By the YU Writers’ Guild
Each month, the YU Writers’ Guild accepts submissions for a short story following a specific theme. This month’s theme was “Pulled Apart” featuring stories set at a breaking place, such as the boundary between two realms, the straw that broke the camel’s back, or a minor conflict of interests. Members of the club voted on a short story to be featured in the YU Observer. For the month of May, “Grapefruit” written by Annette Greenberg was selected.
Orange and black look just terrible together, Martha thought. The blur that appeared on her phone screen was even more nauseating than the wintergreen mint smell of the psychiatrist’s office.
Michael had been accepted to Princeton, the senior Instagram page informed her in the ugliest way possible. Though she still hated him and would not call later to offer her congratulations, she was oddly pleased at this news. The undergraduate depression rate at Princeton was “unparalleled,” as Martha’s college guidance counselor put it when he advised her not to apply. Whether or not the feelings of hatred were mutual, Michael would certainly be thinking of her when he went there. It wouldn’t be difficult for him to find a handful of other Martha’s to try fixing and then leave when he realized their problems were bigger than the way their boyfriend thought of them.
Dr. Davis pulled some papers out of a drawer and clicked his pen, but Martha’s eyes did not move from her phone. The sight on her screen reminded her of a rotten grapefruit, and for a few moments she decided to stop caring about what the doctor had to say to her.
Years ago, Martha’s mother carried a two-liter plastic bottle of grapefruit juice with her every time the two of them went for a walk, especially during the summer. The girl was a picky eater at that age, but one August day, something compelled her to try it.
“You wouldn’t like this,” her mother laughed. “It’s funny. Grapefruit juice has a very mixed-up taste. You think it’s almost sweet for half a second, and then it gets oddly bitter right after. Not very kid-friendly,” she said.
“But how do you know I wouldn’t like it?” Martha asked.
“Martha, I don’t even like this stuff,” said her mother.
“Why are you always drinking it, then?” asked the girl.
There was a little silence, and then her mother began to explain that she’d heard, from Martha’s father and a few of her magazines, that grapefruit juice might do something to help the blood flow to her brain. She began to drink it so that she would forget things less often and have an easier time focusing.
Although Martha didn’t specifically like this talk, she was happy that her mother was willing to let her know about it. Her father never said the word “cancer” when he knew she was listening, thinking it best to only speak about nice things with children. Martha could not stand that. Of course, she was a child, but she hated being spoken to like one. Everyone else seemed to think that a ten-year-old was too silly to even know what chemo brain was. Maybe they assumed this because kids usually didn’t focus or remember things in the first place, but if she did nothing else, Martha did remember. Yes, she remembered, and she didn’t need to be spoken to so gently all the time. Maybe it was true that no child would ever like grapefruit juice, but she should at least be allowed to try.
“Are you taking the sertraline regularly?” asked Dr. Davis, and almost automatically, Martha nodded while still bent over her phone. She knew that she deliberately skipped her dose three times last week and managed to do it only once this week.
“Martha. Is there something wrong? You can still use your phone, but please answer the questions. I’m here to help you, not to tell you what to do.” Dr. Davis said. Martha thought it was funny, the way that he still spoke to her like she was some defiant child even though she had turned eighteen two months ago and didn’t need her father to sit in on the appointments anymore. Did Dr. Davis have any children? She thought it might be rude to ask him, but she imagined him wrapping up this appointment and going home to a son or daughter who went to Princeton, who would’ve given Martha’s father something to be proud of.
She looked at the man and his clipboard. There was something about him this afternoon that she could not put her finger on. Usually, if she wasn’t paying attention, he would just ignore it and move forward with the same set of questions he asked her at every appointment.
Two more silent minutes passed, and Dr. Davis then did what Martha expected.
“Any side effects from the medication?” read the doctor.
Martha turned off her phone. “Just the recurring migraine, but you said that isn’t related to the sertraline,” she told him.
The doctor chuckled. “That’s not exactly what I told you,” he explained. “Migraines can sometimes be a side effect of sertraline, but I do not think that’s the case with you.”
At this, Martha put her phone in her hoodie pocket and asked him why he was so sure of that.
The doctor gave Martha an incredulous look. His absolute certainty infuriated her.
“Why?” the doctor asked.
“Yes. I want to know why you think my taking happy pills all the time has nothing to do with the fact that I become nauseated and have to interrupt the brightest days to seclude myself in darkness,” she told him.
“First of all, they aren’t ‘happy pills,’” said Dr. Davis, as if she was a child who simply didn’t know what she was saying, like she couldn’t just call them whatever she wanted to call them. She wanted to tell him that Michael used to call them Sad Girl Skittles, but she held her tongue.
“You were prescribed sertraline for your Generalized Anxiety Disorder, not for a depressive condition. Are you experiencing any depressive episodes?” he asked.
Martha knew that this was next on the usual checklist, but she wasn’t ready to move on. She was listening now, and her father wasn’t there to intervene, so she knew that she did not have to. She wanted to tell the doctor that he was wrong, that he may as well tear down the wall of framed degrees that hung happily behind him (none of which were from Princeton, she noted). A while ago, she saw a full bottle of the same medication on her father’s desk, marked “for depression.” Other than Michael, she remembered never telling anyone the truth about her mood, but she did read online that thirty-nine million people had been prescribed sertraline in the previous year. She wanted to know how many of those prescriptions were allowed to be called “happy pills” and which ones were like her own, written for anxiety disorders too ambiguous to even be given a proper name. That search had been futile.
“Why don’t you think the medication is causing my migraines?” she persisted, but she only received the answer that she already knew to be the logical one. The migraine problem had been there since the beginning. It was there when it was fluoxetine, and it didn’t go away when she kicked out the fluoxetine for escitalopram either.
She sat in the chair and tried to appear attentive for a few more minutes, answering the same questions that she could have just recited by rote at this point. When he was finished, the doctor told her that she looked irritated. This upset her because there were times when she tried to appear as zombified as she thought someone regularly taking sertraline should be. As Dr. Davis opened his drawer to put away the folder, Martha took out her phone again and saw Michael’s face, and his picture seemed satisfied to be surrounded by the colors of a rotten grapefruit. She still had something to say.
“It’s entirely up to you,” said the doctor. “You’re on the lowest dose possible, so we can’t wean you off. You’ll have to stop taking it altogether, but don’t be surprised if the headaches worsen in withdrawal. You may have a decreased appetite. Also, you still need to stay away from anything containing alcohol or grapefruit juice for a few weeks,” he warned.
Martha gave a genuine smile. She was always disgusted by alcohol, so she didn’t mind that part. For some reason, she expected an argument. She thought her father might run in suddenly when she asked the question and then shut it down like he had six months ago.
She got in her car and drove to the convenience store that her mother used to frequent. Of course, the two-liter bottle could not be opened for a while, but it was comforting to know it was there. She wished her mother was still with her so it could be opened sooner, and its sweet-and-then-bitter taste could be laughed about. Martha put a fresh grapefruit in the refrigerator as well, and she came back to the kitchen again and again, just to look at it. As it turned out, her appetite was just fine.