Oh, How We Drift

Chapter Seven

7.

Jules sat on her bed, bottle of wine in one hand, cheap biro pen in the other. She stared at the blank lined paper in front of her, the book lay flat and empty on the bedsheet, staring right back at her. Outside, rain splashed against the window in long, cold sheets; the overcast clouds of earlier had now split open, unleashing their torrents of water on the land below. The storm had been going on for about two hours now, the rain seemingly unstoppable, the wind picking up and dying down in random intervals as the clouds darkened into a fierce display of black and grey whirlpools in the sky.

Her bedroom was dark, the sunlight had long since left the outside world for the night, the energy saving bulb on her ceiling was hardly helping, the cheap lampshade did nothing to help the pathetic light. Her laptop screen cast strange shadows across her face from its bright white light, the various sources of medical journals, informal videos and online pdf. Files all forming a line at the top of the page, 'saved for later'. This assignment seemed impossible; four thousand words, the deadline fast approaching now, only four days left before crunch time and Jules had yet to write a single letter on screen, let alone an entire essay.

'What are the moral and psychological effects of long term stress on a junior doctor? And how are these avoidable within the workplace? Use works of recent medical writers compared with historic writings to construct your argument.'

What the hell was she supposed to do with this? Of course junior doctor work was stressful, because of essays like this one. She felt as if a massive weight was placed on her shoulders, and square on top of her head too, holding her down with expectations and horrific visions of a hopeless, unemployed future. Her field was incredibly tough to get into after all, over a third of medical students from the previous year had dropped out before the last term had even begun. Yet here she was, somehow holding on to the precipice, ready to fall and feel the wind rush through her hair; but something kept her grip steady, her backbone rigid, she wasn't about to let herself be beaten so easily.

Of course, the wine helped. The wine always helped. The wine was her friend, it wouldn't leave her, it wouldn't ask her to write an explanation for her actions within the next hour, it wouldn't abandon her within the first term of their joint adventure at university to hang out with the group of 'dangerous' boys living in the house across the road. No, wine was here to stay, and she had made it feel more than welcome.

Jules cracked her knuckles, gripped her pen hard in her hand, and began to write. She scribbled notes down so fast that she wasn't even quite sure of what she was writing, just that words were filling the page and that at least made her feel good. Her music blasted soft sounds from her headphones, filling her ears with the tune of soothing music, in an effort to somehow reduce the monumental amount of stress piling up behind her eyes. Yet the music was having no effect, mainly due to the incessant tapping noise she could hear outside her window. The noise was tinny and almost rhythmic, 'tap...tap tap...tap', over and over again, time after time.

Jules got up from her bed with a heavy groan and angrily shuffled over to the window, pressing her head against the glass she peered out of the pane, yet nothing stared back from outside. She looked for a moment longer, the noise had stopped it seemed, so she went back to her bed and resumed her writing. As soon as her pen touched the paper however, the noise came back. Slightly louder and more irritating this time around, though maybe that was just the anger in her mind making it seem worse than it really was. She jumped up and stormed over to the window, this time being greeted by the sight of a visitor at her windowsill.

A crow sat at her window, tapping the glass with its ebony beak, staring back at her with beady eyes as if aware of what it was doing. Its feathers were wet and ruffled from the storm outside, they seemed to gleam with a damp sheen that reflected a light that wasn't there. Jules knocked on the glass with her knuckles, trying to scare the bird away; it stared at her, blank faced and confused, then tapped the window as if in reply.