Control
Disclaimer: they're not mine and never will be. I am just using them for the purpose of this story.
It was about control. That was why she was here. That was why she spent all day in a starched white coat in a room with barred windows. She was in control. Of herself. Of them. Yes she was in control of every man who came through her door in their standard issue blues and greys. They did what she told them to and she in turn ignored their roving eyes, their dirty talk, their degrading nicknames. She ignored them and did her job. Because that as all it was. A job
If anyone asked she said it was because she wanted to help. 'be the change you want to see in the world'. It was a mantra she chanted over and over in her head but it meant nothing to her. She had this job because when she had taken it her options had been limited. No one wanted a doctor working for them who stole from the drug room to feed her own habit. The job as physician in Fox River prison had been the only job offer in a long time. She didn't care who she treated. Cons had the same anatomy as everyone else and, at the end of the day it was their bodies she treated not their minds. It was a job and someone had to do it. Why not her?
The job had the usual benefits of course - good pay, relatively decent working hours, the same patients. And then the not so usual benefits like the unexpected father figure she had found in Pope not to mention the fact that her job angered her own father very much. Okay so it wasn't much of a benefit but she sure as hell got some form of twisted satisfaction out of his frustration. Much like the satisfaction she got out of slamming the phone receiver into the cradle after another row with him in which she told him that no, she would not quit her job.
What was it about him that angered her so much? She knew it was a number of things all rolled up into a little package - the fact that he couldn't be proud of her for instance. The fact that he was never around, that he didn't seem to care at all, that he had abandoned her. Emotionally anyway. She should be used to being abandoned by now. Her father, that uncle who had taken her to the park when she was younger and had consequently forgotten to take her home with him, the guy she had taken to her prom who had ditched her for a blonde classmate with blonde hair and piercing green eyes. And then there were her boyfriends. Every single one of them had used her. Had used her for her key to the drugs cabinet. And she had let them. She had stupidly believed thought they would love her more if she stole morphine for them. Deep down she had probably know they only wanted her for one thing. But she had buried that little part of her. It probably related back to her fear of being alone for the rest of her life. But now that little part of her had resurfaced. It was in control now. It was that part that never saw past the handcuffs of each inmate she had to examine. As moral as she liked to think herself she still saw the handcuffs as a brand. A brand that told her these men were all wrong for her. She labelled them as they walked through the door and entered her little world where control reigned - thief, murderer, rapist. And she never looked past the label. If all she saw was a crime then she couldn't see the reasons behind it. If she pictured the shopkeepers who stared down the barrels of guns rather than the child whose father had gone to steal food for then she would be safe. It was all about control.
So why was she here? If she was so in control then why was she here? Here staring at the wall of her apartment through hazy eyes. Her eyelids were heavy and for some reason she found herself fighting to keep them open. Why? Why bother? There was nothing interesting within her line of sight. Why fight? This is what she wanted. To close her eyes and turn her back on this cruel world. Maybe it was about control?
Hell it had nothing to do with control and she knew it. She had lost her grip on control the second he had walked through her door, his hands in his pockets and a long sleeve t-shirt covering the tattoos she didn't yet know existed. One look from him, one cheeky smile and she was a goner. The label she had tried to pin on him hadn't stuck and she had found herself hiding behind her white coat and all the rules that went with it. Rules she hadn't given a damn about before. Control flew right out the barred window. And, it seemed, he was intent on flying right out after it. He had been in control. All the time. Everything he did was planned to the extreme. Every glitch sorted out and smoothed over. Was she a glitch or just a pawn? The Key. That was what she was. If she was the key then why couldn't she escape? Why did she have to claw her way back out of his eyes every time he so much as looked at her? Why did she mark his appointments in a different colour so she knew at a glance when he was going to come for his shot (not that she didn't already memorise the time)? Why, oh why had she let him kiss her and why in the hell was that stupid flower clasped loosely in her hand? Its red petal worn from her fingering the paper. She could feel it slipping from her grasp but she was too weak to tighten her hold. Morphine did that to you. Tears slipped from her eyes as she felt the paper leaving her hand as it fell to the hard wooden floor. She closed her eyes to blink back the tears.
And she never opened them again.