Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

says. He gets up and rummages in a nearby cabinet. “I’ll get these out.”

“Now?” I ask.

“It’ll be faster than you think, Eve. And it’s time.”

He gloves up and brings over a scissors-looking instrument and a giant sterile pad. “It’s not painful,” he adds.

I stare at him.

He chuckles. “At least, that’s what I’ve been told.”

I lie back and fix my eyes on the lights in the ceiling. He gets to work, beginning on the lower right side of my stomach. I can feel pinching, but that’s about all. He’s right. It doesn’t hurt, although I don’t tell him. I’m usually pretty talkative with Sowah. Not today.

“So, your mom get off okay? She e-mailed me that she was traveling.”

She let him know she was going away?

“Yeah,” I say, a tinge of love mixed with guilt fizzing in my stomach.

“You should be showering now.”

“I took one yesterday. Can’t you tell?”

He sniffs in big. “Like a rose.”

I smile.

“When are you starting back to school? I can’t quite remember the date we set. This week or next?”

My smile fades instantly. It was this week, but I don’t feel the need to tell him about my bargain with Mary Fay. “Monday,” I say, trying pretty unsuccessfully to keep my tone from sounding utterly depressed.

Dr. Sowah looks up from his scissors. “You don’t need to stay all day, Eve. You can wade in, see what a few classes feel like. It’s going to be the sitting that tires you. Don’t overdo it or you’ll end up back in pain.”

A second mention of pain.

It’s time.

I have to ask.

But I don’t. I can’t.

Dr. Sowah keeps working. There are a lot of staples. He starts to hum some song that I know although I can’t place it. It’s bugging me, but I let him alone.

School drifts back into my mind. This does not lift my spirits. Especially with Personal Development first period. Personal Development was her idea. Goddamn it, Lidia. And now the kiss. Did I really have to go and make out with Thomas Aquinas?

What was I thinking?

I wasn’t thinking, that’s the point. I’ll just explain that to him—that it was the drugs.

The drugs.

I have to ask for the drugs.

Again, I don’t.

Instead, I envision myself trying to explain to Thomas Aquinas why I attacked him in the middle of the toilet paper aisle at the Stop & Shop. I remember the taste of him, and that moment when he kissed back—

“Eve?” Dr. Sowah’s hands hover over my rib cage.

“What?”

“You just flinched. Did I pinch you?”

“No, no,” I mumble.

The crunchy medical paper crinkles beneath me.

“You all right?” Dr. Sowah asks.

“Yeah.”

But I’m not. Because I want that Roxy. I need it.

“Just another minute,” he says, concentrating.

It’s now or… now.

“Dr. Sowah?” I stretch my arms up over my head, trying to give off the look of someone who couldn’t care less about the next thing they’re about to say. “I’m kinda low on the Roxanol.”

“You shouldn’t be,” he says.

I crack open my lips. Just a centimeter. I need the extra air to slow my pulse. I close my eyes and try to conjure up calm things like birds flying and ocean waves.

“Well, maybe my mom left the other bottle in her bedroom. When I spoke to her yesterday, she couldn’t remember where she put it, and I couldn’t find it.”

Great. An outright lie. When I’d googled drug-seeking behaviors last night, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t do this.

“I’ll renew. But we will need to talk about coming off the opioids, Eve, and your future pain management.” His voice hits my skin as he speaks, tickling me. “There is a very real risk of dependency.”

“Yeah,” I say with a sleepy air. Like I don’t care. Like talking about the Roxy is boring and not worth my time. And then I close my eyes and struggle not to cry. Because I did it. I have it. No matter that I had to lie. To push Mary Fay away. And my mother.

Every time I help you, Eve, a tiny piece of Minnesota will disappear.

For the first time ever, I see that it is. Disappearing. But it’s not my mother who is in danger, it’s me. It’s been me all along.

I am Minnesota.

Dr. Sowah straightens up in his chair. “Done,” he announces, checking his watch. “Record time, too.”

“You were timing yourself?”

“It makes it fun.” He smiles. “Now, let’s get you on your way.” And he grabs his prescription pad.

The Roxy.

I wait for the sting of joy. It doesn’t come.

Possibly. Hopefully. Probably.

“Eve?”

It’s Lidia.

“I’ll be right out.”

We’re in the women’s bathroom at

the movie theater and I’m holding

a giant fruit basket. It’s a

real struggle to squish out

of the stall with it.

“Oh my god, Eve,

fruit!” she gushes, as if

fruit were the most wonderful

thing in the world.

She plucks out a pear

(her favorite, my least) and

bites into it. Leaning the basket against

the bathroom sink, I also pick out a pear and

take a bite.

This is a dream.

I would never eat a pear

in real life.

While I chew, I think about how I want to stay in here

forever, chomping on this yucky pear with Lidia.

But she turns to leave, to walk out.

“Don’t!”

She stares back at me as the door closes, and

it’s like I’ve never looked into those eyes in my entire life.

I don’t know those eyes.

I’ve never seen those eyes.

The fluorescent lighting darkens and

I’m standing alone in the hallway

at school with the taste of

gross pear in my mouth.

Lidia is walking toward me. The

way she sways, her long stride, the

slope of her shoulders—

everything that sang out so

happy and familiar.

Once.

She grows closer.

I can’t make out

her face. Yet I know, by the

way she sways, her long stride, the

slope of her shoulders—

that this is now a nightmare.

My eyes on the ground,

I let her pass. Without a word.

Leaving only the faint movement

of hair on my arm to know

she’d been there.

I wake myself with a whimper.

Alone in my dark room, I stare up at my ceiling. Wet. Cold. Bloated with fear.

Or