"Prey" by Doc Varga

A government counselor has a limited time to talk patients out of suicide.

Hello everyone,

Did you know we are currently paying writers at a semi-professional rate of $75 for each story we publish? Help us go PRO by upgrading to a paid subscription. If you can’t commit to a subscription right now, that’s okay too! There are other options, like donating a few bucks to show your support (see buttons below). Every bit helps!

• Educators, find out how to get a free copy of a themed edition.

• If you enjoy these stories and want to support writers and what we do, you can always subscribe to our monthly magazine via our website (digital or print), or via substack.

• Also check out our free partner ebook downloads.

Thanks for reading, sharing, and re-stacking this post!

Tina

---

Take the poll for this week’s story, “Prey”:

(It’s completely anonymous…and fun!)

Last week’s poll results:

---

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Prey by Doc Varga

---

As I drove slowly towards the mob of angry protestors and my meeting with 200, I thought of 199. The ashes of a once hard man, staring at me with wide eyes that pleaded for hope like a dog begging for treats. I’d somehow found a way to give him that hope. But I remembered the stench on him when he first came in. A man who had not bathed or changed clothes in who knew how long. Even when he did clean up, halfway through our sessions, I could still smell the decay. And even after that final session, he left a waft of it clinging to the floor.

My car purred almost soundlessly as it drove itself forwards, inching toward the chanting ranks of people and their placards. A cop who looked ready to fall asleep motioned me through the barricade as other officers stood at alert and kept the crowd parted. The picketers screamed the usual insults at me as I drove through them: murderer, bitch, slut, and worse. They had no idea who I was. I could have been any female employee—a janitor, a nurse, an office junior—but they didn’t care. They were hurting and they wanted someone else to feel it. They didn’t know how many lives I had saved. Maybe if I posted my save numbers on the car, I’d be greeted with less rancor.

A scruffy young man with straggly blond hair and a placard broke the police barricade. He threw his sign against my windshield and the car lurched to a halt, its collision detection screen flashing and beeping loudly. My body jerked against the safety belt.

Justice for Jared!! the sign screamed in daubed red letters, before the cops dragged it, and its bearer, away. How clever.

I finally got to my office twenty minutes later. It still smelled of 199, so I cleaned the chair and my desk with Lysol as I composed myself. I remembered Jared—how could I not, seeing the protestors at the LFH gates twice a day?—but he hadn’t been one of my cases. He’d gone to Roger in the end, who was a distant second place in the race for top saver. Jared was sixteen when he gave himself to LFH, which is what all the uproar was about. If he’d been two years older, none of those people would have cared. But he was subjected to all the protocols, all the tests, all the obstacles, and he went through with it anyway. Jared was broken in a way that most people couldn’t fathom. He’d seemed ready to go the first time I saw him. Some people just aren’t meant for the world, and it’s a kindness to let them out of it in a way that helps humanity. It gives them purpose, even at their most hopeless.

My office door opened and the man I’d been thinking of as 200 walked in and broke me from my ruminations and my scrubbing. I took one look at him and thought, This will be easy. I don’t like it, but sometimes I feel just like that cocky, arrogant young girl who was top of her psych classes all through school and graduated valedictorian without really trying. 

He was young and lanky, held upright seemingly only by his dark, tight-fitting clothes. He smiled and limply shook my hand as I sat down at the desk. He sat opposite me, with the transparent glass walls behind him. He glanced around nervously and stared at the lone painting on the only opaque wall behind me, which portrayed a woman walking across clouds. He was pale and pasty, and his brown eyes were staring, but he was certainly handsome, perhaps in a way that the girls his age wouldn’t appreciate; five years from now his picture would have all the ladies swiping right. This was a boy who was struggling, but once he found himself, he would thrive. He was a Temp-D—temporarily depressed—if I ever saw one. I would bet my life on it.

“Hi, Derek,” I said. “I’m Doctor Ansley.”

“Hi,” he said, looking down at the desk.

“So, what brings you to LFH?”

He shrugged. “Same thing everyone comes here for.”

“And what is that? In your own words.”

“To give up my life for a good cause.”

“And what makes you want to give up your life when you are so young?”

He looked up. I could tell even before he spoke that he had rehearsed this part. “I’m tired of living,” he said. “I’m ready to die, and I’d like it to be for the benefit of humanity. I’ve looked into your offerings and I think I’d be best suited for gene therapy—”

“Let me stop you for a moment.” I seldom interrupt. The first thing they teach in training is to let the patient talk. But this was such a slam dunk that I wanted to get right to it. “I’d like to start with why you’re ready to die.”

Derek looked flustered. “I…I don’t know how to explain it. I’m just done living. Everything hurts all the time.”

“What hurts, specifically?”

“My mind. My heart. There’s no point to anything. Why try to deal with it when you can just be done with it?”

“Well,” I said carefully. “There are a lot of good things in life, too. Is there anything you like?”

“Not really.”

“There must be something.”

He looked at his hands, working against each other on the surface of the desk. “I like cats.”

“I like cats, too. Do you have one?”

“No, I still live with my parents. They won’t let me have one.”

“Have you considered getting your own place?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have any money.”

“What if I could help you get a job, so you could get your own place and get your own cat?”

Derek shrugged.

“I could help you with that. Think about it. Your own place. Your own cat. More than one, if you wanted.”

Derek stared at me for a moment and shook his head. “No, thank you.”

I was surprised by his outright and cool denial, but I persisted. “Okay. But just out of curiosity, what would you name your cat? If you had one.”

“I’m not going to have one, so I’d rather not think of it.”

I sat back and examined him. There was an obstinance that seemed to transcend his frail body. This might even take a few sessions. “I understand that, Derek. But to be approved for LFH, you need to be approved by an intervention counselor. That’s me. Part of what I do is ensure that suicide is your only and final choice, and to do that I need to work through scenarios with you.”

“You don’t have to approve anything. I just need to work with you for the mandatory fifteen hours.”

That was true. It was ultimately the individual’s choice, but most didn’t know that completely. “I may not have the final say, but you are right about the hours. Please, humor me.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Why? What’s the harm?”

“It just makes everything hurt more.”

“Because you feel like if you died, you might miss out on something good?”

“No, because I know I was never meant for that life. I wish I was, honest. But I’m just not.”

I sat forward again and leaned my elbows on the desk. “You know, a lot of people feel like that. I did too, once.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. When I was about your age, I was pretty lost. I had…I had a couple of really bad experiences that I didn’t think I could get over.”

Derek smiled, but I could tell it was fake. “I’m glad you did get over them,” he said.

“I am, too. I hope you get over yours.”

Derek’s smile melted into an even expression. “I—it’s not like that for me. Everything is a bad experience for me.”

“You just told me you like cats. You must have had a good experience with cats at some point.”

“Yeah, but no. Even good experiences are bad for me. They make me feel hollow and empty, like I don’t deserve them.”

“Why do you think you don’t deserve them?”

“I don’t think anyone deserves anything. That’s just how I feel.”

“Well, why do you think you feel that way?”

“I don’t know. I just do. My head thinks things, but the way my body feels them is different. It’s like I’m filled with tar. I know I just don’t belong.”

Derek’s cold calculation threw me, I’ll admit. I hadn’t been expecting him to have such a well-thought-out map of his feelings. But where were these feelings coming from? “Derek,” I said at length. “I understand you have some conflict between what you think and what you feel. I’d like to explore that. I think the best way to do that is to investigate your past a bit. Do you mind if we start there?”

“Sure,” he said.

For the next hour, I had Derek paint a picture of his life for me. He came from a regular home and while I did see some signs of emotional disconnection within his family, there were no red flags indicating an abusive upbringing. In fact, much of what he told me was positive. By the time I was done, my initial arrogance was gone. I was still convinced there was no way Derek would go through with the process, but his steady, logical approach to taking his own life worried me. Those whose emotions were out of control often simply needed time and a choice to help them normalize. But the thinkers, they were the ones who went through with it in the end.

“Have you been sleeping well?” I asked just before our session ended.

“On and off,” Derek said.

I reached into my drawer and pulled out a small container of Ambien. “Sleep often helps us find clarity.”

He glanced at the pills. “Oh. No, thank you.”

“Just take them. I can’t make you do anything except attend your mandatory hours, but I’d appreciate it if you tried.”

Derek nodded. “I’ll try one tonight.”

“Thank you, Derek. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”

“Thanks, Doctor Ansley. I appreciate it.”

I walked Derek out of the office and into the lobby. I watched him as he went out the door to the parking lot. He showed no signs of distress. Typically, clients taking the first step toward Life for Humanity had strong emotional responses to their first sessions, and even if not expressed overtly, those emotions were usually apparent. Derek hid his well. Everything he’d said was well-rehearsed, too. He knew the right things to say.

The door behind me opened, and Sidney Gantt flashed a smile at me when I turned. “Save two hundred? I set you up with a Temp-D after that last case. You’ve got two weeks to make your yearly bonus.”

“Yeah, should be easy,” I said, though the words felt heavy and cursed coming out. Sidney was technically my boss, but he was an administrator and was wise enough to defer to the doctors on the front line. I knew I was one of his favorites, not just because of my record, but because our personalities gelled so well. We were both focused on opportunities rather than obstacles.

“Great! Just get him to sign that 703 form and I’ll approve it. Top saver four out of the last five years! Not bad, Doctor Ansley.”

I smiled. “I’ll be happy when I get that check.”

“I’ll be happy when I write it. Want anything for lunch?”

“Nah, I packed my own. I’ll get you your reports by the end of the day.”

“You’re the best,” he said and strode away down the corridor.

I went back into my office and closed the door softly. Top saver four out of five years was pretty impressive. And even the one year I’d lost, I’d been near perfect. This year, no one was even close. I’d had two hundred and one cases, not counting Derek, and I’d convinced all but two of them to reconsider ending their lives. Moreover, from what I could tell, most had gone on to thrive. The two who’d gone through with the process had both been terminally ill and in the later stages of life. Their affairs were in order and their journeys had been supported by their families and loved ones. They were the ones this program was meant for—I didn’t feel I’d failed them.

Many of the saves had seemed like helpless cases. Save 199 had been the most difficult by far. It took all fifteen intervention hours. He was a dad who’d watched his two sons—six and eight years old at the time—die when a compressor in his garage had exploded. His wife killed herself three days later, by jumping off a roof. But after our fifteen sessions, he’d found a reason to try and live at least another few years. There was always the risk he would do it on his own, but I had set him up with a grief counselor and got him a job as a manager for a failing charity project, where he could put his business expertise to good use.

Other applicants were over-medicated or highly erratic. Some were terminally ill, but with a reasonable life span left. Some were even calm and collected about their decision, like Derek. I had convinced them all that life was their best option. I loved saving lives. The hundred-grand bonus for saving two hundred in one year was nice, too.