"So, Doc-tor," I intentionally exaggerated the syllables, letting them float up in the air between us. "What is suicide?"

 He looked at me for a moment, then back at the notebook in his lap. "You know what it is," he said dismissively. "It's what you tried to do when you swallowed a bottle of pills."

It was a sunny day, and I was generally annoyed with being cooped up in the hospital - a situation that was exacerbated by the fact that I had to spend an entire hour talking with a man about my problems. Maybe I thought he shouldn't be an asshole, and act as though I should already know all the answers to my own questions. Could have been that he was assuming I was just being a smart alec teen. Didn't matter at that point. I just wanted away from him.

I put my head down, and let my hair fall down so it covered my eyes - all the better to spy on him. Then I let a long, exasperated sigh escape my lips, watching for the inevitable glance over his spectacles.  Right when he looked my way, I casually lifted my legs from the floor, twisted in my chair, and let my legs drop over the arm of the chair. I smiled for a moment, knowing he couldn't see through my hair. Bingo! So Sulking Sara was right. His eyes nearly popped out of his skull as they slowly scanned my bare legs from ankles to thighs - even better when I realized he had to be fighting himself a little to keep from letting his eyes wander higher. She'd told me he was a Freudian, and he lusted after all the teen girls he treated. Honestly didn't believe her - what person in their right mind would believe a girl that insisted she was about to have a baby any day while she was still a virgin and thin as a rail? Oh yeah, none of us were in our right minds, or we wouldn't have been there.

He looked down quickly, and cleared his throat. "Why are you here?"

Not ready to give it up, "What is suicide?" My reply was sullen, and I knew immediately that I'd gotten him.

"It's giving up on life." His voice was soft, and almost sounded like he was capable of feeling - something I'd never seen before from him.

I flung my head back, getting my hair away from my face, and stared silently at my knees for a few moments. He gave me a legitimate answer, but it still didn't seem right to me.

"No," I said quietly.

I knew he looked up at me, but I didn't make a move to acknowledge it. The room was getting smaller, and I could sense how close he was - I'd always be able to sense precisely how close any man that had even the slightest prurient interest in me was for the rest of my life. Some scars are useful.

 "It's not giving up on life," I whispered. "It's trying to kill the pain."

His notebook fell to the floor, and we both stared at each other like deer caught in headlights. He cleared his throat again, adjusted his shirt and pants, and bent over to retrieve the notebook. I'd only talk to him one more time, and then it would be to make all the important promises - "No, I won't do anything to harm myself again, Doctor." He never did find out why I downed 75 aspirin, at least not until I ran into him years later.

Fifteen years later, I was sitting in my living room, trying to sleep for at least a little while. We were keeping vigil, as my father lay dying on a hospital bed in our house. Hospice left us with an ample supply of Morphine, and business cards to call them if we needed a break. Just as I started to drift off, he started moving in his bed.  As I stood up to go to his bedside, the moaning started - that's all there was. Not a word had passed from his lips in days.

I picked up the little brown bottle off a table on my way to his bed. As I opened the bottle, I looked at him - really looked at him. Fifteen years earlier, what he'd done to me pushed me to the point of not wanting to face another day on earth. For fifteen years I'd run in circles trying to escape what he'd made me. I looked as I knew the pain he was in was increasing by the second. It was 9 o'clock in the morning, and I knew that no one would be around for at least an hour. I stood there, silently watching him as the time ticked along - five minutes, ten, fifteen. The idea had settled itself in my mind, and the only thing that bothered me was that I knew he couldn't say anything in reply. I went up to his bed, and leaned over so I could whisper in his ear.

"Fifteen minutes. I stood here watching you in pain, holding your medication," I whispered as I put the Morphine dropper to his mouth. "One minute for each of the years since I tried to kill myself. We are even now. I told you before that I'd forgiven you. Now, maybe after enough time, I'll be able to get close to forgetting."

He lived for only a couple days more. The death certificate claimed one medical problem or another as the cause, but I know it was the liquid from the little brown bottles that I kept dropping in his mouth each time he seemed to be stirring in pain. I wasn't in the room when he took his last breath, but I closed his eyes for the last time. It's been close to ten years since then, and blessedly, I've begun to forget the minute details of what he'd done to me. I don't expect my memory of that time will ever be wiped clean. I also don't expect anyone to understand how I could go from giving fifteen minutes of pain, to hanging at his bedside until just a couple hours before he died to keep him from suffering. I just know in spite of everything, I still loved him.