Iero Fiasco

Frank and Gerard sit in the waiting room of the hospital across from Jess and Tray. Everyone was completely silent as they waited for someone to give them an update on Molly’s condition.
“Do you think it was suicide?” Frank whispers in a raspy voice. Gerard didn’t want to answer because in his opinion it was a suicide attempt.
“Maybe.” Tray whispers.

Some sort of hospital worker walks up to them and the four of them spring to their feet.
“Is she okay?” Frank asks worriedly.
“Physically, she’s going to be fine.” The woman says clearly, “But when she comes to we want to have her go for a psychiatric analysis.”
“So you think she tried to commit suicide.” Jess clarifies.
“Either that or seriously drug herself into a stupor.” The woman says trying to keep them calm in the process, “The over-dose took such a harsh affect on her because she’s very mal-nourished.”
“Well we’re all mal-nourished.” Frank says rolling his eyes, “We’re been surviving on pizza and Chinese take out!”
“No, I mean she hasn’t eaten in at least two days.”
“What?!” they all exclaims simultaneously.
“Molly loves eating!” Tray says frantic.
“Well according to her state at the moment she hasn’t been eating very much lately.” Frank looks over at Jess and Tray.
“She said she’d been eating with you.”
“We figured she was eating with you.” Jess says in return.
“There’s something else!” the woman announces cutting into their frantic conversation, they all turn their attention to her, “she has scars, on her thighs.”
“That’s nothing,” Jess says quickly, “You try shaving your legs on a tour bus.”
“No, there’s nicks and then there’s these scars.” She clarifies, “It looks like she dug her finger nails into her thighs.”
“Self-mutilation.” Gerard mumbles to himself. He remembers being in the same state of being a few years ago. Frank puts his hands over his face and screams as loud and hard as he could.
“Can I see her? Please!”
“Not at the moment,” the woman says trying to calm him, “But I’ll let you know as soon as you could.”

The four musicians sit down and stay silent for a moment.
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” Tray says quietly, “Way back when she used to show us songs about well depression and suicide.”
“Why didn’t you do anything?” Frank asked exasperated.
“We asked her about them and she told us they were from a long time ago and that she was better.” Tray says in her defense.
“Well I’ve noticed a couple of times in the past where she’d be totally out of whack.” Jess says calmly, “But it would pass.”
“This is all my fucking fault.” Frank says putting his head in his hands, “I should have noticed something was wrong, I just thought she hated me.”
“She doesn’t hate you!” Jess and Tray chant.
“She’s friggin in love with you!” Jess exclaims, “I’ve never seen her so pathetically gaga over anyone.”

Frank lets out a loud sigh and mumbles incoherently into his hands.
“Its okay, she’ll be okay.” Gerard says to his band mate. As Frank thought about his relationship with Molly since they met it all fell into place, the comment in her high school note book about her being emotionally unstable, giving him a blow job so she wouldn’t have to show her legs and her distancing herself from everyone for the past while.

“She’s awake.” A nurse announces to them, “You can see her now.” Everyone stands up nervously, neither one of them knows what to expect. Frank looks at the clock on the wall to see they’d been up all night because it’s almost seven in the morning. Jess and Tray are first to walk in the room.

“Hey Molly, how are you doing?” Jess asks quietly as they watch Molly poke at the tube going into her arm.
“I’m fine.” Molly says casually, “Stomach and head hurt but yeah, are they going to let me leave now?”
“It’s not that simple.” Tray says looking at the other not sure what to say.
“I know, I know, they said they want me to talk to a shrink first but you guys can get me out of that, right? You know I’m alright, I just had a headache.” Molly glances from one face to another to see they aren’t going to comply, finally she stops at Frank, who’s eyes are red and swollen, “Frank, are you okay?”
“Molly, why’d you do it?” he asks softly. Gerard clears his head and nods to the door, and he, Jess and Tray leave.

“Do what?” she asks furrowing her eyebrows.
“Why’d you try to kill yourself?”
“I wasn’t! You know I’m okay, those nurses are just paranoid!” she exclaims. Frank goes over to her, pulls down the blankets and lifts her hospital gown to reveal her scarred thighs. Frank didn’t expect her thighs to be as bad as they are.
“Explain that Molly! That’s self inflicted, no accident.” Molly lets out a whimper then pulls her legs up to her chest and hides her face.
“You weren’t supposed to know.” She cries.
“Tell me.” Frank pleads, “I want to know what’s going on with you.” she lifts her head.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me!” she exclaims, “I just become like this!”
“Become like what?”
“Fucked up!”
“You mean depressed?” Frank asks trying to calm her down; after all they were in a hospital. She nods, “Please tell me.”
“It’s a long fucking sob story.”
“Well I’m not going anywhere.” He says sitting on the edge of her bed, “How long has this been going on?”
“Off and on since I was like fourteen.”
“Fourteen, holy shit.” He gasps.
“Yeah, is started getting really bad when I was fifteen though,” she doesn’t look her boyfriend in the eye as she speaks, “I can’t explain it but, it could be triggered by nothing at all, sometimes I’d think everyone hated me, I’d get really violent and angry towards everyone around me or like this time I’d just sink to an all time low and try to numb this, this pain in my head.”
“So is that why you overdosed?” Frank asks as a hospital worker comes in with a tray of food, she looks over Molly’s clip board.
“Make sure she eats everything.” She says to Frank, “and that she doesn’t puke it up after.”

Molly pulls the tray towards her to find that she’d been served toast and oatmeal.
“I hate oatmeal.” She sighs in disgust as she takes a bite of toast, “Oh shit, I need to take my pill.” She smacks her forehead and turns to Frank, “Is my bag here?” he shakes his head, “Shit.”
“It’s fine; we can’t have sex in a hospital anyway.” He says trying to raise both their spirits.
“No but if I miss a day-“ he puts his hand on her frantic one.
“Calm down, don’t worry about that now, we’ll just be more careful for a while.” His smile seems to calm her.

“So what happened, how’d I get to the hospital?” she asks as she continues to eat toast and drink orange juice. Frank really didn’t want to relive the events of the last few hours, he swallowed hard.
“Well, we all got back from the movies,” he starts, “then I went to check on you. I uhh found you, found you-“
“Found me and?”
“You were face down in a puddle of your own puke, unconscious, we had to call an ambulance.” As Frank describes the events, Molly’s eyes practically bulge out of her skull.

Molly finishes one piece of toast and half her orange juice before pushing her tray away from her.
“Aren’t you gonna eat your breakfast?”
“Nah, I’m not hungry.” She says simply, “You can have it if you want.” Frank closes his eyes for a second and breaths in deeply, he knows he’s about to open another unpleasant can of worms. He pushes the tray back to her, “Really, I’m not hungry.”
“The doctor said you haven’t eaten in like two days.” Frank says calmly, “you’re going to eat something, even if I have to force you.” Molly stares at him bluntly for a moment.
“I – am – not –hungry.” She states slowly and clearly.
“Fuck it Molly!” he yells, “You don’t look healthy! Your ribs are disgusting! You were skinny enough as it was before you stopped skipping meals!”
“I know I’m skinny!” Molly yells, “That’s why I don’t need as much food.”
“You’re living in denial!” Frank exclaims waving his arms in the air, “You haven’t been eating and you’re turning into a skeleton.”

The stare each other down, not blinking and not looking away.
“You are beautiful.” He says calmly, “I liked you the way you were.” Molly picks up the spoon and starts shoveling the nasty oatmeal in her mouth, one hazardous scoop at a time. Frank watches as she takes every bite. He kept repeating the words ‘tough love’ in his head. When she finished all the food on the tray then looks into Frank’s eyes again.
“I didn’t skip meals because I thought I was fat.” She says finally, “I really wasn’t hungry.”
“Molly that-“
“You know how some people eat a lot when they’re depressed, emotional eaters? Well I’m the opposite.”

“We brought edible food!” Jess exclaims from the doorway, holding up a paper bag from Starbucks, Tray is carrying the carton with drinks.
“Here you go Frank.” Tray says handing him one of the cups.
“Thanks.” He says standing up, “I’m uh, just going to find Gerard.”
“Kay, kay.” Jess says as she and Tray go to their band mate to share their Starbucks treasures.

As Frank walks back to the waiting room he realizes that Tray and Jess had a pretty good approach at helping Molly out. Bringing her food she actually likes, and acting like friends not prosecutors. This also made him wonder, how many times have things like this happened that allowed them to create this ‘support system.’ He gets to the waiting room to find Gerard enjoying his own Starbucks treat.
“So . . .” Gerard trails off, “How is she?” Frank takes a long sip from his cup.
“She denied everything, I kind of got mad at her and she told me everything.”
“And?”
“I don’t know.” Frank mumbles into his hands, “It’s fucking scary.”

“Do you know how much this is costing us?” Warson exclaims as he stomps into the waiting room angrily.
“Excuse me?” Gerard says furrowing his eyebrows.
“Do you know when she’ll be outta the hospital and back on the goddamn stage?!” Frank puts his coffee down on the table, stands up and punches Warson square in the eye. Warson is taken aback for a second.
“Molly is recovering fine, thanks for asking!” he yelled just as Warson makes a full fledged comeback of flying fists.

An all out brawl broke out between the two as they grappled on the floor. Gerard pulled the small yet mighty guitarist off the tour manager.
“Stop, stop, stop.” Gerard said as he held him back, but Frank continued to flail his arms and legs in anger.

Frank finally gets loose, as a couple of orderlies hold back Warson. Frank wipes the blood from his upper lip before walking back towards Molly’s room. He felt quite pleased with himself as he did so, smirking like a maniac as he walked into the room.
“What the hell happened to you?” Tray asks confused of whether to laugh or worry. Frank smiled even wider as he went over to the box of tissues and stuffed one in his nose to stop the bleeding.
“Frank?” Molly asks worriedly as he wipes off his face. She could see a bruise forming around his left eye.
“I got in a fight with Warson.” He says simply.
“Over what?” Jess asks trying not to laugh hysterically.
“He stormed in bitching about how the tour is messed up now, so I popped him one.”
“And he popped you twenty?” Tray asks, receiving a glare from Molly.
“You think I’m bad you should see him!” Frank snaps, “Some Jersey fighting pride for ya!”
“I’m so sorry.” Molly says into her hands, “It’s all my fault.”
“Eh, he had it coming.” Frank says shrugging.