JOEY
‘JOSEPH, you lost your mother in the most tragic of circumstances, and it’s okay to grieve for her.’
No shit, Sherlock.
‘It’s okay to miss your mother.’
Keeping my back poker straight, I stared back at the doctor, or therapist, or counselor, or whatever the fuck she was, and waited for her to be done.
All I needed from this woman was to test my piss and stick a needle in my arm. To take all the samples she needed from my body but leave my head the hell alone.
‘Joseph.’ A heavy sigh escaped her parted lips. ‘Part of your treatment plan is participating in therapy.’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ came my sharp reply, knowing what I had regrettably signed up for.
‘Are you?’ she countered, adjusting her glasses. ‘Are you here?’
‘I don’t know.’ Shrugging, I raised my hands and gestured to myself. ‘You tell me, doc.’
“Seems to me like your mind is elsewhere. Back in Ballylaggin, perhaps? According to your file, your long-term girlfriend…” she paused to read over her notes before struggling to sound out her name, “A-oi-eef…”
‘Aoife,’ I corrected, knees bopping anxiously now. “It’s pronounced E-fa.” Shrugging, I added, “It’s basically Eva in Irish.”
“Thank you,” she replied with a rueful smile. “I’m from South Dakota, and while I find Gaelic names beautiful, they can be extremely hard to interpret on paper.”
I shrugged. “It makes sense to me.”
‘According to your file, you and Aoife are expecting your first child —”
‘Can we not?’ I muttered, hardly able to sit still now, as a tsunami of guilt and self-loathing flooded my body. ‘I don’t… I can’t… I’m not talking about her.”
‘Why not, Joseph?’
‘Because she has nothing to do with this.’ I gestured angrily to the room I had been holed up in for the past god knows how long, heart bucking wildly in my chest. ‘Aoife is nothing like me.’
‘Nothing like you?’
‘She’s not a fuck up.’
‘So, you consider yourself to be a fuck up?’
‘Shit, I don’t know, doctor.’ I narrowed my eyes, tone dripping with sarcasm. ‘What else would you call someone like me?’
‘Traumatized?’ she offered kindly. ‘A victim of extreme violence.’
‘I am not a victim.’
‘You’re not?’
‘No. I’m not.’ I glowered at her. ‘I’m the one who got expelled from school before I could do my leaving cert, I’m the one with fuck all in the line of qualifications. He didn’t do that to me. I did that to me.’ Blowing out a ragged breath, I hissed, ‘And I’m the one who’s taken the only person who’s ever genuinely loved me down with me. Yeah, Aoife’s pregnant, and not only does she have to deal with that alone, while I’m holed up here like the pathetic fuck-up I am, but she also has to do it with the label that comes with having my baby.’
‘You sound angry with her.’
‘I’m angry with myself,’ I spat, legs shaking restlessly, hands balled into fists on my thighs. ‘I’m pissed that I took her down with me…’ Words breaking off, I exhaled another shaky breath and glared at her. ‘I see what you did just there – bringing her up like that.’
‘Yes.’ The doctor smirked. ‘She certainly got you talking, didn’t she?’
“When she told me that she was pregnant, I wasn’t present,” I heard myself admit. “I’d been gone a long time before the pregnancy. All the appointments and scans, I’d only been there in the flesh. She was scared and alone, depending on me to help her, and all I did was make it worse for her.”
“But she didn’t leave,” the doctor surmised. “She didn’t give up on you.”
“No,” I replied. “She didn’t.”
“Why do you think that is, Joseph?”
“Because she’s the most stubborn person you’ll ever meet,” I muttered, rubbing my jaw. “Because Molloy doesn’t quit on anything, even when it’s not good for her.”
“You include yourself in that statement?”
“Look at me,” I deadpanned.
“I am,” the doctor replied calmly. “I’m looking at a young man, who, despite all of the trauma and horror he’s had to endure, has continued to focus solely on recovering and returning to her.” She smiled. “I’d say that makes this Aoife Molloy an excellent judge of character.”
“Hm.”
“Maybe she needs you?”
“She needs to run a mile in the opposite direction of me.”
“But that’s not an option, is it?” she probed. “Your child deserves a father, and you of all people, know how influential that role can be in a child’s life.”
You’re just like me, boy.
You’ll do more harm than good.
“He’s in your head again, isn’t he?” the doctor noted. “Your father?”
Fuck, she was intuitive.
“I don’t know if I can break the cycle, but I want to.” Needing to move, I stood up and paced the small confines of my room. “I want to so fucking badly that it keeps me up at night. It’s why I went back that night. Why I let Lizzie talk me off the edge. Why I didn’t throw myself off that bridge. Why I’m here right now.” Frustrated and anxious, I cracked my knuckles and walked to the window. “I know I’m not good enough, but I want to be.”
‘How are the withdrawals?’ she changed the subject by asking.
The withdrawals were the worst.
For days, I felt numb, angry and lacking in energy.
I didn’t want to speak to anyone, didn’t want to lift a finger.
“Better,” I told her, eyes locked on a group planting flowers in the gardens outside. “Manageable.”
“That must be a relief for you.”
“Will the memories fade?”
“Doubtful. But they will become manageable. Bearable. You’ll find a middle ground on which to rebuild your foundations. You’ll learn to cope. That’s why you’re here. To rebuild.”
“I can still smell her.” I released a shuddering breath. “I can still smell him.”
Deciding it was too painful to breathe, I kept poker stiff, nostrils and airways on lockdown, waiting for the wave of sorrow to pass.
Praying it would do so quickly.
Finally, it did.
“When can I call her?” Turning back to face the doctor, I leaned against the windowsill at my back and asked, “I need to talk to her.”
“Not yet.”
“I’ve never not spoken to her in this long,” I admitted, feeling pissed off, but knowing that this woman was relentless. She wouldn’t bend. God knows, I’d tried enough times. “Please, doc. She’s my best friend.”
