Three weeks had passed since the funeral, since Joe had been admitted to a rehabilitation facility up the country, but I swear, I was still stuck in that day. Time was passing by, but my head was stuck in that moment.
I couldn’t reach him, and it was killing me.
According to Edel Kavanagh, who had reached out to me every week since the funeral, Joe didn’t have phone privileges in rehab. It was against their policy for patients to have access to mobile phones or have any contact with the outside world until they were further along in their recovery.
“All you need to do is scrape a pass,” Kev told me, setting his pencil down and reaching for another textbook. “I know you’ve got a pass in you, Aoif. You can do this.”
“What if I don’t?”
“You think this year is hard, trying to get through sixth year while pregnant?” he tried to play tough cop by saying. “Imagine how hard it’s going to be, having to go back to BCS and repeat next year with a baby on your hip.” He narrowed his eyes. “Everyone in our year will have moved on to college and work. Hell, even your boyfriend’s dopey sidekicks have snagged themselves a J-1 visa to the States for the summer. They won’t be there to have your back if you flunk out and have to repeat sixth year.”
That was true.
As soon as the exams were over, Podge and Alec, along with a whole heap of other people from our year, were heading to America for the summer, and I didn’t blame them one bit.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime.
Aside from me, the only other person in my friendship circle with no plans to leave Ballylaggin for travel or college was Casey – well, aside from a two-week piss-up in Benidorm in late July.
“I’m not going back either way,” I told my brother. “Even if I fail, I’m not going back to BCS to repeat sixth year. I’ll apply for hairdressing at the PLC college in the city and hope for the best.”
“And if you don’t get into your course? What then? You’re going to raise a kid off a barmaid’s wage? You’re not flaking out without an education, Aoif,” he growled. “I won’t let you.”
“It’s not up to you, Kev.”
“Well, I know Mam and Dad won’t let you either,” he argued. “So, you need to pass these exams, and if you don’t want to do it for yourself, then do it for the baby.”
That stung.
Everything I was doing was for the baby.
I’M HERE, AREN’T I?
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.”