Lionel shook my hand off and turned his back to me. A long silence passed before he spoke.
"Where there's smoke, there's fire. You and him were probably sleeping together!"
Rage churned in my chest, burning so hot my throat seized.
Then the familiar pain ripped through my stomach, sharp as a blade.
I doubled over, retching, but nothing came up except bile.
Lionel's hand moved toward my back.
Fay's voice cut him short.
She picked up the report I'd dropped.
"So it really was you who asked my friend to fake a medical record!"
Lionel took the report from her.
Moira Swanson, followed by the words confirmed: stomach cancer. His eyes flinched.
He turned to Fay, his expression stone-cold.
"What are you talking about?"
Fay glanced at me with a look of rehearsed reluctance.
"The doctor is a friend of mine from school. She told me someone named Moira Swanson came in today asking her to fabricate a diagnosis. I assumed it was just someone with the same name, but..."
"Dr. Dickerson, please don't be angry. She probably just wanted your attention!"
With every word out of Fay's mouth, Lionel's face darkened another shade.
His hand closed around my throat.
"Moira Swanson. You faked a cancer diagnosis just to drag me home?"
His grip tightened until my face turned purple, and only then did he fling me aside.
I collapsed on the floor, gasping, swallowing air in desperate gulps.
Lionel stood over me, looking down with a cold sneer.
"Fine. I'll go home tonight, just like you wanted."
"And you. Stay here and think about what you've done."
He confiscated my phone and dragged me into the break room.
The cramped space still reeked of what he and Fay had done in there. I choked back the acid rising in my throat and begged.
"Lionel, don't leave me in here. You know I have—"
I grabbed the leg of his pants. He kicked me off.
"Claustrophobia. Yeah."
"You played me, Moira. This is your punishment."
"Lionel, I didn't lie to you. I really do have stomach cancer!"
I scrambled toward the door on my hands and knees. He'd already locked it and walked away with Fay on his arm.
Half a minute later, someone cut the power on his orders. The entire building went black.
I held on by the sliver of moonlight leaking through the window, barely lasting until the small hours.
Then the wind picked up outside. Branches clawed at the glass. Thunder cracked overhead.
A bolt of lightning split the sky and snapped something inside me.
One command pounded through my skull: run. Get out.
I clawed at the door seam with my fingernails. I slammed my head against the door.
All night long.
When Lionel opened the door in the morning, I was still repeating the motion, mechanical, empty.
"Moira. Have you learned your lesson?"
He tilted my chin up.
His eyes were threaded with red.
And in those pupils I saw myself: skull cracked open, blood matting my hair, wrecked beyond recognition.
"Don't ever bring up college again. Fay's career is just getting started. If you ruin her, I will ruin you."
"Remember: she is nothing like you."
I stared at the disgust in his eyes and laughed. A thin, hollow sound.
Lionel must have forgotten. I really was nothing like Fay.
Fay had barely scraped past the admission cutoff. I was the department's star candidate.
And Fay destroyed all of it.
When every appeal was denied, I took a scalpel and went looking for her. Lionel stopped me.
His eyes were bloodshot, and he held me with a stubbornness that wouldn't let go.
"Moira, don't do this! You can't throw away your life over someone that worthless!"
"Give me a chance. I'll fulfill your dream of medicine for you."
He proposed to me right there in front of the entire school, ignoring the laughter and the whispers.
And I drowned in his promise.
