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Back Going Under Save as PDF
Chapters (70)
  1. COVER PAGE
  2. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  3. DEDICATION
  4. PROLOGUE
  5. PART I BIRTH
  6. ONE
  7. TWO
  8. THREE
  9. FOUR
  10. FIVE
  11. SIX
  12. SEVEN
  13. EIGHT
  14. NINE
  15. TEN
  16. ELEVEN
  17. TWELVE
  18. THIRTEEN
  19. FOURTEEN
  20. FIFTEEN
  21. PART II LIFE
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. EIGHTEEN
  25. NINETEEN
  26. TWENTY
  27. TWENTY-ONE
  28. TWENTY-TWO
  29. TWENTY-THREE
  30. TWENTY-FOUR
  31. TWENTY-FIVE
  32. TWENTY-SIX
  33. TWENTY-SEVEN
  34. TWENTY-EIGHT
  35. TWENTY-NINE
  36. THIRTY
  37. THIRTY-ONE
  38. THIRTY-TWO
  39. THIRTY-THREE
  40. THIRTY-FOUR
  41. PART III DEATH
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. THIRTY-EIGHT
  46. THIRTY-NINE
  47. FORTY
  48. FORTY-ONE
  49. FORTY-TWO
  50. FORTY-THREE
  51. FORTY-FOUR
  52. FORTY-FIVE
  53. FORTY-SIX
  54. FORTY-SEVEN
  55. FORTY-EIGHT
  56. FORTY-NINE
  57. FIFTY
  58. FIFTY-ONE
  59. FIFTY-TWO
  60. FIFTY-THREE
  61. FIFTY-FOUR
  62. FIFTY-FIVE
  63. FIFTY-SIX
  64. FIFTY-SEVEN
  65. FIFTY-EIGHT
  66. FIFTY-NINE
  67. SIXTY
  68. EPILOGUE
  69. AUTHOR’S NOTE
  70. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It starts the day you begin ignoring situations and your normal responses to them because you exist inside a system which tells you that you have to be tougher. You’re dehumanising yourself and everyone around you to survive it, holding on to the mirage of finishing specialty training, of finally ‘making it’, whatever that even means. Then you meet yourself on the final day, the day you find that you’re waking up, thinking today is the day you’re going to throw yourself in front of a moving bus. We spend all our time trying to avoid death, but in the end for some of us death is the only way we can feel alive. Sex doesn’t work. The only sex Rachel was having was the kind that wasn’t even sex. It was just one step closer to the deafening silence.

When he started having a crack at me I was almost flattered at first. He’s a qualified surgeon, he’d passed his exams and he has a public appointment—he has everything that I wanted, and I thought maybe because of that I wanted him. But I didn’t want him, I’d only wanted what he had. When I realised that I wanted it to stop, by then it was too late. That night when I saw you, I saw myself through your eyes and I was so ashamed that I couldn’t really face you anymore. I hated everything that I had become, but by then I didn’t know what else I could do. I’d spent so many years of my life dedicated to getting this far that I didn’t have anything else. I can barely have a conversation with my parents, let alone try for another career path. Surgery is everything, it is everything, and without it I have nothing. I am nothing.

He wouldn’t leave me alone. If I didn’t sleep with him, he told me, he’d give me a bad reference. And without a good reference from my direct supervisor, you and I both know I’d be screwed. I don’t want to move to the middle of nowhere and be a shithouse surgeon because I couldn’t make it here. In the end, if I had to give him a few blow jobs, so be it, I decided. I’d finish my term and move on and then I wouldn’t have to think about it ever again. I mean, people have done worse things to get to where they want to be.

People have done worse things to get to where they want to be. The truth of the statement makes me wince. The conscious realisation that her experience was probably just the tip of a very large and very well-hidden iceberg shudders through my heart.