The office is a series of pastel blotches that I’ve read about in interior design magazines. It’s supposedly meant to reduce stress, support positive mental states, and be totally non-threatening.

To me it looks like someone tried to harness their Jackson Pollack, but with nothing but pastels and earth tones. It’s Army camouflage meets Lululemon and throw in a good dose of Lena Dunham annoying, and you have the décor of the office.

“Hello, my name’s Thomas Goldstone,” I tell the receptionist. “I’m here to see Dr. Perry?”

There’s no answer for a moment. Instead, the receptionist, who looks very professional in a 1985 sort of way with her puffy hair and tie at the neck of her blouse, just keeps typing away . . . but considering that she’s only using the arrow keys on her keyboard, I suspect she’s not exactly doing data entry.

“She’ll be with you in a minute,” she says without looking up from her computer. I swallow my frustration, making mental notes about everything I’ve seen here as I sit down in a plum-colored chair.

From the front door, everything had been pretty well-maintained. Clean and bright, maybe a little outdated. And the workers on the first floor had been smiling and helpful. Then, I’d met with an internist, Dr. Maeson, who’d basically spent the appointment time trying to sell me on Botox and Juvéderm injections and very little time actually giving me a real checkup. It’s a good thing I have a primary care doctor of my own. And now here I am, at the pinnacle of my downfall.

So . . . finally, you’ve been reduced to this. And I thought you had some pride.

I do have pride, but you were the one who kept telling me pride goes before a fall. I’m not going to fall.

You keep saying that. But you’re going to fall anyway. You think you’ll be able to get through this interrogation without the doc realizing you’re fifty shades of fucked up? Good luck with that!

I squeeze the arm rests on the chair until my knuckles are white as the demon’s laugh echoes hollowly in my head, drowning out everything around me.

Dimly, I become aware of someone calling my name, and I look up to see the receptionist. Judging by her sigh, she must’ve called my name repeatedly before I heard her.

Getting to my feet, I follow her down the short hallway to what pretty much looks like your standard shrink’s office, although instead of the couch, it seems Dr. Perry prefers the super-comfy club chair arrangement.

I take a seat, and the receptionist leaves, closing the door behind her and leaving me alone . . . except for the voice in my head.

What are you going to tell her? Maybe you should start with how you let you mother die while you ate chicken nuggets?

The door opens, and Dr. Perry walks in, and I’m cringing already.

She’s younger than I expected, maybe mid-twenties, but dressed in a buttoned-up, almost prudish way that makes her seem even younger. I have a biting thought that maybe the receptionist is her mother. There’s just something about Dr. Perry that screams she has no life experience and would be offended by the most minor peek at my true history.

I’m not normally one to judge people on appearance. I know just how much a fancy business suit can hide, after all. But how am I supposed to ‘connect’ and share with someone who looks like her biggest concern is whether she should have a bran muffin or treat herself to Mini-Wheats for breakfast?

How am I supposed to share and gain insight from someone I already think has never dealt with the same things I’ve dealt with?

Not that I have any real intention of getting help from Dr. Perry or anyone else. This appointment is strictly so that I can proceed with the hospital purchase plan.

Aw, you know you can’t get rid of me anyway. And this hospital deal is going to be a failure, just like you.

“Thomas, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” Dr. Perry says, something else that puts me on edge. While I encourage the use of first names within the Goldstone offices, outside I’m always professional. You don’t use my first name without getting permission first. “How are you today?”

“I’m here,” I reply, cautiously guarded. “You?”

“It’s been a good day,” Dr. Perry says, and I notice she doesn’t offer her first name. Instead, she looks me over before sitting down and picking up a clipboard next to her. “So, let’s talk ground rules.”

“Ground rules?” I ask, lifting an eyebrow. Remember the deal. Remember the deal . . .

“Yes. First, I am going to need you to be open with me. That’s the only way to delve into any areas that need clarity. Perhaps we should begin at the beginning. Tell me about your childhood.”

The things I do to be the best.

The elevator can’t open quickly enough as I get back home, my anger barely held back.

I’d spent the better part of an hour redirecting Dr. Perry away from every hot-button issue I have and trying to steer her toward information pertinent to the hospital sale. But she’d been relentless, almost to point of it becoming an interrogation as she calmly asked questions about my parents, my school years, my business, and my personal life, all the while making checkmarks on her clipboard like the whole thing was an automated process for her.

Check yes here, ask follow up question there. And when I’d gotten frustrated at her repeated inquiries, she’d had the nerve to tell me that I need to accept my anger, let it teach me, and grow a healthier future. It might as well have been an inspirational quote from her Pinterest board for all the insight she offered.

She’d basically turned me off therapy, and between Dr. Maeson and Dr. Perry, my biggest concern with the hospital purchase is the caliber of its employees. Well, and that someone had managed to wrangle that whole rigmarole in the first place.

I strip quickly out of my suit and look in my closet, finally choosing the clothes that match my inner anger and rage. The white undershirt’s tattered, bloodstained, and patched in half a dozen places, looking more like Frankenstein’s T-shirt than something belonging in the closet of a man who has more money than he knows what to do with.

For two years, I wore it under my shoulder pads for every football game, every team lift, so that by now, it barely hangs together. But it’s raw, it’s torn and battered . . . and so am I, full of rage, venom practically dripping from my lips as I pull on my heavy compression shorts and go into my gym.

Grabbing my belt from its hook on the wall, I start up the music, Carl Orff’s O Fortuna setting the right mood as I set up the squat rack.

Time to get ugly, to make the pain flow.

By the time Venom pounds through the speakers, sweat stains my shirt, my thighs are flooded with blood, and my chest is heaving as I stare at the 375 pounds on the bar.

Do you think this will make you feel like you’ve accomplished something? It won’t. You’re just going to fail.

“That’s the fucking plan,” I growl, slapping myself across the face. This isn’t exactly safe. You’re not supposed to push yourself to maximum effort under heavy weight without anyone here to spot.

But I built this gym with that in mind, and I’ve got the equipment to protect me. The nylon safety straps looped around the upper supports of my power rack are capable of catching the weight when I can’t do any more.

I slap myself again, rage and anger and hatred for myself, for my life, for everything that I’ve been through coursing through me. Jamming myself under the bar, I revel in the punishment of the steel pressing into my back, the inch-thick bar digging into that space right below my deltoids and across my back before I drop into ‘the hole’.

One.

You’re never going to make it. Your best is twelve . . . you’re weak.

College. Standing on stage. Nobody in the crowd for me. I was the twenty-one-year-old wunderkind who graduated with his MBA at the same age most people were figuring out which beer they liked best. Dennis Goldstone? Didn’t attend, didn’t send a gift, didn’t send a congratulations.

“Bastard! Two!” I yell as the music screams with me.

High school. The state championships. Giving the valedictorian speech. Never once did he attend.

Three . . . and I can feel it in my back. I’ve spent so much time over the past month doing things besides putting in time under this bar, my back is tired already. Fighting it, I push my stomach out against my belt, bracing myself and dropping again.

Four . . . five . . . my thighs are flushed with blood, the muscles in there quivering with each breath, sweat pouring down my face and dripping onto the flooring beneath me, but I still go down.

I bet you won’t even be able to do ten.

Six . . . God, the pain’s blinding . . . seven . . .

You really think you’re the best because you can push some pussy weights around? The best perform to their capability every time, always pushing further, deeper, better. And that’s just not you.

Junior high. Scoring a perfect on my PSAT, then a 2250 on the then SAT scale in ninth grade. No acknowledgement from my father except to point out that over 400 students got perfect scores.

Nine . . . I take a deep breath, my vision narrowing to a pulsing red-black tunnel that barely allows me to see my depth as I go down again. I feel wetness on my upper lip and realize I’ve burst a blood vessel in my nose, but I don’t stop, going down into the hole again.

Stay down! You’re fucking weak, stay down!

My mind flashes, remembering the ‘discussions’ with my father, the time I told him if he’d come, I’d hit a home run in Little League . . .

I groan, pushing as the world spins around me until I’m standing up, pain pulsating through every fiber of my being. My back’s on fire, my legs are numb, I can’t feel my fingertips, and my heart’s pounding so hard that I can’t even hear the music anymore.

But I go down again.

My knees are almost in my chest, and everything’s strained in ways that men are not supposed to strain themselves, and for this eleventh rep, the hole feels like the deepest pit on Earth, the weight of the entire building on my shoulders. I’m in hell, and the only way out is my rage and my own will.

My thighs quake, my calves threaten to cramp, and everything becomes a single explosion of pain as I push to get the weight back up.

I’m a quarter of the way there when the cramp paralyzes my left thigh and I pitch forward, unable to stop myself. The safety straps catch the weight just as planned, saving me as I fall face first to the ground, unable to even stop myself with my arms.

I lay there, blood pooling under my face, trying to will my thigh into relaxing. The pain’s enormous, and even after my leg releases, I can barely move. I have to crawl like a baby out of my workout room, all the way to the bathroom. I’ll clean up the mess later.

My tub is built into the floor, my only obstacle a six-inch lip that I lean on as the water fills and I peel my T-shirt off and use my toes to get my shoes off. I try twice to get my shorts off, but my back and legs won’t let me move, so I leave them on, rolling over the lip of the tub and into the hot water.

Luckily, my arms are moving, and I push myself into a sitting position before calling out, “Alexa . . . play Enya.” The screaming death metal from my workout room stops, replaced by soft music in the bathroom. It’s cliché, perhaps, but everyone jokes about Enya music being relaxing for a reason . . . it is. And with a touch of a button, the jets in the tub turn on low.

I lean my head back, and shame fills me as the voice in my head gleefully taunts.

Told you that you’d fail. You’ve gotten even weaker, if that’s possible. She’s done that to you.

“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. She’s made me stronger, and I can’t imagine not having Mia in my life anymore. I have to have her, and I have to keep her with me.