Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
After tapping lightly on the door, Symphony turned the knob and entered the room with a smile.
“Hi, Ms. Walker, my name is Dr. Simmons. You’re here for back pain today?
” Symphony’s voice was comforting and soothing as she studied the young woman sitting on the examination table with a look of distress on her face.
“Yes.” Blonde tresses stuck to her damp forehead. “I’m moving, and I tried to lift the damn nightstand by myself, and I hurt my back. It hurts so bad,” the woman rocked back and forth with her eyes squeezed shut.
“Okay,” Symphony looked over the chart.
From her experience of having strained a muscle in her back, the pain increased with movement.
When Symphony hurt her back, she could barely move, so rocking back and forth wasn’t an option.
However, she was aware that there were different kinds of back pain, and everyone wouldn’t be affected the same.
She also knew that sweating, aching joints, and stomach pain were often symptoms associated with opioid withdrawals.
It wasn’t uncommon for drug seekers to come into the office or the ER and say they had severe back pain in an effort to get narcotics.
Back pain could be very hard to prove. Symphony had seen patients with debilitating back pain that was the result of a UTI.
That kind of pain wouldn’t show up on an x-ray or scan.
Simply put, back pain was the easiest to lie about because it was hard to prove.
“Most muscle strains will improve on their own after a few days of rest, but I can prescribe you muscle relaxers and Ibuprofen 800 milligrams to help with the discomfort.”
The woman’s head shot up. The agony had turned to panic. “Taking Ibuprofen is like taking Skittles for me. Last time I hurt my back, they didn’t help. You can’t get me like a day’s worth of Percocet’s or Oxycodone? This pain is unbearable.”
“I understand,” Symphony’s tone remained soothing and comforting.
“If you have frequent issues with your back, I can refer you to a specialist. However, for back pain, I prescribe muscle relaxers and Ibuprofen. I can even give you a shot of Toradol, but that’s not something I prescribe narcotics for.
” Symphony’s heart ached for the woman. It was almost like staring into the eyes of her sister.
The woman kissed her teeth as tears spilled over her eyelids. “Thanks for nothing. I guess I’ll go home, and fucking suffer because nobody cares about me!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “You’ll be working for me after I sue this shit hole for hiring quacks!”
Ignoring her tantrum, Symphony stepped to the side as the woman yanked the door open and left the examination room.
She was moving just fine further proving to Symphony that she didn’t have any back pain.
She truly felt for the woman. The addicts were getting younger and younger.
Judging was something she refused to do. Everybody had a story.
One of the nurses, Shawna entered the room with raised brows. “Drug seeking?”
“Yeap. Because from the way she hopped down off that table and stormed out of here, I’d say her back isn’t hurting.”
With a shake of her head, Shawna sighed. “If we didn’t get at least three a week, I’d feel like something was wrong.”
“I know right.”
Symphony hated that part of her job. Addicts were people too.
Even if they were addicted to drugs there were going to be times, they felt pain that had nothing to do with addiction.
However, if they fit the criteria or appearance of an addict, they’d be turned away every time.
Early in her career, Symphony got into a full-blown argument with another doctor that was trying to turn a patient away that was going through a sickle cell crisis.
It was obvious to anyone with eyes that he was in pain, but he was brushed off as being drug seeking.
Writing too many prescriptions for narcotics came with extra observation from the higher ups and the state.
Symphony didn’t have time for it. Some days, it was hard to determine who was actually in pain and who wasn’t.
It was a slippery slope. The practice she worked with was pretty chill.
There were two other doctors. One Indian woman and an Asian man.
The nurses were cool, and Symphony liked her job.
Her first year of residency was done in the ER and while she loved helping people, she hated the ER for many reasons.
Even outside of the emergency room there was never a dull day of being a doctor.
The part she hated was delivering bad news.
It was the least favorite part of her job.
One that she had to endure because the end goal was to save as many lives as she could.
Work was the distraction that she needed, so she wouldn’t constantly stress over her sister.
Monique was once her best friend. She became isolated and withdrawn out of nowhere and by the time the family realized she had a problem; Monique was beyond the point of wanting help.
She didn’t even have the desire to get sober for her son.
It wasn’t until Monique’s addiction had been outed that Symphony thought back to the time her sister came in for a visit and complained about knee pain.
She flat out asked for Percocet’s and Symphony being her sister, wrote her a prescription for thirty.
No, she didn’t think her sister was in that much pain.
Shit, Symphony herself would admit that if she had bad menstrual cramps or a headache, an opioid would relieve the pain and help her to get some good sleep.
She didn’t think twice about it. Until the next month, her sister was back.
When she refused to write another prescription and her sister began to beg, that was when she knew.
Monique’s addiction broke her heart, but it wasn’t about Symphony.
Monique was the one hurting herself, and Mason was hurting more than anyone could understand.
Yes, Monique was Symphony’s sister, but she was Mason’s mother.
That pain had to hit different. Monique’s struggles were the one thing that Symphony could honestly say she was unhappy and stressed about.
So many years and so much time had been spent on studying and becoming a doctor.
Accomplishing that goal had been the top priority for a long time.
It was so important that Symphony rarely dated.
Men ogled her often. They made slick remarks, and she was asked out on at least one date a month.
However, after so many years of being hyper focused on school, Symphony had fallen off the bike and forgotten how to ride.
She had more of a routine and was settled into her career, but now, the thought of putting herself out there scared her.
Dating was like a game of Russian roulette.
Things could go really right or really wrong.
The options were few and good men were fewer.
Some days, she didn’t possess the energy to see if her soulmate even existed.
Failed relationships and marriages stayed in the back of her mind.
The fact that her own father was murdered by his mistress would always be one of her most traumatizing experiences.
Symphony was nine, and her sister was eleven when their lives changed forever.
It was late. Very late, and the girls were supposed to be asleep.
Neither were interested in slumber, and they were whispering about which boys at their school were the grossest when a deafening pop made them jump.
Their hearts raced, and their eyes bulged out of their skulls as they tried to figure out what the noise was.
As they laid frozen in bed, they heard a blood curdling scream.
Symphony and Monique sprang from their beds.
Monique’s side of the room was closest to the door, so she was the one who opened it.
As they raced down the hallway, the screams grew louder.
They attempted to follow the direction of the wailing, but their mother burst into the house before they could get outside.
With tears streaming down her cheeks, she ushered the girls back into their rooms and demanded that they stay there.
It would take more than an hour for them to discover that their father had been with his side chick that evening.
They stood at the window eavesdropping. The police told their mother that the woman admitted to having sex with Daniel that day.
When they were done, he told her that was the last time they could mess around because he had to start being faithful.
The mistress claimed that Daniel said he didn’t want his wife to divorce him because then he’d have to pay his own bills plus child support for two kids.
His mistress didn’t want to accept that he was trying to end the relationship.
She cried and begged. He got agitated and put his hands on her.
She grabbed her gun from the closet and followed him home.
When Daniel realized that his scorned lover followed him, he struck her in the face twice. Then, she shot him.
Symphony was only nine at the time, but she was smart.
Smart enough to know that her father was sleeping with another woman and that woman murdered him in his own yard.
The sisters had to watch their mother grieve for a year.
Her grief was different each day and some days, it came out in the form of anger.
Since Daniel was a cheating piece of shit, she was sure that it was stupid of her to be sad, but they’d been together for fourteen years and shared two children.
Maybe he deserved what he got but all in all, there were still days where she missed him.