it’s about me

I think I killed Donny Haywark.

As I looked at myself in the mirror while I brushed my teeth, I felt a pang of guilt. Well, several pangs of guilt actually. But then I shook my head, looked at my reflection fiercely and pointed at it. “It’s not your fault you’re a human being with a conscience.” Oh yeah, if that’s how you want to look at it, my conscience spat back at me.

I sighed. After finishing with my nightly ablutions, I turned the telly on and tried not to watch the news. The other options were depressing - black and white movies of women and men overcoming all obstacles and living happily ever after. I was already feeling vulnerable about the Haywark incident and it didn’t help that I was 43-years-old, childless, not in the best of shape and single. On most days it didn’t affect me because I met almost a dozen other people with gargantuan problems and issues.

Donny Haywark for instance. He’d been coming to me for about eight months now, when he first discovered his lover was bisexual and wanted erm, more experimenting in the bedroom. Haywark discovered he was supremely homophobic and couldn’t look at her the same way anymore. This despite the fact that he was actually fond of her, they had great sex and she didn’t want anything more from him. A no strings attached affair with a hot Spanish woman, who then wanted to bring other hot women into their bedroom would be almost any man’s dream come true. But not Haywark’s.

We’d tackled that pretty well, but things got bad after the oil spill happened. I knew there was a bit of remorse under his 1,000 pound suit… well, somewhere deep within him. But some of the stuff he said… I let my emotions get to me.

I’m a doctor. A certified psychiatrist, which means I went to med school and have been a rationalist all my adult life. But some things make me emotional – watching pelicans drown in oil, baby seagulls smattered with oil, workers knee-deep in oil and fishing out a dolphin’s carcass… you get the picture. And listening to Haywark, something finally snapped within me after six months of his whining about how much shit he was in and how much money he had lost and how he was going to lose everything.

After six months of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, and by then the Atlantic, he brought up something he made me sign a confidentiality contract for. Some of it was personal stuff – there was too much at stake, he didn’t really want to plug the spill, but then again his wife was getting screamed at in the supermarket and had oil thrown at her, and he didn’t want people digging deep, finding his Espanol mistress and doing the same to her, yada, yada, yada. But some of it was directly related to clean up efforts and his core team. They apparently didn’t want to plug the spill because once it was done, they would never get the oil. And that meant an even more gigantic loss for his company.

This was something I heard months earlier, from a photographer friend who had visited the Gulf of Mexico. Now to hear it from Haywark jolted the bejesus out of me. But I looked neutral, as always, and tried to help him with his problems like I was paid to do.

Nothing seemed to help though. I thought it was remorse that he couldn’t see within himself because it was too deep, and hence he couldn’t handle the remorse. But in time I realised it was as plain as it seemed – he had no money, his family was threatening to leave him and he needed the oil to rescue him. “It’s me that I’m worried for, doc. It’s about me. All about me,” he wept into a silk handkerchief.

That’s probably when it became about me and not my patient. I hypnotised him, saying it would help. I took him through a cycle of hypnosis sessions where sometimes he would oops unwittingly become say, an oiled pelican on its way to death. Of course he had no clue what happened during these sessions. Hayward began to feel guilt, combined with worry for the future.

About five and a half weeks after the sessions began, he had reached the lowest of lows. I was careful not to give him very strong medication, in case he decided to swallow some pills. But I knew what was coming when he told me he was settling all his finances and sending his family on a weekend trip to his in laws’ place.

I sighed and poured myself a whiskey. Then I turned back to the news. I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a few months.

“…Haywark allegedly consumed a litre of alcohol and overdosed on medication he was receiving as treatment for depression. His body was discovered this morning in his London home. Sources say he was dead before he reached the hospital. Meanwhile, National Petroleum representatives say there is a Board meeting scheduled for tomorrow morning to decide on his successor…”

I knew who the successor was. Haywark had told me unwittingly in a session. Luckily for me, it was someone who was also a patient of mine. I was good with patients you see, and many came via word of mouth. This one had come through Haywark himself. Tears came to my eyes as it occurred to me just how evil I had become. But somebody had to try and save the world right. It’s not just about me, I thought. I did this for humanity.

I poured myself another drink. It was going to be a long night.
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this post is entirely fictional. no offense is meant to any living (or dead) person. the author holds no opinion, nor is trying to make any statements about anything. no, honestly!! come on.. read the tags!