"The world was on fire and no-one could save me, but you

It's strange what desire will make foolish people do

I'd never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you

No I'd never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you"

~"Wicked Games", RAIGN

...

Benjamin pulled into the In-N-Out parking lot and parked next to a group of teenagers.

He decided on a burger for dinner because he’d forgotten to do grocery shopping over the weekend. Between his Friday night hanging out with Elena and his Saturday crashing over at Sherry’s apartment, he didn’t even see his weekend disappear.

He grabbed his phone and wallet and stepped out of the car. He was halfway to the door when he realized that the group of teenagers had stopped talking. He looked back at them to see they were all eyeing him appreciatively and giggling among themselves. Gritting his teeth, he fought the urge to roll his eyes.

Ugh.

He ordered his meal and took a seat at the nearest table. He regretted his decision to dine in when he felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He looked up to find one of the girls from the giggling group standing by him.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“Hi. My name is Jessica. My friend Carla,” she pointed to the group outside where the other four girls stood waiting, “...She’s the one with the PINK sweater, she wanted you to know that she thinks you’re very attractive. She wanted you to have this.” He blinked when the girl dropped a folded sticky note in front of him. “She said to call her.”

He felt his eyebrows rising up to his hairline, could feel his face heat up a little.

“Uh, can you tell your friend, Darla—”

“Carla.”

“Can you tell your friend Carla, that I apologize but I’m not interested.” He tried to be nice, but he didn’t smile. He hoped she got the hint. They were teenagers for fucks sake.

“Oh. Ah...” the girl bit her lip and looked back at the group through the window. “She’s a really nice girl. She’s not crazy or anything.” She offered.

With a sigh, he shook his head again. “I’m sorry, but how old are you?”

“F-fifteen,” she stuttered out. She was beginning to regret being the messenger.

“Okay, and how old is your friend?”

“Oh, she’s seventeen!” Like that made it any better.

“Tell your friend that I don’t date girls who were barely alive when I was in high school. Please, with all due respect, you guys should be focusing on school, not guys.” He added with a scowl. He didn’t want to be rude. He hated being hateful. But he was already upset from Elena’s aloofness to Sherry’s moods and everything in between.

The girl flushed bright red and nodded. She gave him a last look before turning and speeding out of the place. He could see the other girls huddle around her, asking her for an update, and then they all turned to him with wide eyes and shock. He glared at them and they all started across the parking lot looking frazzled.

He went to ask for a paper bag for his food and decided to drive home instead. He hadn't noticed the sticky hanging off his bags until he was close to the door. He yanked it off, handing it to some nerdy looking kid with glasses sitting by himself at a table. He had a comic book opened and Ben planted the sticky on the top page. "Here, I think you'd appreciated it. Her name is Carla, she's seventeen, and apparently looking for a boyfriend." The kid looked confused as he opened the sticky and found the number. Ben nodded towards the group of girls waiting to cross the street. "She's the one with the PINK sweater."

....

“Maybe instead of sitting around just playing on that stupid cube of yours, you should figure out what you’re doing with your life.”

“I know what I'm doing.”

“Oh, yeah, what? Fucking around with girls and wasting your time hanging around with that useless friend of yours? Caden.”

“His name is Caleb. He’s more useful than you,” Ben muttered the last part to himself. His father had come barging in to his room only to scream at him again. This was the daily routine. He’d go to work in the morning and come home already angry, ready to scream at Ben for whatever reason or idea he’d thought of during the day.

Today it was about the Gamecube his mother had gotten him for his birthday.

“I really wish your mother would stop buying you useless things. It’ll just rot your brain and make you even more useless. I should make you come to work with me instead.” Ben rolled his eyes at that. There was no way that he would go work with his father. He hated business. He hated all the competition that went with it. And he didn’t care about no damn berries. His father worked at Caleb’s grandfather’s company, and he had already been told that if Ben ever wanted to go into business, he’d be welcomed there. “Seriously, you need to figure out what you’re doing after high school because I'm not going to have you lounging around here doing nothing. Money doesn’t grow on trees and don’t expect to be receiving money from me freely.”

“I’m going to medical school.” Ben said with a shrug. He didn’t even look at his father who was still standing by the doorway. “I’m going to be a doctor.”

“Ha! A doctor? You need brains for that!” His dad scoffed.

“Which is why I'm not going into business,” Ben said calmly. “It would be a waste to go into business.”

“You need the grades and dedication for medical school.”

“I know.”

“What dedication do you have? Besides fucking around with girls? Your mother nearly had an aneurysm when she found you on the couch with that one girl.”

Ben flushed. Yeah, he felt bad about that. For his mother’s sake (he gave no shit about what his father thought of him) he stopped bringing girls home. Whatever shit he was up to, he kept outside of the house. He loved his mother enough to not do stupid things in her presence.

“Yeah, well you’re one to talk about dedication.” Ben muttered. Yeah, he knew the old man was cheating on his mother with his secretary. “Maybe my dedication was a gene I got from you.” He didn’t see his dad’s hand coming but he felt it when he smacked him across the head. Dazed for a moment, Ben finally looked at his father.

“You shut your whore mouth, kid. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Urging his embarrassment to turn into anger, he glared at his father. “Oh, yeah? But you see, if I'm fucking around it’s not a problem because I'm fucking single, and at least they're my age."

His father glared right back at him. “You don’t know anything. You're going to be as useless as your mother, mark my words.”

Head held high, Ben gave his father his widest smirk.

“I’m going to get into medical school. I’m going to become a doctor. And when I have that license in my hand, I’ll send you a plaque with my name on it and the letters MD right after the last name.” He would. Fuck it if he would let his old man win. “You mark my words.”

His father raised an eyebrow and smirked.

“I’ll be waiting then.” With that, he turned and slammed out of Ben’s room.

When he knew that his parents had gone to bed and he’d made sure that his mother wouldn’t be coming back into his room to check on him, Ben pulled out a small box from the back of his closet.

Sitting down on the floor by his bed, he pulled a black shirt from his dresser and opened the box. Pulling his long sleeve up to his elbow, he pulled a blade from out the box.

It didn’t hurt anymore. He barely registered the stinging of the metal point against his skin. The drag of it.

He watched the drop of red slide down the side of his arm to the black shirt underneath it. One line for the one smack across the head from his father.

One line for one year left of living in this hell hole.

.....

Ben woke with a start, breathing heavily, his right hand reaching to touch his left arm.

“Shit.” It was burning. Fucking hell. Shit.

He laid back against his pillows again. What the actual fuck was that?

It’s been years, years since he’d remembered that.

Why now? He had touched his arm expecting the warmth of liquid against his fingertips and was almost surprised that there wasn't any when he'd looked at his hand. "I'm not that anymore. That's the past. That's not going to happen again. The bastard. Fuck! 

The strange way that Elena was acting and his relationship with Sherry was acting up on him. He hadn't thought about those memories in years.

He wasn't the same anymore, he wasn't. He refused to go back to that.

It was another hours before he was able to fall back asleep. 

...

When Elena walked into the building the next morning the first person that she ran into was Dr. Ross. 

She stared at him for a moment, seeing the dark tired bags under his eyes. He hadn't looked like that yesterday when she'd seen him. He looked tired and a little annoyed.

She debated whether to talk to him or keep walking.

"Good morning, Dr. Ross."

He looked up at her, "Oh hey, morning. How are you feeling today?"

She bit her lip, "Probably better than you probably do. Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Why are you asking?" He yawned and stretched. 

"You look like shit." Shit. That just came out.

Caught off guard, he blinked at her. Then started laughing. He was grinning when he spoke again. "Thank you, I needed that. Hey, I just remembered something crazy the other day."

"What is it?" She was the first one at the station that morning so she went and started all the laptops and desk computers. 

"You were at Caleb's and Melanie's wedding last September, weren't you? Remember, we met there." He was still grinning as he leaned against one of the counters. Elena thought for a moment.

"Oh, yeah. You're right." He had tried hitting on her then, except that she'd panicked an acted like a bitch to him. Once Melanie had come over to say hello, she'd walked off and left him hanging. "You know Caleb then?"

"Yeah, he's my best friend, actually. We grew up together. I used to hang out at his house all the time."

"I've heard that his mother is a real... special lady." Elena commented as she walked down the hallway to check some rooms and fridges. He followed her along, with a nod.

"Yes. I used to call her the dragon. When she was pissed off, it was as if fire was coming out her mouth. I don't know if she's changed, I haven't seen her in a couple years, and I don't want to." Caleb, always the joker, hadn't really cared about his mother's tantrums. It always seemed as if her words would just roll over him and not even touch him.

"I've heard stories from the other nurses. I guess she used to visit her son when he was still practicing here. Dr. Dale?"

"Oh, yeah. Jared. Apparently, she kept trying to boss him around."

"I heard he is also kind of...special." Elena glanced up at the doctor as she pulled down some paper for the tall bed.

"Nah. He just had a hard time with being the oldest. There was always pressure from his grandfather for him to take over their family canning company." Elena cocked her head. Wow. These people were loaded. How the hell did he become a doctor if he was already a possible heir to a company. "He hated it, so he went into medical school  instead." Ah.

"How about you? Are your folks also loaded like Dr. Dale's?"

"Not as much. My father used to work for Caleb's grandfather." A  hard glint fell over his eyes. Elena stared away from him since she could sense there was something there he didn't want to talk about.

"Did you always want to become a doctor?" She asked and he simply shrugged.

"Better than a business man, that's for sure." Better than being like  his father, that was 100% sure. He looked over at her as she scribbled in temperatures for the fridges and signed off on something in the Pyxis. "What about you? We've never really talked about this stuff."

"What about me?" She looked up at him for a moment, before looking back down at what she was writing into a clipboard. 

"Any reason in particular why you became a nurse?"

She shrugged. "I was always a science nerd. My father got sick when I was about nine, passed away when I was ten. I saw death in my life that year. It seemed like the only direction to go." Not to mention that Elliot was always sick with something and she spent a lot of time accompanying her mother in the hospital, helping her with Elliot one way or another.

"Oh, I'm sorry." Ben said with a concerned look. "I didn't know."

"Nobody really does," she commented, "I don't talk about these things with a lot of people. There's something about that hospital smell and watching people's life drain out their eyes that stuck with me for the rest of my life. I don't think I'll ever forget that." They started walking back to the nursing station. "Besides, it's good money as well. Oh, hey, good morning guys."

"Morning Elena, Dr. Ross!" Chirped Alicia as she glanced over her laptop.

"Morning everyone," he responded.

"What's good pay?" Dennis (the Menace) asked. He was one of the only male nurses in the place. 

"I asked Elena how she got into nursing." Ben explained. "She said science and the pay was good as well."

"Oh. That's true." Dennis agreed. "I had someone pass away in my arms once. It was hook, line, and sinker for me."

"I saw the Twin Towers fall on live television when I was ten," the other nurses commented from behind her computer. "It triggered something in me, made me want to help people out."

Dr. Ross stared at them all. "You know, you nurses have really morbid stories."

They all stared back at him before they started laughing.

"Oh, Dr. Ross!"

"You're so funny."

"Why did you become a doctor?" Dennis asked.

"To move away from home." Ben answered with a shrug.

They all laughed, thinking that he was joking. Even Elena smiled.

Little did they know how true his comment was.

Ben smiled because he'd learned that it was better to smile, otherwise, all you would do is cry.