14 i can do this
I was hoping the urge to cry would leave when Gray did, but apparently nothing about my actions makes sense anymore. This doesn’t feel like me, but I also can’t stop it.
I’ve barely cried in my life. Dad wouldn’t have tolerated it, not since I was about six years old and he started emphasizing the importance of carrying myself like an alpha, so people didn’t get the wrong idea.
“The rest of the world is weak, son. Alphas are the strength that keeps society going. If people look at you and see soft behavior, they’ll assume that’s who you are on the inside and take advantage of it. It’s a slippery slope, boy. Once people have made their mind up about you,
it’s difficult to change. Never give anyone a reason to think of you as a sissy, or you’ll be branded for life. I need you to grow up and make me proud, like your brothers.”
The words play on a loop in my head while I bawl like a little kid, clutching a couch cushion to my chest until both it and myself are covered in tears and snot and I’m even more dehydrated than I was when I first took the suppressants.
This is the most humiliated I’ve ever felt, and there isn’t anyone here to see it.
I must look weak. I feel weak. I realize with a deep, shuddering fear that Dad will never respect me again, even though he’s not here to see this, and I’m not convinced I will ever learn how to respect myself.
The light streaming in is dim and golden-hued by the time I pull myself together.
Or exhaust myself, more accurately. My stomach hurts, my eyes are sore, my mouth is cottony-dry, and I have an inconceivable headache.
The whole thing is not something I’ve ever experienced before, and as soon as I have a little blood returning to my brain, I resolve to never, ever let myself break down like this again.
I can be strong. Omega or not, I have to be. Nobody will give a damn about me, otherwise.
A flash of sense-memory hits me—Gray’s warm, comforting hands and that scent surrounding me that always manages to lower my blood pressure just by its presence.
No. I don’t need him or his scent. I can do this alone.
The rational part of my brain is telling me that despite this being a stressful time, it’s still not like me to absolutely lose it like this. Especially not from something that I enjoyed so much while it was happening.
Before that, I’ve had the highs and lows of a dead libido followed by an uncontrollable one, accompanied by these extreme swings of misery and numbness.
This can’t be natural, even during a presentation.
My brothers were temperamental, sure, but none of them seemed on the edge of something drastic, the way I felt a few minutes ago.
I remember the free clinic doctor telling me how important it was to avoid suppressants until after my first heat and listing a lot of reasons for it. I didn’t really listen to them, because once he said no one would prescribe them, I shut that down as an option in my mind.
When Doc Watts gave them to Dad, I told myself it couldn’t be that bad. Dad wouldn’t do something that truly risked my life. The free clinic doctor must have had an agenda.
But with the way I feel right now, I have doubts. There’s a deep, gnawing kind of misery inside me that’s telling me to give up. Give everything up and abandon this life as an omega drenched in shame.
I’ve never felt anything even approaching that before. Not for one second. Not even after the darkest, most vicious fights I’ve had with my father. Or when Mom left us alone with him forever, without a word of explanation. Just gone.
It’s not me, I realize. This isn’t myself feeling this way. It has to be a side effect of the suppressants, and the clinic doctor was right. I always knew Doc was a quack, and he must’ve convinced Dad that the pills were safe, even though they’re not.
Before I can second guess myself, I get up, grab the blister packs of pills that Dad left for me, pop each and every one of them out of the foil and then throw them all down the garbage disposal. I’m not going back to that. They were fucking with my head, as well as making me sick, I know that now.
Even the sound of the whirring blades destroying them makes me feel a little more like myself. I cling onto that as tightly as I can, determined to find a way to fix this.
Without Gray’s help, of course. I don’t need to give him any more reason to think of me as some pathetic, needy omega that he has to come over to babysit. It’s humiliating, for one, but it threatens to give him some sense of ownership of me that I can’t possibly allow.
The clinic doctor will know what to do. I can drive up there myself, tell them what’s happening, and finally get some answers.
It’s not the same doctor as before. This one is a woman—also a beta—and she looks like this is her four thousandth appointment of the day.
But still, when she sits down on a stool and asks me what I need, then clocks the moment I almost started crying again, she gives me a compassionate pat on the knee that somehow threatens to overwhelm me more than anything else.
I tell her the story as briefly as possible, and now she’s quietly studying the blister pack that I punched all the pills out of before coming here.
“Are you willing to tell me the name of the doctor who prescribed these to you?” she asks, her tone carefully neutral.
I freeze. The only person who knows about this is me and Dad.
If something happened—anything—I would be the only person who could possibly have blabbed.
I don’t know what Dad would do if I was caught not just humiliating his friend but possibly affecting the man’s career. And I don’t want to find out.
Slowly, I shake my head at her.
“I don’t know his name. I’m sorry. My father went and got them for me.”
She doesn’t respond immediately, studying me carefully. There’s nothing I can say, but I hope she’s able to read between the lines. I’m already here under a fake name. None of this can come back to me. I just need to figure out how bad this is.
“Okay,” she says, sighing softly and crossing her legs before she continues.
“I’ll level with you. You should absolutely not have been prescribed these. It’s unconscionable. If you want to pursue police charges for medical abuse, you would have reason to go ahead. But I know how the system works and how omegas are treated, and I don’t know your home situation,
so I understand if that’s not something you’re willing to look into. If you’d like me to help you with options finding someplace safe to go, I can help. If you’re not safe at home.”
That’s almost exactly what the other doctor said. Why does everyone keep offering to send me to a shelter like a battered omega? My dad’s an asshole, but it’s not a big deal. He doesn’t beat me.
“I’m fine,” I tell her, not knowing how to express my growing unease that people keep saying this shit to me.
I shouldn’t confide in this woman, anyway.
Just because she’s nice and doesn’t have the creepy undertone I always associated with Watts, doesn’t mean she’s here to help.
In my short time as an omega, the thing I’ve picked up on the fastest is that all the systems we’re a part of seem designed to keep us secured, rather than safe.
A month ago, I would have said they were the same thing.
Now I know better.
There’s no telling what agenda this doctor is pushing, and the more information I give her that’s real, the more likely she is to use it against me.
“So, no medications?” I ask. “Do I need to take anything to counteract what these pills did? I just want to feel like myself again. I don’t care about the rest of it anymore.”
She fixes me with another of those hard stares that make me think there are things she’s not really saying.
“I want to make sure I’m being clear. Your body is literally trying to grow new organs right now, and taking these pills abruptly stopped that process.
They could already have done significant damage, and there’s no way to know what can be done about it without doing some tests.
But you can’t underestimate this. Your endocrine system is delicate, and it’s rapidly changing right now.
Messing with that doesn’t just damage the endocrine system itself, there can be knock-on effects on every other system in your body.
Excess strain on your heart, or your kidneys, that could be irreversible.
Not to mention the high risk of infertility.
“Right now, I recommend getting extensive testing immediately. And definitely arranging to be inpatient for when your first heat comes because it could potentially be much more dangerous than we would normally expect. And male omega heats can be challenging under the best of circumstances.
Unfortunately, we’re really limited in what we can provide here at the free clinic. Do you have insurance? Would you be able to see a physician that isn’t the one your father went to?”
Her words sink in, although maybe not quite all the way.
I’d started feeling a little more confident when I arrived here.
I’m taking my future into my own hands, after all.
I don’t need my dad’s help, or Gray’s. But now it sounds like doing anything else is going to be insurmountable, and the blackness from before hits me again in a wave.
What’s the point in trying to take care of myself if I’m always going to be hamstrung like this? Dad will never let me go to another doctor, and I’m on his insurance, so there’s no way to go to a doctor out of town without him knowing about it.
No options sit before me, and the hopelessness sucks me back under. I hate that I’m 21 years old and still completely under his thumb, but until I’m able to graduate and get an actual job with benefits and a living wage, I’m trapped.
“That’s okay,” I say, suddenly desperate to leave. “I’ll just, um…”
I trail off. Tears immediately rush to fill my eyes as my throat tightens. I turn my head like I’m thinking because the last thing I need is for this random stranger to see how weak I’ve become, just like Dad always said. But the thought of pretending everything’s fine is too large to tackle.
I just want to go home and enjoy the time I have left alone before Dad gets back and does… whatever he’s going to do now.
The sympathy on her face has deepened. She reaches out and puts her hand on my knee again. It’s an anchor, but I can’t use it, so I pull back. No one can help me, so I shouldn’t pretend. I’m only wasting her time.
“Thanks. I’m fine. I’ll take care of it.”
The words rush out as I pop up from the seat, using the burst of burning shame to fuel my quick exit.
Just get to the car. Just get to the car, and get home, and be alone. None of this has to be real. I can pretend, as long as I’m alone, and no one is looking at me with big, sad eyes.
I’m sure the doctor shouts something after me as I rush out of the clinic, but I’m very careful not to listen.