Dr. Infatuated

1.4

Alec was troubled. He ran hard in the cool Friday morning air, as though he could outpace the thoughts that had raced relentlessly since the 'incident' on Wednesday. He couldn't reconcile with any of it: the infarction overseas, the infarction during the stress test, the myocardial scar.

"I'll take such good care of you, okay?"

Alec's heart stumbled as the doctor's gentle voice echoed in his head for the umpteenth time. He became acutely aware of the cables beneath his clothing, and he wondered if he was checking in on his condition without his knowledge.

He pushed himself up the last of the incline that led to the driveway of his property. The air stung his throat as he jogged the gravel to cool down, and when he approached the door, he steadied himself on a nearby handrail and clutched his heart, as if to calm it.

I never had any trouble with this before these damn pills, the fit soldier lamented. He poured himself a large glass of water from the kitchen faucet and downed most of it in a few ravenous gulps. After contemplating it for a moment, he opened the fridge and cracked open a beer.

He slammed himself down in front of a blank TV and stared off into the middle distance while he imbibed. Far too early, he knew, but he didn't much care. The minutes passed, and when his heart wouldn't seem to fully recover from the exercise, he decided he'd had enough.

What the hell is this 'nadolol'? he thought urgently.

Alec sprung up and stormed his bedroom. First, the bag he'd brought home from the clinic—he reasoned there would be a printout about the prescription. When he couldn't find one, he let out a growl, swiped the prescription bottle off his nightstand, and busied himself at the kitchen table. He flipped open a laptop and queried the search bar:

'nadolol 80mg side effects'

The information presented to him was alarming. His brow knotted—nadolol was supposed to slow his heart rate, but his resting rate had been steadily rising since the last visit with Dr. Palmer. It always spiked about an hour after taking the meds, too...

Alec's face twisted when he scrolled past a pill ID photo and back up again. He studied the image, and his hands began to shake as he popped the lid off and extracted one of the tablets.

"No..." he uttered. He glanced down, then back up, then back down, and finally held the pill up to the screen.

"What the fuck," he murmured intensely. His breath hitched and his heart threatened to thunder out of his chest entirely—nadolol was blue and round with a bevel horizontally through the center. 'N' above the line, '80' below; blank on the flipside. The tablet he had was also blue and round. But the bevel was vertical, separating a '1' and a '0', and on the other side, the letters 'A D'.

Alec's rhythm fumbled itself for several seconds while he punched in the description of the tablets he'd been given. The thought occurred to him that he should press the button on his Holter monitor, but he didn't.

Adderall, 10mg, the search engine helpfully told him.

The colour drained from his face. His heart gave a loud thump and pounded harder, faster, as the information fully set in. He didn't want to believe it, but the evidence didn't lie. Dr. Palmer had given him amphetamine salts and told him it was heart medication.

The implications overwhelmed him. Veins bulging, he balled his fists, pounded the table, and let out an anguished shout as he spun out of the chair toward a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the counter. He didn't want to cry, but he couldn't help it. He winced sucking back as much of the bottle as he could in one go.