at bay had no longer become important. “I’ve been forgetting lately.”
“Alright.” Reynolds checked her chart again, glancing at my test results with a furrow in her brow. “This can’t be right,” she murmured under her breath, double-checking the paper as the wrinkles on her face turned from cracks to caverns.
I already knew what she was looking at. Weirdly enough I didn’t give a fuck. “It is.”
She glanced up at me, her eyebrows rising as her lips drew into a thin line once again. I knew what she was looking at. Knew that the pill bottles were not adding up the way they were supposed to. Knew that she could see plain as day that I didn’t need them.
“You have dangerously high levels of Alphacortiphone in your system,” she said softly, though we both knew I already knew that. “This could be contributing to the fogginess you mentioned experiencing earlier. Am I correct in assuming that you haven’t been taking the strongly recommended breaks between cycles?”
The way she said strongly recommended made it obvious the breaks weren’t recommended at all. More like required.
I couldn’t bring myself to care, even though she looked obviously paler than she had before. It was clear she was genuinely concerned. Which was a shame, because the emotion was wasted.
Reynolds took a deep breath. “I have good news for you then. Taking a break from suppressants and blockers will surely let your levels dip back into a normal range, which will help with some of the symptoms you’ve been experiencing, though not all.” She flashed a cheery smile, which I didn’t return. “I’m going to prescribe you a bottle that is half your usual dosage. I want you weaned off of your suppressants entirely, but we’ll have to settle for this for now. At your age, if you continue abusing unnecessary, potentially harmful medicines, as you have been, your symptoms will only get worse. The fatigue and lethargy you have been experiencing are only the beginning of a long list of health issues I’m sure I don’t have to repeat for you to recall your previous doctor’s warning.”
Lesions, internal bleeding, boils, depression, heart failure, etc.
I’d had them memorized since I was sixteen.
The consequences of my actions had always felt so far away. A problem for future me to figure out.
“You can’t quit something as strong as Alphacortiphone cold turkey so I want you to make sure you are taking the correct half-dosage.” She blinked, her face shuttering with a quiet huff. “You’d think your mother would’ve warned you about things like this—” she muttered under her breath.
My mother?
Why would my mother warn me?
“What do you mean?” My mother was dead. She’d been dead for years, long before I’d ever presented. I could hardly remember anything about her, though I did recall the way the air had tasted like rain as we’d buried her. The white daisies I’d picked from her garden that I’d placed on top of her grave. The way Dad had brushed my hair out of my face, leaned down, and whispered in my ear, “Don’t you dare embarrass me now.”
So I’d swallowed my tears, just like I’d swallowed everything else.
Let myself become a black hole that sucked up all the bad and was left empty.