And she leafs through a copy of Heat! magazine, reading into other people's lives as if they were her own and she makes up stories of what could have happened, stories where she's working at St. Phillips with Ric, with a six figure pay check, and they're married and they're happy...and she makes up stories in her head to keep her immune to the emptiness, and keep her immune to what she knows and dreads is happening. The tears on her cheeks don't fade and she's envious of everyone, she's even envious of Chrissie. She longs to be what they are, she longs to say what they say but somehow she cannot. Yet all those people cry the same tears and bleed the same blood, and hide from the same truths and wear the same masks.

And she cries because she's never been loved, really, truly, passionately "til death do us part" although she knows she's had the opportunity. And she cries because the phone's not ringing reminding her of how lonely she is, and because she wants more than anything to be in Ric's arms and for him to stop hiding his feelings behind wise-crack jokes and bad clichéd eddicts and "what we had was in the past." And she cries because she still remembers that night, and she still has the internal bruises and she remembers how embarrassed, ugly, revealed she'd felt in the police cell. And Chris, her colleague and friend, had broken her over and over again and she'd let him, not knowing exactly what was going on, too blind to see it. And she hates him. She hates him because he made her weak. She hates him because he violated her And she hates him because he is the worst thing that has ever happened and the ugliest part of her.

And she remembers that night she ended up in St. Phillip's ED, smashing the mirror with a bruised fist and she dreamt of lipstick laced with toxic cynadie "Lord, let me have rest." It's labelled by doctors as shock from the attack, everyone knowing full-well what happened and desperately trying to understand why this bright, attractive medical student wouldn't admit that she'd been raped. And she wonders if the doctors had ever felt this lonely and this empty and this sad. But of course the doctors are right, the doctors are ALWAYS right, we, we're always right. They read the books and raised their hands in class, and they studied lab rats and patients and therefore doctors have the right to play God when they know nothing but other people's biased experiences and she remembers that if it wasn't for Ric, she would have dropped it all at the first hurdle.

She laughs at her patients, at the hospitals, wondering how they expect to change anything. She swallows those pills they'd prescribed but knows they won't help. And she listens to their advice and walks out feeling just as empty as she did walking in. She's heartbroken and lonely and she has a hundred things to say but her throat is rough and her eyes are tired. She wants to kill away the pain and let the world dissolve away. And oh, how she's still in love with Ric. Falling deeper and deeper with every breath. Fingertips tingle with memories and she is surrounded by what ifs and could-have-beens. "You are everything to me" and she believes every word, every suffocating word. And how she wants to tell him, how she wants him to prove that he still cares, and how she wants him to hold her hand and tell her that it's all a lie and that she's not really pregnant with Steve's child and how she's 18 and care-free and still in love.

Yet her nail polish is chipped and her hair is a mess and her eyeliner is smudged all down her cheeks, deep long mascara lines painted across her face. She spends hours in the bathroom, but looks no better then when her hair is drenched from rain and her make up's washed off. She is attempting to become painstakenly perfect even though she knows it's so far from possible.

And at the end of the day there is emptiness, aching emptiness, longing to be filled; confusion muddling her mind; and pain too deep to ever go away. But she closes her eyes and she’s in Ric’s arms, and just for one second – one blissful second – everything’s okay.