We always used to text each other. As best friends did. It became a routine thing; neither of us could sleep until we’d messaged the other for at least a couple hours.
We had tons of quirks, inside jokes and we just knew. We knew how the other was feeling and we developed a code for this. If one of us was feeling particularly down we’d text the other with two words, like a trigger.
Therapy session.
If the other person felt up to diagnosing or comforting them, they’d have to text back with ‘the doctor will see you now’. If they didn’t feel like listening, they’d have to text ‘the doctor is out of commission’. We didn’t use this all that often, but it was an undecided trigger word that went back years. Neither of us had any clue who came up with it, it just seemed to appear in our little society’s rulebook. Like a visitor had written it down on the blackboards in both our brains and it would never rub off.
I’d just gotten back from school and picked up an apple from the fruit bowl. I tossed it up in the air flawlessly and depended on the gods to bring it back to my palm. The apple landed solidly and celebrated inwardly to an unnecessary standard.
I bit into the apple just as my phone rang. Actually and properly rang. I never called people and people never called me. This was a rare occurrence. The confusion quickly morphed into excitement, like when you’re a kid and you get something in the mail outside of Christmas or your birthday.
I picked up, “Hello?”
There was a crying woman on the other end.
I can’t remember most of the conversation I had with this woman but I know the two pieces of information I hung up with. Number 1; that was Will’s mother, though I knew her beforehand. I never mentioned his name before. I think I assumed people would know who I was talking about. Number 2; Will was in an accident.
He was walking through a dodgy back alley in the dark, the idiot. Someone jumped him, took his money and shot him three times. He died in that alley and I wasn’t there. No one was.
I can’t remember much of what I did for the next couple weeks but I do remember texting Will a lot. No responses of course. His contract had expired and his phone was recycled but his number was still in my phone. I still couldn’t sleep without my hours of mindless texting.
Towards the last week I texted him the same thing over and over and over:
therapy session therapy session therapy session therapy session therapy session therapy session therapy session therapy session
I didn’t stop. God help me if I ever stopped. I didn’t want to.
Yesterday my phone beeped and I lazily brought it up and unlocked the screen.
ONE NEW MESSAGE:
Will:
the doctor will see you now
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Credits to: WarpedNerd
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