Roommate Thought Me Rich, Forced My Depression—I Went Wild

Neither of the two people in the dorm room moved. One didn't dare; the other was in too much pain to move. When Chubby got back from his morning run and saw a crowd gathered at the dorm entrance, he had a bad feeling. He quickly pulled out his keys and opened the door. Now the whole scene inside the room was in plain view for everyone. Boris forced a strained smile. "Felix, I just want you to keep your focus on your studies. There's really no need to blow up at me like this." He said nothing at all about how any of it had started. Chubby came in and hugged me. I pointed at his phone, my voice loud enough for the whole floor to hear. "What gives you the right to sell my medicine? Who said you could?" "Do you know that's the medicine that keeps me alive? Is a human life worth only five hundred dollars in your eyes?!" I dry-heaved, sick to my stomach. The way the people around us looked at him changed. "This girl's medicine got sold?" "What kind of snake of a roommate is that? How could anyone do something so heartless?" "If my life-saving medicine got sold, I'd be even crazier than him." Listening to the muttering around him, Boris went pale. He steadied himself. "Everyone, don't get the wrong idea. Felix is emotionally unstable. He doesn't even know what he's saying." "I saw him sleeping in class every morning, so as class president I just wanted to look out for him." The muttering around us died down a little. I want to die. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see, and dully my gaze settled on the railing across from me. We were on the second floor here, not like the fourth or fifth where there wasn't even an open spot to catch a breeze. I couldn't think it all through—my body was faster than my mind, and before anyone could react I already had one foot up over it. The air went silent for a second. Then it exploded. "Stop him!" "Call the teacher, hurry!" My body was rigid, and I'd only gotten one leg over before someone pulled me back down. Boris walked up to me, his face dark, and let loose on me. "What are you doing? Putting on a show for everyone? I asked you a couple of things about your studies, and you have to act like you're going to kill yourself?" "Is this any way to treat your parents?" He was rattled. He knew things had blown up, and he wanted to pin all of it on me. But he did get one thing right. I couldn't die. If I died, what would happen to my parents? Would I make them bury their own child? "I want to die." "No, I can't die. I have to live." The expressions of the people around him shifted. "He really does seem to be in a lot of pain." Tears running down my face, I forced out a smile. I looked at Boris. "Please, give me back my medicine. My parents scrimped and saved out of their own mouths to buy that for me." Drained, I sank down flat on the ground, as if bowing low to him. Chubby quickly helped me up and couldn't stop himself from shouting at Boris. "Haven't you done enough? I figured, since you were his roommate, at least you'd give the medicine back to Felix—but you actually sold it? Are you even human?!" Countless ways to die flashed through my mind, and I forced them back down. Now that I'd been given a second life, I couldn't fall here. I borrowed Chubby's phone and called my mom. "Mom..." "My medicine got sold." There was silence on the other end of the phone before my mom's voice came through. "Felix, is there anyone around you?" I handed the phone to Chubby. He took it. "Okay, ma'am, I'll keep an eye on him." After the call ended, Chubby gripped me even tighter. "Felix, your mom's on her way." The academic advisor came hurrying over, and that was exactly what he heard. His face went ashen. Once the parents knew, it wouldn't be easy to resolve this internally. If he handled this badly, his Outstanding Teacher award at the end of the year would be gone.

There was no time to think it over. He forced the onlookers watching the commotion to scatter. "What are you all crowding around for? Don't you have classes this morning?" Once most of them had left, he looked down at me. "Felix Coleman, what are you up to again?" Why "again"? Then I remembered. In my past life, I had asked the Advisor for help too. On the first day off my medication. This was what he had said: "Felix, honestly, I don't see any problem with you not taking your medicine. Your professor even said today that you finally stopped dozing off in class." His tone was full of the relief of having one less hassle. He thought it was a good thing that I wasn't taking my medication. With no hope of getting help, all I could do was beg Boris over and over to give my medicine back. As I felt worse and worse, I bought a lot of fruit knives and kept them in my drawer. But Boris was telling other people behind my back that I was faking it: "He goes on about how sick he is. If you ask me, he's putting it on, just fishing for sympathy." Another classmate let out a mocking laugh. Now I seemed to hear that laughter in my ears again. "Stop laughing." "I'm not faking it." "Give me my medicine. I need to take it." My teeth were chattering as I glared at Boris. "Sir, he's the one who sold my medicine." The Advisor looked over at Boris. Boris immediately fell back on the same old line: "Sir, I didn't sell his medicine. He was drowsy every morning. As class president, I was worried he'd fall behind and drag the class down, so I swapped it for vitamins." "Look, he's not drowsy anymore." "I was clearly doing it for his own good, but he hit me and trashed the dorm room." Boris sounded so wronged, as if he really did care about me. The Advisor frowned at me. "There's nothing wrong with what he did, either. Don't think you can relax just because you're in college. You're a student, and studying comes first. As for the rest, can't you just push through it?" In my past life, I tried to push through. And then I died. My fingernails dug deep into my wrist, as if to tear the veins open. Boris glanced around and moved to come pull me up. I broke down. "Get away!" "Thief!" "You sold my medicine!" I saw Boris's phone lying on the table, snatched it up, and clutched it tight. Tears fell in big drops. Looking at the money transfer record in his chat app, I felt like I'd grabbed a lifeline, and pressed the voice-message button. "Can you please give me my medicine back?" "I'll pay. Any amount, it doesn't matter." "Without the medicine I'm going to die." Boris shouted: "Felix Coleman, what are you sending from my phone?" He panicked, and ignoring the Advisor standing right there, lunged forward to grab the phone. Chubby didn't give him the chance. He stepped in front of me. "Can you stop setting him off? If something happens to him, you're a murderer!" "And you'd be an accomplice!" He said that last line looking straight at the Advisor. Once those words were out, the Advisor couldn't just stand there and let Boris go at me either. He stepped aside to make a phone call, his voice urgent. I curled up in the corner, dragging my fingernails across my wrist, over and over. Both arms were covered in cut marks, so many and so dense it was frightening. Chubby held my hands to keep me from hurting myself, and stayed there beside me. "Felix, your mom's almost here. Hang on." The Advisor called several people over. But no matter how they tried to talk me down, I didn't budge. I was waiting for my mom. There was nothing they could do but close the dorm door so fewer people would see. My mother arrived two hours later. With a police officer. She was drenched in sweat from running, and when she saw the state I was in, she nearly tripped on her bad leg. "Felix!" She couldn't crouch down, so she just sat on the floor and pulled up my sleeve to look at my wrist. Seeing all the extra cut marks, her eyes went red with heartache. "It's okay. Mom's here. Don't be scared, don't be scared." In my mother's arms I felt safe, and everything I'd held in came rushing up like a tide. "Mom, he sold my medicine." "He said I'm not sick, that I'm just being dramatic." "Mom, I'm not. It really hurts."

Mom didn't even look at them. Instead, she turned to the police officer and said: "You saw it yourselves. Someone here is deliberately trying to commit murder." The Advisor swallowed hard. Boris was swaying on his feet, close to collapse. Mom stared at Boris with a heavy gaze and pointed at him: "I will not let you get away with this." "You dared to sell a depression patient's medication—you murderer." The police were about to photograph and document the evidence, but Mom took me to the hospital first for emergency treatment of my condition. The Advisor tagged along with a forced smile. Mom pulled out my old medical chart with practiced ease, and the doctor's expression turned serious the moment he glanced at it. "This is the newest antidepressant. You can't buy this in the country, can you? The withdrawal from this drug is no small thing." Mom nodded. I added in a low voice: "Other medications don't work well for me. Only this one does." The Advisor suddenly spoke up from the side: "Withdrawal? How bad can withdrawal be just from not taking your meds?" The doctor gave him a look. "If you stop this drug abruptly, the negative thoughts it was suppressing come back many times over. Clinically, plenty of people have died from going off this medication." When I first started taking this drug, Mom had already warned me that I could absolutely never stop. Even if my condition improved and I needed to lower the dose, it would have to be done as an inpatient at the hospital. If she could have, she wouldn't have wanted me on a drug this dangerous, but there was no other way—every treatment available in the country had already been tried. Mom had brought me to the hospital for two reasons: first, to urgently treat my condition, and second, to collect evidence. We were already very practiced at this kind of thing. When the Advisor heard me say I'd been off my medication for three days and that seeking help from the teacher had gotten me nowhere, he cut me off again. "You can't write the medical chart like that..." I watched him quietly. "Didn't I tell you my medication had been switched?" "Didn't I say that I felt terrible once I ran out, and ask you to help me get it back?" "Didn't you refuse?" "You said, 'You seem fine without the medication.'" As my words landed, the doctor's hands paused over the keyboard, then came down hard again. Doctors are very careful when a dispute is involved. But psychiatric charts just record whatever the patient says—very plain, very easy to understand. In the recommendation section of the outpatient chart, the doctor wrote: "Given the patient's strong thoughts of self-harm and suicide, and considering the special nature of the medication, it is recommended that the medication be taken as prescribed and not stopped rashly." "Should the medication be stopped, prompt medical attention is advised." The doctor prescribed a temporary supply. The Advisor's face went grim, and he made a phone call to report what had happened here. Funny. When I'd run out of medication, he hadn't tried to fix it. The moment it involved him, though, he pulled out every trick he had. After taking the medication, I felt drowsy, and Mom told me to sleep. By the time I woke up, the police and the school administrators had been waiting for a long while. Seeing so many people, I felt instinctively scared, and Mom gently comforted me. "Felix, the police are just here to take a statement. They're here to help us." The officer was holding the outpatient chart, reading it very carefully. "You discovered three days ago that your medication had been swapped out for vitamins?" I nodded. "Why didn't you tell your parents?" I lowered my head, and only after a long moment did I answer: "This medicine is hard to get. You can only buy it in the Harborview District, and only a half-month supply at a time. I was afraid my parents would worry, so I told the teacher first." The officer kept his voice soft, asking his questions one by one, but the school administrators' faces grew uglier and uglier. Beads of sweat the size of soybeans rolled down the Advisor's forehead, but under the officer's warning glare, he didn't dare cut in. When they got to how I discovered the medication had been sold, I finally produced Boris's phone. The officer told Boris to unlock the phone. Boris unlocked it in a daze. The officer's sharp eyes fixed on Boris: "What's this about? You just said Felix was mistaken." Boris tried to explain, but he'd barely gotten out a single word when a panicked voice came from outside the door. "Officer, someone sold this to me—I didn't know it wasn't his medication!"