One Whole Hour Ago

D/N · #1

Dr. Josiah "Mac" MacFarlane was enjoying tea in his office, a big man in his 50's with a greying beard and thick, theatrical hair he kept brushed backwards. MacFarlane was a clinical psychiatrist, and he looked like one. He dressed like one, preferring comfortable looking suits in earth tones. He spoke like a psychiatrist, his office was decorated as you'd expect it to be, and he treated his patients with an easygoing, slightly detached manner in the tradition of his profession. Mac enjoyed his job, and most of his patients liked him.

Or their parents did, and since he specialized in child and youth psychiatry, that was the important thing.

MacFarlane shared his office space with Dr. Edward "Eddie" Finch, who looked like David Schwimmer, wore turtlenecks, and claimed he had specialized in youth psychiatry because he felt it was very important to make a difference in young lives. Once, when Dr. Finch had told a particularly troubled youth that he was "really down with what's mackin' ya, buddy", the teenager had punched him in the throat. Dr. Finch constantly complained about his job to MacFarlane, and most of his patients disliked him.

As Mac sipped his tea and waited for his next appointment, he figured there was a lesson to be learned there.

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"Ah, CHRIST!"

Ugh, she needed to keep it down, lest she alert Doc Mac's steely receptionist.

Andrea Raymer had done a great many stupid things in her short life, so it wasn't like this was even in the top ten. But that didn't make it any LESS stupid. Even worse was the fact that she didn't really need a hit right now, and was acting out of some idiotic post-adolescent rebellion that might have been edgy when she was 14 Now that she was 17, it was just pretty sad. Ooooh, snorting in the psychiatrist's bathroom before the appointment, you're so damn dangerous, aren't you, little girl?

She pinched her left nostril shut and took a second snuff of the crushed powder up the opposite side, then wiped her hands and stared idly into the mirror. Well, at least she wasn't deluding herself. She was a 17-year-old girl who was snorting Ritalin before she got prescribed more meds from her shrink. Yeah, it was all a little bit pathetic. Sure, she got a better high, but she was fucking up her nasal cavities in the meantime, and it wasn't like it was that much of an improvement over just swallowing them.

Well, she considered, could be worse. Always look on the bright side. The first time she'd tried it she'd actually used a rolled up dollar bill, and now that was really pathetic, not just a little bit. It was one thing to stuff medication up your nose that had no right being there; it was another entirely to pretend you're Tony Montana while doing so. And hey, maybe come college she'd move on from this misguided teenage stage and either get her meds under control or have the guts to move on to coke and put something a bit more pleasant and sophisticated up her nose.

Andrea flushed the toilet and moved back to the waiting area to find Doc Mac's receptionist still at her desk.

"Dr. MacFarlane will see you now, Andrea."

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MacFarlane leaned back in his chair as Andrea entered with a grin on her face. He'd known Andrea for a long time, and although their meetings had become fairly rote, they still had a good rapport with each other. She slouched lazily in the armchair in the same matter as she had the last five years, her fingers playing with her black hair. It was a shame a pretty girl like Andrea felt the need to dump chemicals in her hair and stick metal in her face, but image consulting was not part of his treatment program, save obvious cases like self-mutilation or eating disorders.

"Andrea, good to see you."

"Same to you Doc, as always." She was in a good enough mood, but he could detect something in that tone and body language. "Just in for the usual chat, y'know, we do the talk therapy, get the updated uh, prescription, the dosage we've got now is still working good I think, then set up the next appointment, so nothing really earth-shattering in terms of stuff going on.

"I'm still doing good in school, aced my AP English essay and actually finished it a day early this time so I think that's uh, pretty good progress."

MacFarlane continued with his tea. "Mmmhm. That is good, Andrea. You're going to be graduating this spring, right. Have you decided where you're headed?"

"Eh, I dunno, Doc. I'm sorta considering taking a year off before I uh, commit myself anywhere. It's tough, y'know, I mean everyone seems to think that you hit senior year and somehow you like magically should know what you wanna do with your life right then and there." To Mac, she seemed a bit rattled by the question, as if trying to decide how much she wanted to actually give him.

"And... well I'm not trying to blame the fact that I don't know what I wanna do on having ADD or anything, but it can't really help, can it? Not everyone has their whole life planned out, I don't think everyone WANTS to have their whole life planned out when they're 17!"

She rolled her eyes before smiling again. "Plus if I uh, moved away then I'd have to set up meeting with some other doc and tell him all about myself, and he might be some kind of greasy sinister guy so I'd be pretty nervous about that."

MacFarlane smiled thinly back. "Well, you're not a child anymore Andrea, so that day is coming no matter what you do. But, I'm sure you'll do fine. And for your, uh, teenage identity problem if you'll let me call it that, that's nothing unusual, especially given people like yourself that don't like to feel pigeonholed in life..."

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He found himself thinking back as the appointment went on. Mac had first met with Andrea when she was 12. Her father David had been a fellow member at the country club, a place with overcharged fees and mediocre buffets, but a great golf course and an even better network of Twin Cities citizens. He'd probably treated half the club's kids for one reason or another, and found that half of those had just been typical cases of parents desperate to blame issues on disorders rather than disorganization at home. It was really no wonder that people looked down at members of his profession for over diagnosing kids, especially since it was always difficult to convince the parents of that.

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"So, your current prescription has run out. When did you finish the last refill?"

Her eyes flickered. "Yeah, I took the last pill yesterday, y'know right on schedule, just like the prescription says."

Mac grunted a response and made a process of fumbling in his desk for a pad as he considered. The girl was clearly fibbing a bit, as he'd expected. He'd been alerted by the shaking of her hands as she'd entered that she'd probably again blown through his prescription a couple days early. But she hadn't shown any other signs of long-term withdrawal, nor had she seemed too insincere during the course of their conversation. And it certainly wasn't as bad as it had been in the past.

MacFarlane had upgraded Andrea to Adderall XR two years ago when the effectiveness of her prior prescription began to wane, and he'd regretted it soon afterwards. Almost immediately she had begun rescheduling her sessions for earlier times, having used up the drug earlier than she should have. On their second session, she had come in two weeks early while cruising on several pills, and ridiculously claiming that she didn't think her current dosage wasn't potent enough.

At that point he'd almost dropped her entirely, but after delivering a rather harsh lecture and threat to do just that, he'd rescinded, and merely dropped her down to a single-use prescription, declaring that she'd better learn to take them as instructed if she wanted to keep them up. Andrea was remorseful if sullen that he wouldn't just toss her more pills, and it was a needed medication for her. Moreover, she'd still been dealing with the loss of David at the time.

That had been a hell of a thing. Mac had never been too close to David Raymer, but the mortician had been a familiar face around the club, the kind of guy you could hold a conversation about anything withm and the kind of guy it was nearly impossible to dislike. The news about his cancer had dulled a lot of spirits. Andrea had never wanted to discuss it too much with MacFarlane, which was entirely her business, of course. He was no grief counselor. But still, he knew enough to recognize that she'd had a lot of pain inside her.

So he had kept her on, and although since then there had been several cases like today where Andrea had given off signs of slight overuse, her prescriptions were always refilled on time and on schedule, and he'd relaxed his restrictions. So he wasn'g going to worry about today. Besides that, Andrea wasn't going to be his patient much longer. It was the time to start winding down their relationship rather than worrying about a pill or three.

Not to mention that his services didn't come cheap, of course. Dr. Finch, were he even astute enough to recognize the girl's subtle signs, would have probably blown things out of proportion and insisted on bringing the family in for one of his infamous "Group FEELINGS Sessions". Eddie Finch liked to capitalize words like FEELINGS. That was how people like him got punched in the throat and people like Mac could charge 30% more an hour than Finch did.

"Well then, that's good, Andrea. I'm glad to see you're keeping up things as instructed. Let me just get this finished out, and then you can be on your way."

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Andrea breathed out as she left the office. Doc Mac was a decent enough guy, but he made her freaking nervous at times, and she was pretty proud about getting through that meeting without him suspecting anything. Meh, she really didn't need to be this paranoid. He'd just nodded and bought her lines about finishing on time like he always did. She was like, the master of manipulation, or something. But still, being paranoid was kind of fun, imagining the worst that could happen should your indiscretions come to light. If Doc Mac knew she was snuffing up a drug that she hadn't been prescribed in years, well, he might..... be gravely disappointed? Or he might alert her mother, who might..... also be gravely disappointed.

Bah, she needed to imagine worse fates than that if she really wanted to justify her paranoia. Maybe they'd force her to see that weird David Schwimmer in a turtleneck-looking shrink in the other office. Now THAT was pretty scary.

In the privacy of the descending elevator, Andrea filed the prescription in her messenger bag alongside a motley collection of other pills and random stuff. Sure, the Ritalin and caffeine pills she traded the others for were excellent in a pinch, but they were supporting players. Doc Mac's prescriptions had the starring role in her pharmaceutical show, and she couldn't afford to be without those precious pills for too long.

Now, the rest of the day. Well, no better place to head to than the mall. Get her prescription filled at the drugstore, and meet up with that new kid later on to see what he had to barter. But first, she'd get herself a coffee or three.

(Andrea Raymer continued in The Alibi)