TWO

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'When life came calling, you were the one at the other end. When death came hollering, you were kidnapped.' – Dakota by River Atlas Jones

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    The door of the room closes and silences the wailing of the family I had to break the news of their loved one's death to. It never gets easier, and I hate doing it; mainly because I loathe grief. But they love shoving that burden onto the foundation doctors, and I'm the easiest target. Grief is never one size fits all, and because of that, I hate dealing with it; that's not why I became a doctor. My reason was to help the sick, to cure the ailments that stop people from being them, and to stop death. Now I'm nearly qualified, I'd thought it would get easier. Well, I have around six months left on the training. It doesn't get easier. Every patient lost is harder on me than my colleagues, and once people put a face to the news, they soon got it.

But my training made me realise you can't stop death, but you can delay it. You can keep it at bay for as long as possible. I've never believed in destiny or fates or higher spirits, but I do truly believe that the world will take someone if it really wants them.

Like it wanted Dakota, so it took her.

Death is a natural thing, but not always. Both sets of my grandparents died by the time I was seventeen, so I knew what grief could do. I'd done work experience in a hospice, so I knew what death looked like. But all of them were natural. Sure, cancer can take someone before they've barely lived, but cancer and old age are natural.

A car crash at age eighteen? Not natural at all. That's not even science and biology determining it's been your time. That's just cruel.

I used to perform 'surgery' on my stuffed toys and patch up my sister's 'cuts' and 'wounds' while she sat and read her books. That was before she left when she was nineteen. I'd wanted to be a doctor since those days. Well, it was either a doctor or a poet. I'm an all right amateur poet and a good guitarist, sometimes mixing them to create spoken word to a song, as they call it. Dakota loved hearing me play the guitar and reading my poems, but a doctor was the most realistic option for many reasons, especially after my sister fled.

Then I met Dakota when we moved here. I was sixteen and being the new kid at that age was always going to be hell on earth, but I sat beside her in English, and it soon became history. Despite my name being River with my middle name Atlas, she would always call me Atlas because the day we met, she found it hilarious that anyone would name their kid River. It was one of the first things she said to me, and I've loved her ever since.

It took us a week to become best friends and six months for me to pluck up the courage to ask her out on a date despite loving her that long. She was my first kiss, my first time, and my first girlfriend. The night I got my acceptance to medical school, my dad gave me three hundred quid from a bank account my grandma left me when she died. Her letter stated I was to have half the money in the account when I got accepted to medical school, and the other half when I started. It was a strict 'let your hair down and celebrate' bank account, bless Grandma Angie's heart.

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