All My Favourite Colours

My eyes grow wide and for a few minutes I’m rendered immobile. Frank didn’t just leave.
“Well are you gonna call her?” Mikey blurts after a while.
I nod and pull out my phone and type in the numbers. It rings and rings and rings… I feel like it’s going to ring out but instead a voice comes through, “Hello?”
I gasp for some reason. “Hi um Ms Iero… My name is Gerard Way… we met a while back at thanksgiving or so…”
“Gerard yes! How are you?” she gushes from the other end.
“I’m okay thanks. I’m calling about Frank… They’ve taken him from the hospital here and I don’t know where to…”
Mikey looks keenly at me, “Oh will they not tell you?” she gasps, “how mean. He is here in Denver, currently having surgery…” she chokes up a little. “I won’t lie it’s pretty… you can come visit. There’s a bed here for you to stay in if you want.”
My eyes start to blur and I nod. Then realising she can’t see me squeak out a “yes. I’ll leave right now.”

“It’s a long-ass drive for this time of day.” Mikey says from my doorway as I throw a few things into a bag. “Like six hours at least.”
“Great, if I leave now it’ll be like what midnight? That’s okay,” I say slinging the bag over my shoulder. “I can’t wait Mikey, if he’s in surgery what if I’m too late?”
He sighs, conceding. “Right, okay, whatever. Are you sure you want to go alone?”
I nod shoving past him and bounding downstairs. I pull eleven or so CDs off the sitting room stereo and shove them in the bag. “okay I’ll text you” I say as I fiddle the front door open.
“Gee,” Mikey calls after me, “be sensible.”
“Always,” I grin and close the door.
I’m a mess of emotions as I drive toward the west exit onto the interstate. I’m happy, excited, nervous and heartbroken all at once. He’s alive right now, I’m going to see him, but in six hours…
I forget all about the music I’ve brought and listen to Christmas themed songs until I get off the roundabout. I shake myself out of it and put on the cd at the top of the pile, Iron Maiden. The sun is hanging low in the sky and there’s no traffic.
Soon I’ve left all signs of civilisation and there’s just a lot crops. Every now and then I’d pass a farm house or a few cows but that’s it.
I let the road stretches out before me as I drive well above the speed limit toward the setting sun.

About two hours on the road I notice I’m nearly out of fucking gas. I just push on and pray to something for a station nearby. Slowly instead of becoming immersed in places to get gas I get immersed in trees. The little light on my dash I thought was broken starts flashing telling me I’m practically running on fumes.
The trees just get more and more dense and the tank gets more and more empty. At one point the trees are so fucking dense that they cover the sign and I almost miss the turn off to the gas station. The car groans as I stomp on the breaks and twist the wheel viscously. The car makes weird creaking noises as I push it down the short drive to the gas station. I pull up at the pump and pour as much fuel in as I can as quick as I can, I honestly don’t want to waste any time.
The woman behind the counter seems surprised she has any customers and acts like she’s never used a cash register before. Maybe she sucks at her job or maybe I’m over pedantic because every second I spend standing here is a minute farther from Frank.
As soon as I’m on the road I do even faster and I hear my car creak beneath me but at the moment I’m beyond caring. I’m carried to Frank by the sound of his favourite band.

I’m six hours on the road to the second and when I hit signs saying “Welcome to Colorado.” Yea okay great I’m not in Denver yet. The last miles are torturous. I’m tired, it’s dark and I’m so close to Frank yet so far away.
The car grinds to a halt and god if cars could talk it would be cussing like a bitch. I wasn’t the most considerate driver in my efforts to get here. I’m low on gas again and really low on funds but I don’t care.
Denver’s hospital reception is pretty normal, no potted plant absurdities or anything. I make it to the front desk but before I can ask the middle aged woman behind it if she can direct me to the hospital room of Frank I-e-r-o my name gets called behind me. “Gerard Way? Is that you?”
“Hi Ms Iero…” I say turning around to see Frank’s aunt flushed and watery eyed.
“Hello dear. Please call me Marie. Would you come this way?” She starts walking down a stark white corridor. We climb a staircase and turn enough corners so I no longer have a notion which wing I’m on. The double doors are all different colours, trying to add cheer to the cancer ward…
When we stop we’re facing a window into a dimly lit room full of complex machines with flashing diodes and numbers that mean something in the medical jargon.
After staring for some time at the glow of the machines I decide to let my eyes try focus in on Frank. His pale little face comes slowly into view looking drawn and old. His mouth is covered by an oxygen mask and his blanket is pulled up and under his chin. He looks so small.
“What…” my voice trails. I don’t know what questions I want to ask mainly because I don’t know what answers I want to hear.
“He’s in a c-” Marie croaks and then covers her mouth. “I’m sorry,” shaky breath, “you might want to talk to a doctor…” she steps backwards and sits down on a seat.
I sigh and take a seat next to her. There is no clock here but I know it’s pretty early. 1am or so. Marie must have been here a very long time because she has a completed book of Sudoku puzzles and a half empty box of tissues.
I can’t really see in through the window. The machine with glowing red numbers and a box monitoring irrationally inconsistent heart beats is all I can see. The heart monitor shows his heart increasing speed and then slowing. Some beats are larger than others and the whole changing thing is worrying. People should have an even heartbeat, even I know that.
After a hundred or so heart beats a doctor opens the double door carrying a shit ton of clip boards. He places them in this pocket in the wall I didn’t know existed by Frank’s door and walks in. He looks at all the monitors and scribbles on a clipboard. Checks more and scribbles more. He places the clipboard on the door on his way out.
“Excuse me doctor, I’m a close friend of the patient but um I don’t know what’s going to happen to Frankie… at all. Could you like explain it please? Is he going to be okay?” I ask. Marie is, I realise now, asleep beside me.
“Uh yea sure,” the doctor shifts uncomfortably and crosses his arms, “the patient has lung cancer as you probably know. He had surgery on it and we removed a large part of the cancerous cells but, of course, that includes cutting out a whole load of his lungs too… The thing is he could either react okay to this, come out of his coma and be almost cured or…” the doctor looks pitifully at me. Coma. That can’t be good, “the cancer could grow back or his lungs might be too weak reduced to what they are. Either way there is a chance he might not wake up.”
I take in a sharp breath. I’m not sure what I hoped to hear. Not this. Frank being perfect after this and coming home with me in a few days was an illogical wish. I had wished it anyway.
“Though, I must say, his lung capacity has grown since the last time I checked so there is plenty of hope yet.”
I nod to the doctor and thank him. Picking up his clipboards he strides away down the hall. I lie back against the cold plaster wall behind and somehow in the greatest discomfort I find sleep.

My eyes fly open and white fills my eyes. You know that panic you get when you wake up in a new place full of strange noises and strange people? Well that was coursing through me as I leapt to my feet and tried to remember where I was. People are rushing in and out the door in front of me and blinds are drawn shut. There’s plenty of shouts and scampering.
My mind focuses in on the secondary noises and I hear something that sounds like an electric chair in those old horror movies. My heart fills with fear and my vision grows black at the edges from the sudden waking.
Franks aunt is awake beside me tears rolling down her cheeks and eyes trained on the door. I can’t bring myself to speak.
Five minutes pass in what feels like a decade and I suddenly get the theory of relativity. I pray silently to every god I can think of. I cross my fingers and my toes and I sob.
Suddenly all goes silent except for a long beep. The doctors emerge slowly. One walks up to us and says something. I don’t hear it as much as see it. Her mouth shapes, I’m so sorry.
Then my vision goes completely black.

The funeral is held the next day. I spend a sleepless night at the funeral home with some of Frank’s childhood friends and his aunt.
Dressed in no more black than usual I stand beside a man called James in the grey cemetery under grey skies that threatened to rain all afternoon. People read some things about Frank and some funny stories about him as a kid. My mind is confused by hearing it all in past tense. Frank was so funny, Frank was an amazing guitarist and Frank had such a short time on this earth. It makes no sense to me.
The service is short and small. Back at a hotel in the city outskirts people laugh and reminisce about all the crazy shit Frank has done. I can’t really join in but listening is just as good. Some stories I know from Frank himself, some I don’t and are completely weird and out of character and I see this whole new dimension to the short guy with a huge personality.
Back at the house, Marie hands me an envelope and then excuses herself to go and mourn by herself. I walk into the small guest room across the hall from Frank’s old room. I placed the letter on my bedside locker and just stared at it for a while before forcing myself to sleep.

Notes