Jake is not sick, though he looks it with the knobby bumps of his spine diving and resurfacing like some primordial creature through the sea of his t-shirt. He looks tired and vacant and tends to stare at unimportant things for too long. He rarely looks anyone in the eye anymore, but when he does it seems like he’s looking past you, squinting like you are his own reflection in a dirty window. Jake says little without provocation, and when he speaks it is with a jaw too heavy to form the staccato of a sharp word. He slurs in monotone, too tired to speak with any clear conviction.

Jake kills himself with the occasional, distracted signature of a world-weary physician. With that signature and the pill it buys him he is unable to feel much of anything at all. He takes pills to focus. He must focus to do his work. He must do his work to obtain good grades, to go to medical school, to become a doctor, to sign his name on a prescription pad, to give someone else the chance to focus.