Page 112 of The Doctors Will See You Now

The show. The goddamn breakup. Life here, without her.

I hated all of it. And this one fucking week felt like it had lasted a year.

Frustrated that I couldn’t get any relief from the terrible ache in my chest no matter how hard I scrubbed at my face, I snatched my briefcase from the chair and turned to leave the room when bright blue and pink icing caught my eye.

A cake, celebrating the end of the show.

Congratulations, Dr. Cummings, it read. Dr. Obscene has cum to an end.

Cute.

Obviously, I wasn’t in much of a mood to gorge on sugar and celebrate the ending of a docuseries that had pretty much ruined my life.

All of the rage inside me built and broke at once, raising my arm with my briefcase up above my head involuntarily and bringing it down roughly…right on the cake.

Icing and perfectly moist crumbs shot out the sides and sprayed the fabric of my pants, the table, and everything else within a three-foot radius.

All of the women came running.

Marlene was actually the first to slide through the door—and start to cackle hysterically.

“Oh dear,” Betty remarked.

Melissa and Beth just stood there, hands to their mouths.

Done with it all, I grabbed my icing-coated briefcase and headed back for the door.

“I’m taking the day off.”

“Uh…” Melissa started as I shoved past her, forcing her to pull her body up and out of the way to avoid getting coated in icing. “But what about your patients?”

“I don’t care. Give them to someone else.”

And I didn’t. I couldn’t have cared fucking less in that moment if I’d tried.

Funny, I thought. That damn show tried so hard to fuck up my career and failed. Until the last episode…where it broke two people’s hearts.

My life had been reduced to six cardboard boxes.

Sound familiar?

Well, it was familiar, only this time, I was moving out of my parents’ apartment.

It’d been two weeks since I’d last seen Will. Two weeks since I’d quit my job at his practice and ended our relationship. Time had nearly stood still for the first few days. They’d gone about as awful as anyone could imagine they’d go for a twenty-nine-year-old woman, fresh off of another failed relationship, jobless, and still living with her parents. But, eventually, after I’d had time to isolate myself from the world and lick my wounds to a tolerable level of pain, I’d found a way to pick myself up off of the floor and put myself back on shaky, unstable feet.

It’d taken baby steps, but slowly and with determination, I found things to focus on, things to fill my days so that my mind didn’t have much time to think about Will. And it had worked for the most part, besides when I’d lie in bed at night, without the warmth and comfort of his arms. It was those quiet, lonely moments when I’d realize just how much I missed him. Just how much I still loved him. But before I could do something rash like show up to his apartment and beg for him to take me back, I’d remember just how much he’d hurt me.

How much I’m willing to give up for one of his stupid smiles.

And that was still a very present reminder of why I needed to look forward, to move on.

My frugal money habits had turned out to be a positive force. Before quitting my job, I’d managed to save enough funds so I could put down a deposit on an apartment in SoHo. Of course, I was renting for cheap from a friend of the family and had only enough reserves to pay bills for six months until I figured out what my next career step would be, but it was something.

I wouldn’t say life was good, but I was doing everything I could to make it better.

“Melody,” my mother said as she peeked inside her work-out room, where I was putting the last of my clothes inside an empty box. “Do you want me to box up the microwave for you?”

I smiled and shook my head. “Thanks, Mom, but I don’t need your microwave.”