Chapter 8- Heart Attack
I waited for Ashley, as she dragged mourning Nicole down the hill, and finally they, both with unwillingness, parted from the woods. I resumed my search, but it was too dark, and I could not hear any water cascading sound, or any traces of water or moisture (the ground was cracking hard!), so I plucked some wild berries from a tree, not caring whether it was a poison berry or not, and the next morning I woke up quite alive, with a bitter berry taste in my mouth, the hunger quite huge enough to disturb me greatly.
I glanced at my watch. It was about eight in the morning of a Saturday- Mr. Smith would be not working, in his office, studying further.
Mr. Smith watched me with amusement as I finished three plates of bacons, eggs and buttered toast, along with a bottle of dark coffee, water dripping down my hair from a recent shower down, soaking the back of my patient shirt.
I had come and asked him for some food because I really could not take the hunger, but he had insisted on treating tuberculosis, and threatened to strap me down and force it.
In the end I raised a white flag in surrender, and for the time being he lent me his bathroom and gave me all the food I needed- he said don’t worry, for the food was provided for the doctor from the hospital itself.
“So until when are you going to hide from them?” he said, his eyes pinching in worry.
“Not exactly,” I mumbled, having another helping. “I’m not a child anymore. I’m going to live alone.”
“Living alone and running away and living alone are different,” he said, rolling his eyes in a not-so-doctor way.
“It’s just that I’m not so useful, so I figured out no one would want me anymore. So I left, so that it would be more convenient,” I said, sinking my teeth into the bread. “Nicole is upset because I increased Erica’s growth- I told you just now- and she sort of wants to divorce with me. We almost did, and I agreed, and I told her about an amiable man to re-marry, but we had no time to divorce in the hubbub and all the things going on.”
“Nicole wants divorce?” thundered Mr. Smith. “She…what? She hates you?”
“Yeah. She sort of…is sick of me, I guess- like, she knows what a terrible creature I am,” I said, shrugging painfully, forcing a smile, but in vain.
“Come on, Charles,” he coaxed, but I would not let him to the pep talk- that’d make me burst into tears like a child.
“How about we just watch ‘Batman’? They say it’s good,” I said, giving him a strained and awkward smile, and took the remote control, which he seized, shaking his head.
“Listen. Psychologically you are sick as well- your self-esteem is so low.”
“I don’t need higher esteem, sir. I am already arrogant enough,” I laughed bitterly. “Perhaps to an overly modest person it is needed, but I am not at all modest. I’m the prince of arrogance and ice, remember?”
He bit his lip. “You’re degrading your own character. You think you will feel better that way, but you aren’t. You’re just swallowing down the pain, hiding it, and not showing it. You want to be appear as an arrogant and a selfish person- but you aren’t.”
“Aren’t! Aren’t, you say, Mr. Smith? Then maybe people would have loved me a lot more- more people would have,” I sputtered, tears springing in my eyes- but I swallowed down back coldly. “Yes, how do you know? Are you a psychological doctor as well? No one loves me, so what’s the point of…of- those modest speeches and flatteries and modesty that only two-faced people do? What’s the point of doing it when all the same people detest you?”
