Chapter 1: Goodbye
Noah—
It was a typical Thursday night after work. All my coworkers left and I was the one to close the clinic down. I was glad they had homes and families to return to. Each exam room door got closed, the overhead lights got shut off, and I logged out of my computer. The ceramic frog on my desk got his ritualistic head pat. My best friend Jordyn and I named him Fabio because he looked glorious with his legs stretched above his head.
Something in me knew I'd miss him.
I knew I'd miss Jordyn even more. She had been a beacon in my life for the last couple years. The only person who could call me out and still make me laugh five minutes later. The only of two people who didn't look at me like I was something that had gone wrong.
I closed the clinic doors and went downstairs to exit the hospital.
Goodbye my cardiology family.
I barely remember getting into my car for the short drive home. I played no song on the radio. Just drove in silence. I reached my green house and got out of my car, a gift from my other best friend, Ember, when my old car died. Walking up the couple concrete steps, I stepped inside through the black metal door, walked through the kitchen and tiny dining room. I had set it up with a desk and my pottery tools instead of treating it like a dining room. The little one-bedroom house I was renting had no sound. It was as quiet and hollow as the office I had just left.
Silence had weight.
Three years of it hung heavily.
The last time I held my daughter she was three months old. She fit against my forearm like something fragile and new. I could still remember the warmth of her cheek against my arm. She wouldn't even recognize me now. If I saw her in a grocery store, she'd walk right past me and never know I was her dad.
Clara, her mother, made sure of that.
Weaponized our child like a bargaining chip. Like a lesson. Disappeared to who knows where.
I had stopped asking when I would see her again. The universe never answered. Hope hurt more than an answer.
I thought about my mom sometimes — how I never quite measured up. How every success felt like it needed an asterisk. My dad left before I was even born and only showed up when it suited him. I learned early that love had office hours. You could be needed, but not wanted.
Then the relationships. The words. Worthless. Failure. Not enough. Some of them didn't stop at words. Rachel made sure of that. Bruises fade. The echoes don't.
I never imagined I would be the kind of man who chose this.
But I couldn't drag everyone through my turmoil anymore. Jordyn deserved better than watching me drown. The clinic deserved better. The world would keep spinning without me in it. It always had.
There was only one thought left in my mind.
Escape this empty life.
I grabbed my medications out of the bag Jordyn had gotten me. It had the words "Some days the best thing about my job is that the chair spins" printed on it. I let out a small, humorless breath. Even now she was trying to make me smile.
I turned on the shower and grabbed an alcoholic drink. The sound of the water hitting tile filled the room, but it only made the quiet inside me louder. I swallowed everything like I was swallowing years of disappointment. My years in medicine helped me decide what to take first for the effect I wanted.
Years of trying. Years of fighting to be enough for people who had already decided I wasn't.
The water ran over my face.
I stood there longer than I needed to.
Afterward, I made it to the bed and put on some music. Something soft. Something that didn't demand anything from me. Sleep was coming in heavy waves, fog rolling in over everything sharp.
The fight inside me finally stopped arguing.
I felt at peace because it was all over, finally.
My eyes closed, accepting the darkness.
Goodbye shitty world
