Gerard's POV

The purple man is gone and so is my headache. Bob checks on me sometimes and gives me medicine which makes me go to sleep. I start to feel warm and safe in here even though I can't use my arms and legs, the hum of conversations going on around me lulls me to sleep.
I wake up briefly for Bob to hold a glass of water up to my lips and help me drink it. I smile sleepily at him as he lays my head back down.

"How're you doing?"
"I'm tired."
"Is the purple man here?"
"No, he got bored a few hours ago."
"That's good, I'm glad. By the way, Doctor Green is due to visit you for your afternoon appointment right about now."
My eyes widen in fear. "No, you can't let him come in here, he isn't nice!"
"Gerard, stop panicking." He holds me down on my bed as I struggle against him. "Stop, you're fine."

"Oh dear, Mr Way," says a slimy voice from the doorway and I freeze. The doctor is standing in the doorway. "Thank you, Nurse Bryar, you can go now. Mr Way and I can take it from here."
Bob leaves the room, ignoring my pleas for him to stay, and the doctor shuts the door. He turns slowly to me and smiles.
"Apparently you attacked me," he says maliciously. Cold sweat beads on my forehead.
"You made it up," I accuse him.
He shrugged. "You're the schizophrenic," he says, "who would believe you over your doctor?"
"Why are you so horrible to me?" I whisper bravely.

Doctor Green walks over to the bed and tugs up my t-shirt, exposing my pale torso. His long fingernails pinch into my skin and I hiss.
"Because of what you've done to Donna," he says softly. Before I can pluck up the courage to ask my next question he pulls a wad of cloth from his pocket and stuffs it in my mouth, gagging me. Next he pulls out a pin, the kind mum used to pin our trouser hems in place before she sewed them up on her machine.

He traces the pin along my skin and I feel a trail of goosebumps break out behind it. "You were an ungrateful burden to your poor mother," he says. The pin pricks my skin and I gasp through the cloth.
"You were a lead weight around her neck. Selfish. Stupid. Ugly. Time-consuming." With every insult he moves the pin to a new place on my stomach and presses it in deeper than the last until I shriek into the gag.
"Oh relax, acupuncture is a wonderful holistic treatment," Green says. My eyes roll back in my head and I writhe to get away from him and his pin.
"Don't wriggle so much," he tells me, leaving the pin stuck in me and pulling out another. "You'll tear your blood vessels.

I freeze in panic and he slides another pin in. I try to relax the muscles around my stomach like I used to when I had an injection because it hurt less, but I'm so scared of the pins. They're too much like needles.
"Mmph!" It's a wordless scream of pain that nobody else can hear. Again and again, pin after pin until I go limp, exhausted and on the verge of passing out.
The doctor leans down close to me and whispers savagely into my ear, "if it wasn't for you, she would have loved me. After your dad died I stood a chance. I was successful, respected, friendly. This is all your fault, just like everything else."

I hardly feel him pulling the pins out of me and I don't hear the exact words he says to the nurses outside my door when he leaves - I guess he's instructing them to leave me alone so his torture will go un-noticed. He ducks back in quickly to rip the gag out of my mouth and steps out again.

"That looked painful." The purple man leans against the wall by the door tapping his cane against the floor.
"Leave me alone," I tell him sullenly. "Go on, leave."
He pulls up a chair and sits next to me, stroking his hand across my smarting stomach. To my surprise it doesn't hurt at all but then again he's not real so what did I expect?
"Why would I leave you when you're hurting?" he asks and his concerned tone of voice pulls me up short.
"What do you mean?"
A grin passes over his features. "I mean it makes you easier to wind up if you're already feeling low," he says, pressing his hand down hard on my stomach.

Bob comes running in at the sound of my screaming and grabs me by the shoulders. "Gerard. Gerard?"
Another nurse comes in behind him holding a syringe. I zero in on it. Another needle. I make an effort to calm down, my wild hazel eyes finding Bob's cool blue ones and breathing deeply.
"The purple man," I say breathlessly. "He was hurting me."
"Gerard, he's not real. There was nobody in here when I arrived, there's nobody in here now except for you and me nurse Jamie. Do you understand?"
I nod frantically and lay back. My body is shaking.
"It's my fault," I croon quietly to myself. Just like Doctor Green said, everything was my fault. I've been a burden to my family and it wasn't fair on them.

Bob stays for another ten minutes until I calm down then gives me a pill to make me sleepy again. I slowly feel the tingle in my fingers and toes as the sedation sets in and I watch Bob move around the room in slow motion through half closed eyelids.
"Well done, Gerard," he says. "You just sleep it off."


Doctor Green visits me three times a day for the next few days and after every time the purple man comes to make it worse. I know now that I'm worthless but they haven't let me out of the cuffs except to shower and take toilet breaks so I can't find any way to kill myself and save them all the trouble. Even Bob is beginning not to like me. He insists that he does but the purple man says differently.

Now Bob's coming in to check on me again and give me my lunchtime medication. They've already fed me through a tube which they inserted into my nose and down into my stomach because I was refusing to eat. Bob presses a button on the remote and I am pushed up into a sitting position. He catches my head as it flops forwards and presses it back gently.

"Hey, Gerard," he says and I hear worry in his voice. "Are you feeling okay?"
I nod, not trusting my voice.
"Here you are." His fingertips brush my lip as he places a tablet on my tongue and lifts a glass of water for me to wash it down with; my hands are still cuffed by my shoulders. "Mikey's coming to see you later this afternoon," he tells me as he lays the bed back down again so I'm back in my semi-recline with my knees up.
I perk up, my eyes opening. "Mikey."
"Yeah, Mikey and somebody called Ray are both coming."
"I like Ray," I say absently. "I'm glad he's coming as well. He played board games with me."
"Well, you've got five hours worth of visiting time so there's time for a board game if you're feeling up to it."
"Will I be allowed to take the cuffs off?"
"I'll ask your doctor."
I sigh because Doctor Green will never let me take the cuffs off.

"Incidentally," Bob says, "we're going to assign a therapist to you. He'll work in equal measure with Doctor Green."
My interest is piqued. A therapist?
"He's actually a hypnotherapist but he's also a brilliant psychologist as well, his name's Frank Iero. Maybe he can give you some help that we can't."
"Sounds good," I mutter. I can feel my eyelids starting to droop under the weight of the little pill Bob has just given me. I love his little pills; they make everything go away for a while.

Notes