#x. e.rhodes

[yasmine-arslan]

☠ -elias

send ☠ for a threatening message imessage: are we still set for my appointment on tuesday? imessage: ??? imessage: i hope you’re not ignoring me. imessage: what’s that? the sound of your sport’s car being repossessed because you’re no longer receiving my monthly $6k for my scripts? imessage: you better confirm tuesday! 

[yasmine-arslan]

Who: Dr. Elias Rhodes @distvrbia​  Where: Fairview Family Clinic When: 2/4/21, 11:24am. Yasmine’s fingers gripped the pen in her hand tighter than usual as she signed her full name, the date, the time of her arrival and the time of her appointment on the clipboard the receptionist handed to her. She hadn’t seen Dr. Rhodes since before she’d learned of her pregnancy and debated whether or not she was making a mistake as she retrieved her wallet for her ID and insurance card. Yas, like so many other unbeknownst patients, had a clandestine deal with Doctor Elias Rhodes that included committing insurance fraud by allowing him to bill each patient additionally under the table. Stressed suburban soccer moms would often find themselves picking up a prescription of Adderall or Ativan from him -- anything to take a little off the edge or kick it up a notch. She’d received his number from a friend of a friend and had been getting opiates unnecessarily prescribed to her for a few months now. Her husband knew nothing of their arrangement or her ‘substance problem’, though she was certain she had it under control. If he could polish off several bottles of vodka a week, why couldn’t she pop her little favorite blue pill every once in a while?

Because you’re pregnant, you selfish bitch, she thought. Not for long, Yasmine reaffirmed to herself. She couldn’t have this baby. Adrian and her were hardly in a place in their marriage where they could have another child, especially so soon after Josiah’s passing. She hadn’t been to see the baby itself on a sonogram, only confirmed what several drug-store tests had already told her by requesting her OBGYN to order a blood screen. There was no doubt about it… at that very moment, a small collection of cells were forming within her to eventually create a baby she hadn’t decided she really wanted yet or not. She had an appointment to see if it was even viable or had a heartbeat yet that she kept putting off. Yasmine would keep putting it off until she had her little blue bill in her first. 

In comparison to Corpus Christi in Texas, Fairview was significantly smaller, to put it loosely. Yasmine, herself, worked in the healthcare field as a registered nurse with a military background as a medic and almost all of the doctors and nurses around their neighborhood knew one another. As luck would have it, her doctor even lived up the street from her. She wondered that despite the patient-doctor confidentiality laws in place, if Dr. Rhodes had learned of her pregnancy. She tried to convince herself she was only paranoid, for not even her husband knew, yet, and Elias wasn’t exactly the most ethical person in the position to cut her off either way. The Hippocratic Oath meant nothing to him as he continued to serve Oxycodone to stressed housewives like Yasmine, to sleazy lawyers with Adderall problems, to rich college students with ‘concentration issues’ or ‘back pain’. 

Her name was called next. Vitals were taken and she was led to the backroom, per usual, as nothing seemed amiss. She began to relax a little, sure of herself that he didn’t know about her pregnancy. She wasn’t showing and had only just learned herself. Besides, Yasmine knew after he saw the wad of several hundred bills she’d picked up from the bank earlier that morning, tunnel vision would set in and nothing else would matter. 

The door opened. She sat up straight, retrieving her wallet from her bag. The wad was a little more padded than usual, as she’d arrived with the intention to get him to raise her prescription and add another to the lineup for her ‘anxiety’. Yasmine cleared her throat, sliding out of her coat as she held her hand out to shake his. “Doctor Rhodes. I hope you enjoyed your holidays.” She wasted no time peeling her YSL wallet open before removing the money from its sleeve and setting it on the examining table. “I was hoping we could discuss an increase in both the dosage and the quantity. I believe we discussed having a little wiggle room to prescribe me Alprazolam after our last visit. As promised, here’s the payment in full for both.”