Daron's Guitar Chronicles Volume 12

996 Dig for Fire

Dig for Fire

At the doctor's office they took her into a room right away while I sat alone in the waiting room. I paged a little through a two-month-old People magazine but really didn't absorb much and ended up just sitting there, thinking about Ziggy.

The waiting room slowly filled up, and they took more people into the back, and I wondered why it was taking so long. What were they doing to her, exactly? It sank in when an older man rushed in, taking off his coat as he crossed the waiting room and went directly into the back. The doctor was in, finally.

I went back to thinking about Ziggy. You'd think I'd be in a panic, but I wasn't. If him hanging up on me was supposed to send me into a tizzy, well, it didn't. Was I upset and worried? Yes. Was I freaking out? No. There's a difference, and I was glad to realize that.

Okay. I had fucked up big time by not going to New York. That much was obvious, even if previously it had not been obvious to me why I should have gone. I'd never dealt with someone like Jordan dying before and I really just had no clue—and all the people telling me I should have known better weren't louder than the million or so voices that had been telling me all my life that I should have known better than to–for example–get into a relationship with my lead singer. Or any number of other things that were "obvious" to society but were obviously not for me.

I started writing him a note–Ziggy, I mean–to get my thoughts in order.

I wish you'd told me how you felt before you went. If you felt like I was abandoning you, you could have said instead of blaming me for not knowing you felt that way. Or did you not know you felt that way until you got there? I was upset with you for a similar reason, for not knowing that I felt obligated to stay here. But now that I think about it, I know you know I felt that way, so it feels like you ignored it or didn't want to deal with the fact I felt that way. How's it going to work in the future? If one of us feels conflicted about something, shouldn't we be helping each other to make the choice? You're right. I made a choice and stuck to it without reconsidering it. But so did you, so I'd like to get past the blaming each other and onto the part where we figure out what we're going to do differently next time.

It looked reasonable when I read it back to myself but I had a feeling if I said this to Ziggy he'd skewer it full of holes within seconds. So I was back to really thinking about what was going through his head.

Except a nurse was trying to get my attention. "The doctor would like to speak with you."

"Oh, sure."

I followed her from the waiting room into the back area where the exam rooms were. This was another one of those low, stand-alone buildings, so it was a bit like a house where the living room/dining room was the waiting area and the bedrooms were the exam rooms. Except there was no proper kitchen, I don't think.

The nurse led me to a small office, past several doors that must have been exam rooms. The man in the white coat behind the desk stood up and shook my hand. It was the same guy who had hurried in earlier. "Doctor Gandy," he said, as he let go my hand and looked me up and down with a slight frown.

I can't imagine what he disapproved of. My jeans only had one or two visible holes. I guess he was expecting someone more like Remo and less like me? Someone without red streaks in his long hair, I would guess?

"I didn't expect you to be so... young," he said.

"Don't let Claire hear you say that or she'll sulk for a week about being an old lady," I told him. "She still can't get over the fact she has a grandchild."