A Chronic Invalid
III.
The alarm goes off, its repetitive beeping screaming throughout my entire flat. I hate it. I slam my palm against the front, hearing a satisfying crack of the clear plastic to signify that I hit my mark. I turn onto my back and I stare at the white washed ceiling. There’s bumps and cracks in the plaster and when I had first moved into here, I remember making out small little images and imagined them to move. Kind of like Lite Brite, but caveman style.
I roll on over to my stomach and shut my eyes. I’m so tired. It’s nine o’clock in the morning and I’m tired. I need to get up and get dressed and have coffee and smoke a Newport and go out and do errands and go to therapy and—fuck it. I’m tired. I want five more minutes.
“Just five more minutes,” I say to myself, yawning and then closing my eyelids. “Five... more... minutes.”
-
My eyes flicker open to the sound of the consistent ringing of the goddamn land phone. I hate it almost as much as I hate my alarm. I put a pillow over my face and smother myself with it as the sun blares brightly through the small balcony’s window. Since I don’t have the energy to get up and answer the phone, my machine picks it up. Cue the computerized voice.
“Hello, you’ve reached—” My voice, “the fuck do you think,” Its voice, “They cannot come to the phone right now. Please record your message or try your call again.”
Now the message.
“Hi Frank, it’s your therapist calling for... oh I don’t know, the fortieth time—”
I check the clock.
“—and I just want to let you know, again, for the fortieth time—”
15:39.
“—that our session started over two hours ago and guess what? You’re still not here.”
My eyes go wide. Oh my—
“So I suggest that you get up, get yourself decent and make your way over to my office right fucking now.”
There’s a click to signify the end of his message and by this time, I’ve got my toothbrush shoved down my throat as I struggle to get a pair of track pants on. I know I’m too far in and if it wasn’t for that last call, I wouldn’t give a shit and go back to sleep. But he sounded pretty angry. You don’t mess with an angry therapist. Especially one like him.
I’m in too much of a rush to make breakfast, so I decide to skip it. I shove on a pair of torn up Nikes and rush out the door. Instead of waiting for the elevator (because today, I just don’t have the patience for it), I bound down the stairs.
I’m running out the lobby door and take a right, speeding down the streets and giving a finger to whoever was in my way. I make many twists and turns before I’m finally on the building’s street and I jay walk onto the block Adam Fest is on. As soon as I’m at the entrance and through the doors, I run in the elevator just as it’s beginning to close.
“Cmoncmoncmon,” I mutter as the machine begins to click up the floors. As it finally reaches the third floor, I speed out to the room and go up to reception, my face as red as a fucking tomato.
“Hi, I’m here to see Dr. Way,” I try and say through my heaving chest. The woman at the desk looks at me through eyes that look like they’ve almost been glued shut.
“And who are you?”
I’ve been going here for the past few months and this bitch still doesn’t know who I am. Or she pretends she doesn’t.
“Frank Iero.”
She seems to be moving a centimetre every hour because it’s what must be at least five minutes later that she actually responds.
“How do you spell your last name?”
I’m almost tempted to rip off her head. “It starts with an I.”
More slow as fuck clicking. “Frank Anthony Iero?”
I grit my teeth at the mention of my middle name. “Yeah.”
She picks up the phone and dials a few numbers, before speaking into it, telling whoever it was on the other line that a Mr Iero was waiting here to come see Dr Way. I can hear the person on the other line say a “Fucking finally” and a click to say that the call was dead. She sets the phone down on its dock and turns to smile at me.
“He’ll be right with you.”
I give her this cheesy looking smile that holds the super secret message of “Ohmygod, why won’t you just die” and I turn around to the waiting room to take a seat. It’s silent, aside from the click-clacking of the goddamn receptionist at the computer. I don’t like it because I hate silence. I hate not having noise. It reminds me of when I was seven years old and I went to my mother’s office. Everything was about a head taller than I was and I had to stand on my tippy toes to even see the smooth hardwood surface of her desk. Everyone kept cooing at me like I was just some animal that was starved for attention. I hated it.
There’s a slam at the doctor’s door and I see him with a fuming red face that is absolutely terrifying because it doesn’t suit his usual pale tone.
“WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?”
My eyes grow to the size of dinner plates and I’m afraid to answer. So I don’t. He doesn’t give me a chance to anyway.
“MARCH STRAIGHT INTO MY OFFICE RIGHT FUCKING NOW AND GIVE ME ONE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING EXCUSE AS TO WHY I SHOULDN’T JUST GIVE THE FUCK UP.”
I do as he says because to be quite honest, he’s fucking terrifying. This was a definite first—I’ve never seen him lose his cool before. I think I should answer him before he has a premature heart attack. So I do.
“...I was sleeping.”
He raises an eyebrow. “No nightmares?”
“Well I can’t remember any.”
To my complete surprise, his expression softens and his shoulders give out. “For once.” He opens up a drawer in his desk, pulling out a pad of paper, “How long?”
“I fell asleep at two. I woke up about forty five minutes ago.”
“...Which would be?”
“You can’t make me do math. I just woke up.”
His face deadpans and he stares at me like he wants to rip out my throat. It’s scary. I tell him this.
“I never really knew how fucking terrifying you can be. Until now.”
“Oh yeah,” he says, sniffing and ripping off a page of the paper pad he had, then putting it back in the drawer. “I’m as beast as fucking King Kong.”
“But King Kong wasn’t a beast. He was just a misunderstood giant.”
“Shut the fuck up, Iero, and let me have my goddamn moment.”
I hold a palm up to my face to stop me from laughing. I hate Gerard with a deep and fiery passion—almost as much as I hate Celine Dion and trust me, I hate her with all my heart, body, soul and mind—but I have to love him at the same time. Or his humour at least, whichever comes first.
An apple core comes flying at my head.
“Put that in the trash for me, will you? You’re closer to it and to be completely honest, I’m just too comfy in this chair.”
-
“So what’s the dealio, homeslice?”
Translation, how was your day?
You see, this what I have to deal with this every single fucking time I come here. And it’s ME that needs this stupid therapy. “Why are you talking like that?”
“Because I’m going to be in a famous gangster movie and I need practice. So again, shut the fuck up and let me talk in dat coolz speak, yo.”
I give him this ‘how in the fuck did you graduate with a psychology degree?’ look. “...okay?”
“You iz coodizzle, dawg. I be talkin’ to you like I iz so damn fuckin’ gangsta.” He glances at me while he’s typing in something on the computer, which is placed on his desk. He notices my face and cocks a brow. “Now don’ youz be givin’ me dat face, yo. I ain’t belonging in dat house fo’ crazy ass muthafuckas.”
This is the first time he’s ever done this and quite frankly, I’m a bit concerned. But I let it slide because he’s my superior and I’m just his fucking psychotic patient who needs to take his medication every hour.
I lean back on the leather sofa that he’s got in his office and I put an arm across my forehead. I sneak a glance at him and he catches it, raising one of his brows and nodding his head to usher me to answer. So I do.
“It was alright, I guess. I spent most of it sleeping, but I don’t remember any dream so I guess that’s good,” I tell him. He gives me this encouraging smile, which scares me more than it does assure. I go on anyway.
“I woke at around nine this morning and I remember promising myself five more minutes, but I ended up taking more, because if it isn’t obvious enough, I’m late.”
“Obviously.”
“Like I said, if it isn’t obvious enough. Asshole.”
He smirks and watches me as I watch him. He knows that I don’t like it when I know people are staring at me. He knows that I hate it even more when the person that’s staring at me knows that I know that they’re staring at me, but they don’t stop. He doesn’t even have any expression, his eyes are blank and his mouth is flat. I begin to fidget because I feel uncomfortable.
“Fucking stop, you cunt. You know I hate that.”
His eyes crinkle from smiling and he chuckles. “Yeah, I do.”
“Then why the hell do you do it?” I’m glaring now. Mostly because despite my deadly tone (or at least it sounds pretty damn scary to me), he’s still smiling.
“Because it’s fun to watch you get all riled up because of it,” he says in a matter of fact tone, while he looks back to the computer screen. He starts typing something in and turns back to me, rolling his eyes.
“Fucking duh.”
I roll on over to my stomach and shut my eyes. I’m so tired. It’s nine o’clock in the morning and I’m tired. I need to get up and get dressed and have coffee and smoke a Newport and go out and do errands and go to therapy and—fuck it. I’m tired. I want five more minutes.
“Just five more minutes,” I say to myself, yawning and then closing my eyelids. “Five... more... minutes.”
-
My eyes flicker open to the sound of the consistent ringing of the goddamn land phone. I hate it almost as much as I hate my alarm. I put a pillow over my face and smother myself with it as the sun blares brightly through the small balcony’s window. Since I don’t have the energy to get up and answer the phone, my machine picks it up. Cue the computerized voice.
“Hello, you’ve reached—” My voice, “the fuck do you think,” Its voice, “They cannot come to the phone right now. Please record your message or try your call again.”
Now the message.
“Hi Frank, it’s your therapist calling for... oh I don’t know, the fortieth time—”
I check the clock.
“—and I just want to let you know, again, for the fortieth time—”
15:39.
“—that our session started over two hours ago and guess what? You’re still not here.”
My eyes go wide. Oh my—
“So I suggest that you get up, get yourself decent and make your way over to my office right fucking now.”
There’s a click to signify the end of his message and by this time, I’ve got my toothbrush shoved down my throat as I struggle to get a pair of track pants on. I know I’m too far in and if it wasn’t for that last call, I wouldn’t give a shit and go back to sleep. But he sounded pretty angry. You don’t mess with an angry therapist. Especially one like him.
I’m in too much of a rush to make breakfast, so I decide to skip it. I shove on a pair of torn up Nikes and rush out the door. Instead of waiting for the elevator (because today, I just don’t have the patience for it), I bound down the stairs.
I’m running out the lobby door and take a right, speeding down the streets and giving a finger to whoever was in my way. I make many twists and turns before I’m finally on the building’s street and I jay walk onto the block Adam Fest is on. As soon as I’m at the entrance and through the doors, I run in the elevator just as it’s beginning to close.
“Cmoncmoncmon,” I mutter as the machine begins to click up the floors. As it finally reaches the third floor, I speed out to the room and go up to reception, my face as red as a fucking tomato.
“Hi, I’m here to see Dr. Way,” I try and say through my heaving chest. The woman at the desk looks at me through eyes that look like they’ve almost been glued shut.
“And who are you?”
I’ve been going here for the past few months and this bitch still doesn’t know who I am. Or she pretends she doesn’t.
“Frank Iero.”
She seems to be moving a centimetre every hour because it’s what must be at least five minutes later that she actually responds.
“How do you spell your last name?”
I’m almost tempted to rip off her head. “It starts with an I.”
More slow as fuck clicking. “Frank Anthony Iero?”
I grit my teeth at the mention of my middle name. “Yeah.”
She picks up the phone and dials a few numbers, before speaking into it, telling whoever it was on the other line that a Mr Iero was waiting here to come see Dr Way. I can hear the person on the other line say a “Fucking finally” and a click to say that the call was dead. She sets the phone down on its dock and turns to smile at me.
“He’ll be right with you.”
I give her this cheesy looking smile that holds the super secret message of “Ohmygod, why won’t you just die” and I turn around to the waiting room to take a seat. It’s silent, aside from the click-clacking of the goddamn receptionist at the computer. I don’t like it because I hate silence. I hate not having noise. It reminds me of when I was seven years old and I went to my mother’s office. Everything was about a head taller than I was and I had to stand on my tippy toes to even see the smooth hardwood surface of her desk. Everyone kept cooing at me like I was just some animal that was starved for attention. I hated it.
There’s a slam at the doctor’s door and I see him with a fuming red face that is absolutely terrifying because it doesn’t suit his usual pale tone.
“WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN?”
My eyes grow to the size of dinner plates and I’m afraid to answer. So I don’t. He doesn’t give me a chance to anyway.
“MARCH STRAIGHT INTO MY OFFICE RIGHT FUCKING NOW AND GIVE ME ONE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING EXCUSE AS TO WHY I SHOULDN’T JUST GIVE THE FUCK UP.”
I do as he says because to be quite honest, he’s fucking terrifying. This was a definite first—I’ve never seen him lose his cool before. I think I should answer him before he has a premature heart attack. So I do.
“...I was sleeping.”
He raises an eyebrow. “No nightmares?”
“Well I can’t remember any.”
To my complete surprise, his expression softens and his shoulders give out. “For once.” He opens up a drawer in his desk, pulling out a pad of paper, “How long?”
“I fell asleep at two. I woke up about forty five minutes ago.”
“...Which would be?”
“You can’t make me do math. I just woke up.”
His face deadpans and he stares at me like he wants to rip out my throat. It’s scary. I tell him this.
“I never really knew how fucking terrifying you can be. Until now.”
“Oh yeah,” he says, sniffing and ripping off a page of the paper pad he had, then putting it back in the drawer. “I’m as beast as fucking King Kong.”
“But King Kong wasn’t a beast. He was just a misunderstood giant.”
“Shut the fuck up, Iero, and let me have my goddamn moment.”
I hold a palm up to my face to stop me from laughing. I hate Gerard with a deep and fiery passion—almost as much as I hate Celine Dion and trust me, I hate her with all my heart, body, soul and mind—but I have to love him at the same time. Or his humour at least, whichever comes first.
An apple core comes flying at my head.
“Put that in the trash for me, will you? You’re closer to it and to be completely honest, I’m just too comfy in this chair.”
-
“So what’s the dealio, homeslice?”
Translation, how was your day?
You see, this what I have to deal with this every single fucking time I come here. And it’s ME that needs this stupid therapy. “Why are you talking like that?”
“Because I’m going to be in a famous gangster movie and I need practice. So again, shut the fuck up and let me talk in dat coolz speak, yo.”
I give him this ‘how in the fuck did you graduate with a psychology degree?’ look. “...okay?”
“You iz coodizzle, dawg. I be talkin’ to you like I iz so damn fuckin’ gangsta.” He glances at me while he’s typing in something on the computer, which is placed on his desk. He notices my face and cocks a brow. “Now don’ youz be givin’ me dat face, yo. I ain’t belonging in dat house fo’ crazy ass muthafuckas.”
This is the first time he’s ever done this and quite frankly, I’m a bit concerned. But I let it slide because he’s my superior and I’m just his fucking psychotic patient who needs to take his medication every hour.
I lean back on the leather sofa that he’s got in his office and I put an arm across my forehead. I sneak a glance at him and he catches it, raising one of his brows and nodding his head to usher me to answer. So I do.
“It was alright, I guess. I spent most of it sleeping, but I don’t remember any dream so I guess that’s good,” I tell him. He gives me this encouraging smile, which scares me more than it does assure. I go on anyway.
“I woke at around nine this morning and I remember promising myself five more minutes, but I ended up taking more, because if it isn’t obvious enough, I’m late.”
“Obviously.”
“Like I said, if it isn’t obvious enough. Asshole.”
He smirks and watches me as I watch him. He knows that I don’t like it when I know people are staring at me. He knows that I hate it even more when the person that’s staring at me knows that I know that they’re staring at me, but they don’t stop. He doesn’t even have any expression, his eyes are blank and his mouth is flat. I begin to fidget because I feel uncomfortable.
“Fucking stop, you cunt. You know I hate that.”
His eyes crinkle from smiling and he chuckles. “Yeah, I do.”
“Then why the hell do you do it?” I’m glaring now. Mostly because despite my deadly tone (or at least it sounds pretty damn scary to me), he’s still smiling.
“Because it’s fun to watch you get all riled up because of it,” he says in a matter of fact tone, while he looks back to the computer screen. He starts typing something in and turns back to me, rolling his eyes.
“Fucking duh.”