Chapter Eight

Miranda cleans out her desk and prepares for a new life in a different line of work.

The shock of Jacques’s death left me in ruins. I was unprepared for it, despite how fondly and often he spoke of his own demise.

It was my fault, partially, for assuming he was just desperate for attention and not believing that he would actually go through with his plans.

I am supposed to be a therapist. I am supposed to help my patients, even if that means halting everything the very moment, and every single time someone mentions suicide.

I thought that Jacques was smarter than that. I thought that he knew what he had going for him, and I thought for sure that he would eventually wake up and smell the coffee, and his life would turn around.

Well, his life did more than turn around, it did a complete nose dive and crashed into the middle of the ocean, leaving no survivors.

And I can’t help but feel that every bit of that horrible tragedy is my own fault.

No longer feeling that I am fit to be a therapist, the only chance I have at even slight peace of mind is to resign.

It took a lot of hard thinking and nail biting, but in the end, I’ve decided that it’s for the best.

Future patients’ families don’t deserve to go through all the pain and agony that Jacques’s family is now faced with, and I am lucky not to have them press charges against me for malpractice.

Jacques did say in his note that I worked my hardest on him, but how hard could I possibly have worked if I allowed him to slip through my fingers?

There is no excuse for that, and I cannot allow myself to continue taking innocent people’s lives into my own hands.

So I am done with it. My days as a therapist are over.

I’ve been up all night putting in applications to various places, unable to sleep. It might not be such a bad thing to start over new in a different line of work.

Now, as the clock chimes 8, and the morning birds are chirping merrily to each other, I am standing in my office, wearing my normal clothes, and packing up all my things.

Everything around my office reminds me of Jacques, and makes me feel worse.

My clock, which he would so often stare at instead of my face.

The throw pillow, stained with my makeup where I cried into it over his death.

The jar of confetti that was once a stack of beautiful drawings.

I suck in my bottom lip and chew it, forcing myself to remain calm and not shed anymore tears.

The last thing that Jacques ever asked for in his life was that no one cry over him.

Stupid boy.

How could he do something as extreme and permanent as killing himself and then expect no one to cry?

Surely, his parents are crying at this very moment, and it’s probably safe to say that they will be crying for a very long time. Their lives will never again be the same as when Jacques was around, even if he was a pain in the a*s at times.

People always do that.

They cause problems, and assume that people only care about the bad sides to them. They don’t seem to realize how much their family loves them, or how good a friend can feel just having them near.

They don’t seem to realize that no one is perfect, and that no one expects perfection. They cannot see the good in themselves, or the good they bring to others.

And then, it’s too late.

If they could just stick around long enough to see the effects of their death… To watch their funeral and all the nice things people have to say about them… If they could see all of the pain and misery they cause to each and every person who loves them, maybe they would think twice.

What’s the point of killing yourself to prevent further pain to your loved ones, if killing yourself will put more pain on them than they’ve ever felt?

My vision blurs as my eyes fill up with tears.

Dumping a drawer full of pens and pencils into a box, I hear a small sound by the door, and look up to see Holly standing there.

“Good morning,” she says, softly.

I nod, unable to speak.

“So… You’re really leaving, then, are you?”

Again, I nod. Holly sighs.

“I’ll miss you,” she says. “It was an honour to have worked with you.”

I set the drawer down, wiping my eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” I whimper to Holly. “You’ll probably be out of a job, too now, won’t you?”

She shakes her head.

“I’ll still need to stick around the office for at least a couple of weeks to answer the phone and any questions, and also let people know not to come in for their appointments and stuff. That should give me plenty of time to find a new job.”

She smiles, weakly at me.

I can’t even return a weak smile.

Holly steps further into the room.

“Do you want any help packing?” she asks.

I shrug.

“You can if you want,” I say.

Holly grabs an extra paper box, and starts taking books off my shelves, stacking them neatly into the box.

I pop another drawer out of my desk and empty the notebooks and various other junk into my own box. Most of this stuff will probably end up getting thrown away.

I reach for another drawer, when my pocket vibrates.

Straightening up a bit, I tug my phone out of my pocket and peer at the display.

“One message received,” it tells me.

Why in the hell would someone text message me?

I flip open the phone and click “view message.”

“Hello, there,” it says, from a number I don’t recognize.

I sigh and hit “respond.”

Figuring out the number pad, I tap out a quick “Who is this?” before hitting “send,” and shoving my phone back in my pocket.

“What do you want to do with these?” Holly asks, indicating a pile of toys I keep in the corner for little children that may accompany patients.

“Donate them to a thrift store, I guess.”

My name placard on my desk, with its nice golden letters, well… That’s useless, now.

I pick it up and drop it in the waste basket. 

Holly catches my eye, with a sad, almost pouty look, and I turn away as my pocket hums again.

I roll my eyes, dropping everything once more to see what this moron wants.

Seizing my phone, I open the new message to find that the person who sent it is apparently Alfonso.

Alfonso? Great. I didn’t give him my phone number. What a fabulous start this is off to.

I respond, “How did you get my number?” and then drop the phone on the desk, immediately busying myself in another task.

My office is beginning to look quite bare, now, and except for the furniture, I think pretty much all of my things are now in boxes, ready to be taken out to my car.

“You wanna help me lug these things downstairs?” I ask.

Holly nods and picks up one box, tucking it mostly beneath her arm. I stack two on top of each other and heave them up and out the door.

The stairwell is narrow and hard enough for a person to walk through, much less a person carrying heavy boxes.

With my back to the wall, I step side-ways down the stairs until I make it through the glass double doors at the bottom, where my car is parked, waiting for me.

Setting the boxes on the roof, I fish they keys out of my pocket and unlock the back door of the car.

Holly and I take turns setting the boxes on the back seat, and then, we’re done.

This is it.

I take one last look at the old brick building, promising to myself that I will never come back to it again.

“Well, it looks like this is goodbye,” I say to Holly, who pulls something out of her pocket and hands it to me.

“You forgot this,” she says, setting my cell phone in the palm of my hand. “It was on your desk, so I grabbed it for you.”

“Oh,” I say, looking at the display, which claims I have another message. “Thank you, Holly. I wouldn’t want to have any reason to come back here again…”

She nods, her face turning a little pink, and her eyes glassing over.

Without warning, she falls forward, locking me into a tight hug.

“I’ll really miss you!” she cries into my shoulder. “You know, you can always call me if you want to talk! I’d be more than happy to stay friends with you…”

I smile, pulling away, and looking her in the eyes.

“I would really like a friend,” I tell her, trying hard not to cry. “And I will keep in touch, I promise.”

We give each other one last hug and then I throw myself into the car, waving at Holly as I do.

She waves at me as I back out, and all the way down the street until I can’t see her anymore.

My pocket vibrates again, and I pull my phone out, stopping at a red light.

Two messages received.

The first message says “I got your number off your profile.”

Well, see if I don’t take that down. I delete the message and move on to the next one.

“You just gonna ignore me now?”

Good grief, what a jerk. Excuse me for having a life and needing to take care of some things.

Before the light turns green, I manage to type out a quick “Sorry, I’m kind of busy,” and send it along.

Maybe it’s just because I’m not in a very good mood, but this guy seems to really be pissing me off today. Maybe I should ask him to give me some space until I have time to recover from everything that’s happened to me in the last couple of days.

 

Or maybe I should just finally try to get some sleep.