AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“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 the 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 fuckup.”
“So, you consider yourself to be a fuckup?”
“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 fuckup 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 out, 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.
