"Just relax, it might hurt for just a second but as soon as it's in you won't even feel it."
"I'm scared, you know I'm scared. Please just stop talking and do it."
"This isn't your first time is it?"
"Well, no... but the thought of it still grosses me out."
"Just take a deep breath and I'll pop it in real easy and we'll be done before you know it."
She winced as the needle stuck in her arm and the doctor tried to suppress a smirk.
"See, that wasn't so bad, was it? You were very brave."
"Don't patronise me, Darren."
"I'm sorry to hear about Andy, by the way. I'm sure he'll turn up soon. You know how men are; they say they're going out for one quiet beer with their mates and don't come home for days without giving you so much as a text."
"It's been three weeks. Nobody knows where he is. You aren't helping. Are we done here?"
The doctor placed a vial of Stephanie's blood in the rack next to him and nodded with raised eyebrows.
"Yeah we're done. You'll get a call within the next seven days with your results.
"That's what I thought. Your fly is undone, by the way."
Stephanie stood up and left the room as the doctor fumbled around his trousers. He sighed when he found his zip securely fastened.
"Mum, I can't talk right now, I'm driving back from the hospital. Yeah he's fine, still an arse. Okay. Yes okay. Okay. Yes. Okay. Will do. Yes. Okay. Bye mum. Bye. Yeah I will. Bye. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Bye. Bye."
She hung up the phone and tossed it onto the empty passenger's seat next to her. She turned on the radio to check for traffic updates but punched the off button before the newsreader could finish the words "missing person". She had heard nothing else for almost a month, and it angered her how even with all this incessant talk about Andy, nobody was making any real effort to find him. She made a left turn about three miles away from home and parked across two spaces outside The Clock Tower pub. Halfway through her second pint of cheap, watered-down lager, she overheard a conversation from across the bar.
"... woods down by the quarry. I always tell my kids not to go there. It's a dangerous place even without all the pikeys and smackheads."
"Such a shame. He was a good kid, heard he was gearing up to do his PhD. The missus is worried about his young girlfriend. Can't imagine what she must be going through. We just hope they find the body soon so she can get some closure and stop wondering."
Stephanie slammed her drink down on the bar and soaked the already sticky wood with an eruption of lukewarm beer. She spun around to face the two men and prepared herself to loudly berate them in front of all the other punters, drunks and lost souls. Before any words escaped her lips, she felt her lip tremble as her vision blurred from wet eyes and found herself not shouting in a rage, but speaking slowly and almost inaudibly.
"How dare you talk like he's dead. Imagine your poor son disappears, or your wife, or that bloody cat you love so much and not even a month later, everybody's talking about what they were and how it's such a terrible thing they're gone forever but none of you have any intention of actually doing something, do you? All you want is something to chat about in the pub or over breakfast that, for a moment, makes you think your own lives arent quite as shit and meaningless and empty as they are, and maybe you have something to be grateful for after all. Well, good news. Everybody has problems and I can guarantee that most people have to deal with far worse situations than your wife putting on a little weight. She's enjoying herself, just let her be happy and keep loving her while you can because one day you're gonna wake up and she won't be there. Just be glad it'll probably happen when you're 87 and not when you were 24. Let me be scared and angry for the man I love without making me the subject of your vacuous gawping and leave me and my life well alone before I promote your wife to be this town's newest widow."
