It started with an innocent phrase. Something that might be passed around the room of a science class than where he had heard it. He'd wanted to play pretend, like this wasn't real and he was just hearing things, but he didn't quite have that luxury. Hell, 'hearing things' was part of what landed him in his situation in the first place. Part of it. Either way, it was a bit late to be playing the pretend game. Shit was real, and he didn't have a magic reset button.
Not that it would have done any good. He'd have landed himself here eventually. Apparently, he assumed. And he'd rather not have to go through this whole ordeal again, if he were given a choice. Suicide attempts just kind of sucked, in more ways than one. Then again, so did playing the waiting game. Which was what Sollux was doing right now, while being stuck in an uncomfortable hospital bed. He couldn't do a thing but wait until he was seen by some lady to 'evaluate' him. He hated the thought of that with every fiber of his being.
The whole spiral of events happened because of one stupid phrase. 'Chemical imbalance.' If he had been okay, fucking normal, he wouldn't be sitting here in an uncomfortable bed, and barely remembering how to make his limbs work. He had to piss in a fucking glorified baby-potty on wheels. More than once. Only today had he managed to make his way to the bathroom across the room, and he'd needed his mother to help him get there the first few times. Degrading as fuck.
He still felt like shit though when he'd caught a look at himself in the mirror for the first time in days, since his overdose. He'd looked like glorified shit. His skin was pale and pasty and in the bathroom light, a little yellow. He'd been in there for four days - two of which he was asleep, and the third he couldn't move without retching. (Or smell. He knew hospital food was bad, but simply dry heaving at the mention of it was a bit much.) And today was the waiting game.
Great. The guy on the other side of the wall to his right of him just walked to the desk to ask for his damn prune juice. Again. And he forgot to tie his gown on the side. Again. Sollux was getting tired of seeing that dude's saggy ass cross his vision. Beautiful.
The lady to the right of him - sort of, she was in front of him and to the right, probably in front of prune-butt - was in a full on crying fit with the evaluator. He was surrounded by emotional idiots, and he did not approve. Not at all. Fuck. Before this, he hadn't even known there was a full section of a hospital devoted to those who were a little batshit insane.
"Calm down, Sollux. We'll be out of here soon."
He knew his mother means well, but he sort of wishes she would disappear. All she really wanted was for him to get 'fixed.' Yes, mother. Talking about my feelings and things will totally change the chemical make up of my brain. Love you too. The 'problem' was that he was bipolar. That he heard voices. That he was crazy.
Too much was going on in his head, and sometimes he just couldn't tune it all out. Sometimes he gave in, because it was hard to tune out the constant droning in his head. Sometimes he stopped fighting. Fuck, and he had just gotten so tired of it that he had decided that enough was enough. Yeah, he had been on meds, but they thought he was just cycling. They didn't know about the voices. He didn't want them to know. But somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew lying wasn't going to get him anywhere...
"Sollux Captor? Hi, my name is Amy Cambell, and I'll be your psych evaluator. I'm going to be asking you a few questions today, alright?"
Not like he had much of a choice. This chick's voice really annoyed him.
"Sure. Go ahead. Not like I have much of a choice; don't expect me to break down like a fountain."
So she did. She went down the list, "Are you depressed," and "Are you thinking about harming yourself," "Do you have any hallucinations-" he's lied about that one, his mother was still there, "Substance abuse," "Stressors," "Hobbies to relieve stress," ect. He's realized these all sounded familiar half way through, and it took a moment to recall that he'd been asked these very same questions when he had been twelve and was first committed. Different state, different life. No use talking about it
It was all formalities before they send you in with the crazies. Once he was done with that little questionnaire, he'd been told they would have a bed open soon - which meant more waiting. Great. He'd already been reduced to making nice with two of the nurses on the night shift. They were the only reason he'd known the passing of time anyway. Tends to happen when there are no windows, and the clock is out of his line of vision.
Instead of sitting there in boredom for a good god-knows-how-long, Sollux decided to crash. He's actually a little grateful that he can fall asleep on his own now, because that liquid-shit they pumped into him through the IV tube knocked him out. Still, it seemed he could never get enough sleep here, somehow. He was knocked out for two days - how could he even stand a bed at this point. The question didn't linger long in his mind - he was out once he lowered the head of the bed.
God, he didn't want to be there. Not even a little. He was probably surrounded by a bunch of lunatics - including the crying girl from before. Welcome to Alternia's Mental Health Facility. Can that even be counted as clever? Alternia - Alternative. They're not going to shove their 'alternative medicine' down his throat, are they? Fuck.
The upside to this was that he got to ride in an ambulance, while still conscious this time. Or, well. Okay and conscious, he supposed he should say, since he was awake while he was being driven to the hospital. It's not a pleasant memory, but something tells him that it is going to stay with him for a long time, because as the ambulance drives over the bumps on the road, Sollux swears he remembers the same bumps as they hooked him up to machines, measuring things to make sure he was still going to be okay.
When he arrives at the place, it was in the afternoon. He apparently had a roommate, whom he didn't know, obviously, and people were split up between two conjoined rooms. There was one sitting room with a bunch of chairs and a TV, and to the side of that there was a hallway and a giant circular area near the wall that was apparently the nursing/business area. Computers and shit, mocking him with what he wasn't going to be able to have for at least a week. God damn it.
On the other side of the narrowed hallway, there was another area, but this was filled with a few small square tables. Once Sollux had gotten the 'tour,' he plopped down in one of the plush blue chairs and huffed. Not cool. Not cool at all. The guy next to him, who had been previously glaring holes into the TV, turned to him.
"Hey, newbie. What the fuck is your name?"
What a fucking ray of sunshine.
"Sollux, fuckwad." Yeah. He could be a complete douchbag too. The person who had just asked turned his sneering expression to him; he couldn't lie. He was a little bit intimidated...not like he'd ever admit it out loud.
"Sollux, huh. You're the fuckwad that's my new roommate. Great. I hope you're better then the last guy. He drove me nuts, like, not even those individually packed nuts - I mean the fucking whole-canned nuts that spend ages on your grandmothers table in those retarded white little bowls that somehow never collect dust. By the way, name's Karkat. Karkat fucking Vantas. Remember that."
...Metaphors about his grandmother's nuts. Why is there so much wrong with that whole statement.
"Right. I'll be sure to do that." Conversation over. Leave me alone. I am not here to make friends. Sollux rolled his eyes just for good measure. Karkat did the same. Copy.
"So, what's your brand of crazy?" Karkat questions, and Sollux wasn't sure if he wanted to tell him. Bit it took about two seconds for him to realize where he was, and that he didn't give two shits about what they might think of him,.
"Suicide attempt. Bipolar. The voices whisper to me," he said, fully expecting the other teen to leave him alone. Instead, he made a small 'hm' noise, and nodded his head.
"Nice. So, what are they saying now?"
Who asks that sort of question? Seriously..."Nothing big," he replies, turning his attention to Karkat instead of at the television. "It's usually them telling me that people are going to die. Right now they're pretty quiet, but I can still hear them."
He doesn't know why he's even sharing this. It's always been something he kept under wraps - people might know that he's bipolar, but information about his fucked up brain never left his lips. Yet here he was, spilling this to a complete stranger like those information barriers never existed in the first place.
"Wow, that's pretty fucked up, dude."
"Basically. What about you?" The bad thing was that he was genuinely curious.
"Suicide attempt as well. Bulimic and paranoid schizophrenic."
He's not sure why, but that actually surprises him. To Sollux, Karkat seems like someone with too much self-esteem for an eating disorder. And what the hell even is that last thing?
"Seriously? You seem...not like someone who would have an eating disorder." Echoing thoughts. "What's a paranoid schizophrenic, anyway?"
Karkat seems to fidget a bit at that, but he quickly saves face, and Sollux is a bit jealous of how well he recovers. "Yeah, well. It is what it is. Shit just disgusts me. And it's..." he hesitates, droning as he directs his attention away from Sollux. "It's where I pretty much think everyone is after me. I got committed because I thought it was my blood that was causing people to 'suspect' me. Tried to bleed myself dry."
Okay. Wow. He didn't think someone like him would ever have all that boiling under his skin. Not that he cared. He was just...surprised. Surprised and maybe just a little bit interested.
"Anyway," Karkat continues, the roughness in his voice returning. "You're the second one to come today. Feferi had come during the night, bawling. She's..sort of weird though. You wouldn't guess that she should be here, if you speak with her. Just, wow."
Sitting next to Karkat, not so hidden or out of earshot, sat the crying girl - Feferi, he reminded himself - who didn't look like she ever beloned here. Karkat had the rude temper and Sollux had the snide behavior, but this girl looked like she would fit in better on a cheerleading squad.
Her slim form was being hidden by the large, blue scrubs - he had been forced into a pair as well, yet Karkat and many others he saw were in causal cloths - and her black hair practically spilled out of her ponytail. But her eyes caught his attention the most. They were a bright fuchsia, and it left him staring like an idiot. She just beamed and giggled, and it was easy to understand the 'does-not-belong-here' comment.
"Oh shush! Not another glubbing word out of you, Karkat! That was sooooo embarrassing! And I'm pretty sure I recognize him from the hospital, so he probably saw me! Grr!"
Karkat didn't even think before firing back, "Careful, on the elongated vowls, Spider-Bitch might think you're trying to steal. And I think we've learned that you don't want to deal with her, correct?"
Sollux didn't know who this 'spider bitch' was, but Feferi's groan seemed to tell him that was a good thing.
"Anyways! I know I heard Karkat's backhand comment, but I really wasn't listening to anything before that. I'm Feferi Peixes! What's your name?"
"Sollux Captor. Why...are you here?"
Feferi smiled, but it seemed a little sad, and he wondered if he should have asked. He shoots a look at Karkat, who was eyeing both of them hardly, and that told him nothing at all. He couldn't even mull over his choice for long, since she cleared her throat and started speaking.
"Oh, well, you see, it's kind of PTSD. Trauma, and all that. But I'm okay! I'm just sometimes not, and I snapped one day on my parents, and I ended up hurting my brother when he tried to stop me. Things weren't so swell when we were kids...he's so strong, and i envy him, despite how much trouble I give him."
"Wait, Fef? Ampora?"
To his surprise, Feferi perks up and tilts her head; confusion playing clear across her face. "Yeah, that's the name he calls me, and his last name...How do you know about that?"
"Eridan and I go to school together. We also dated for a while, and he'd always mention you. The guy was crazy about you. Never mentioned his home besides you, though. I guess this explains why. I was suspicious about your name at first, and when you said you had a brother, it all sort of clicked into place."
Eridan and him had been a thing for a long time; they'd operated under a sort of hate/love relationship. They loved to hate one another. But when they started to genuinely like one another, they had to break it off. It had been too weird. But then they'd become friends, normal friends, at least, so it was fine. Sollux hoped that he was doing alright, since both him and his sister were in here.
"Oh gosh! The boyfriend! I knew the name Sollux sounded familiar! Oh, Eridan would always talk about you! Hehe; what a bizarre place to finally meet...I love your eyes, by the way. Blue with splashes of red in them - and I thought mine were unique!"
"Alright guys, time for lunch! Line up by the door!"
Karkat groaned, and Feferi and Sollux looked at one another. They followed his lead, but...shit, hospital food sucked.
Sucked is an understatement. He wasn't sure any of that was even edible; Sollux is fairly sure he is going to eat only salad throughout his whole stay. And he was tired. He'd starting to suspect that they drug his food, because he was never tired at twelve in the afternoon. Unless he was in one of his lows - but he wasn't in one of those. He was pretty fucking close to normal.
"Sorry Fef, I'm really tired. I...probably will see you later."
She nodded, and waved, while he made his way to his room. Karkat had left first, claiming that he hated the feel of the cafeteria. And Sollux couldn't even blame him. It was uncomfortable to be in a room with so many people that he didn't care about, and that were crazy. That added to the uncomfortableness, for sure. Some of the kids here weren't even from his side of the ward.
It was a short way back to his room, so it didn't take long to get there at all. So he crawled up into his bed - holy shit, this thing was uncomfortable - and closed his eyes. He could see the bathroom light shining through the handle-less bathroom door, and he could only hope that Karkat wouldn't slam the thing open and wake him up later.
Sollux had been faintly aware that he was woken up three other times during his sleep - twice for 'groups' and once for dinner, which he slept through. He wasn't hungry anyways; he was pretty sure he was still kicking off the nausea that had come with swallowing a bottle full of pills. He could feel it in his gut when he ate, and really, he's pretty sure he's emptied his stomach more times in the past few days than he has in the last few years.
The room was dark, but he could see the light peeking out from the cracked door that lead into the hallway and the main sitting room. There was also a small light off to his right, which was over his roommate's bed. And his roommate.
"Fuck, what time is it"
Sollux really was starting to hate not having a clock in the room. Or his phone, which he always used to check the time. He could hear the television on from his room, so he could only guess that people were still out there and watching it, so it couldn't be too late.
"We had closing group, like...fuck, ten minutes ago or something, so it's probably a little bit after nine. Lights out are at eleven, by the way."
They had a curfew? What the hell was closing group? He has no idea what that is. Instead of asking, Sollux yawns and turns to look at Karkat, who is sitting up on his bed with his side of the room light on, and writing in a composition notebook. Hell, it's a little surprising that they even allow them to have pencils, given the place that they were all in. Sollux would have thought that they would have been really stupidly up-tight about something like that.
"Oh. So what are you writing? I wouldn't have guessed that they would let you have stuff like that."
Karkat stops writing and shrugs while setting his pencil down in the crack of the notebook. "You'd think, but they actually give these fuckers out if you ask for them in group. They're supposed to be journals to fuckin, I don't know, track your recovery or write about feelings...but fuck that shit. I didn't have a journal back home and I sure as hell not starting one here. All I use it for is writing, like...story writing. It's useful for passing the time."
Oh, that would make sense. More tools to aid for the recovery, or for people to write the next 50 Shades in. This has to be the only place in the world where someone would be so bored that they would endeavor on writing the worst popular 'erotica' series in the world. His mom read the whole trilogy in two days, and...no. Just, no.
"I see. Fuck, I don't understand how I can still be so tired!" Sollux groaned, flopping back onto the bed as he stared up at the ceiling. Honestly, he didn't get it. He's still tired and he's only just woken up, and he has been sleeping for literally almost all day. Maybe they were poisoning his food. What was it that he had today?
"Hah, dude, what did you come in here for again? Like, was it willing or otherwise?"
He actually snorted at that. "It was 'greatly suggested' that I come here. It was just after I had OD'd so...it's not like I was in the best mind in the first place when I had said that I was open to the idea. But being a minor and all, I...didn't have much of a choice to begin with, I guess."
When he'd been lucid enough to argue, he had. He said that he was almost eighteen and that he should be able to make his own choices, and that he didn't think that he needed to get sent to a damn ward. He still didn't think that he really belonged here. He wasn't...okay, he was a little crazy, but being here wasn't going to help anything. It was just a giant time waster.
"Shit, you OD'd? Right, you're the kid with the mood swings and voices. Yeah, you're probably still detoxing, and that shit makes you tired. By the way, can I ask you something?"
Mood-swings and the voices. Dear god, now he really was being labeled by his disorder. How fucking great. Though I guess that's all there really is to remember people by here, seeing as they're all just a little bit unwell, and probably aren't here for very long. You know why they're here before anything else. If for no reason else, to make sure that they won't grab those annoyingly nubby pencils off the table and try and stab your eyes out.
"Uh, sure. Go ahead." That's all Sollux says as he turns to look at Karkat, who was now looking straight at him with his brow furrowed and a semi-frown on his face. Did this kid even know how to smile without it being a sarcastic smirk?
"Was it easy? I mean, I gouged the fuck out of both my arms, but it's general knowledge that physical pain is going to hurt like a bitch. They say that pills sort of take the fucking edge off and make things easy. Was that the case for you?"
Sollux can't help it – he laughs. It's a stupid, almost hysterical deadpanned laugh, because he can't believe Karkat actually thought that. Except he can. Because it's the same damn thing that he had thought while he was swallowing the damn things in the first place.
"No," he starts, sitting up in his bed so that he can look at Karkat a bit better. "It was probably the most painful experience of my whole life. Maybe pain pills would be better, but since all I had was my bottle of lamictal, they really didn't take any edge off. It felt like my body was exploding, I couldn't move any part of my body without it shaking horribly – and when I say shaking, I mean swaying about like I was having a fucking seizure or something, and I probably was – but it sucked, bottom line. Degrading as fuck, too. But whatever."
It really hadn't been what he had been expecting. He had read before hand what the side effects might be: Coordination problems, seizures, eye movements, whatever. He had saw 'coma' and 'loss of life' as two of them, and he figured he had been good to go. Apparently not, obviously, and it was a fact that pissed him off. He thought he had been good. He didn't think he would be sitting here talking about it.
The worst part had been the fact that he was still conscious through the whole thing. Not completely lucid, but enough that he sort of knew what was going on and that he could make small goals. It hadn't taken him more than four hesitant and tentative steps to realize that he wasn't going to be walking, and it hadn't taken him more then a few drags of himself across the floor that he wasn't going to make it to the toilet.
He remembered trying to sit up plenty of times during this whole thing, and each time he was met with his head swaying so violently back and fourth that he had hit his head on the cabinets that were under his sink. Repeatedly. The same had been for when he had raised his arms, but surprisingly his legs didn't act the same. They were smaller movements, and had allowed him to get as far as he had, with all the kicking.
But the worst part of it had to be knowing. Knowing that he had already fucked up, and that this wasn't going to work. This might have not been what he was prepared for, but he had fucked up and he had done it so wrong. If he could have screamed, he would of. But all he was able to get out were flurries of sounds that were supposed to be words, but sounded much more akin to the drooling of a baby.
"Jesus. Sounds like hell. I'll have to put that on my list of things 'not to do' when I get out of here. Fuck."
Sollux laughs again, and it's more for his own sake then it is to mock his roommate. It's not that he thinks he will cry or something stupid like that, but it was a sudden realization that he was completely vulnerable to this complete stranger. Seriously. Of all the things they could talk about, they had to start with the most awkward and most embarrassing thing there was.
This was not a one-way street here.
"So? What's your "life story," nut house addition?"
Karkat gave him this look, and Sollux was starting to wonder if he really was glaring at him, or if it was just how he looked at everyone. Really. He didn't think that he had seen the kid smiling even once today.
Then again he hadn't really been up for very long today, but something told him that time wasn't really an issue here. He could watch him for weeks, and he's still probably only get icy glares from him.
Real friendly.
"Nothing really fucking interesting. I hear people's voices in my head, sort of like you, I guess, and they were telling me that they were going to come after me. Because there was something wrong with my blood. There was something so wrong and absolutely fucking repulsive about it, and if they found out, I was a goner. I didn't really know what was so abso-fucking-lutely fucked up about it, but the bottom line is that I freaked the fuck out about it and decided that it was better to die by my own hands then to let someone else get a hold of me and pretty much torture me. Or so I thought. Whatever, it was a fucking stupid decision, blah blah blah, moment of weakness, so fucking what. Storytime over."
"And the bulimia?"
"It's just a thing."
"A thing?"
Karkat scowled. "A thing."
Sollux couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him. Not that he pitied him, exactly, he could just understand where he was coming form and that it pretty much sucked to be at the mercy of your own mind. It was his own malfunctioning brain that had brought him in here in the first place, so he knew how degrading and frustrating it was to deal with the fallout of it.
Not that he would tell any of this to him. He would keep his inner thoughts to himself.
"Okay, fine, don't explain. I've got a full week to get it out of you anyways," Sollux replied, rolling his eyes as he flopped backwards back onto his bed. Fuck. How was he so tired.
He heard Karkat moving on his own bed, which was really loud, he noted, which was followed by a small grunt.
"Yeah yeah. Maybe I'll be gone before you ever get the chance. Did you ever think of that?"
"Nope," Sollux replied, closing his eyes again as he curled into himself while on his side. "And I don't actually care. Maybe I don't even need a week. I'll think about it tomorrow, or not. Whatever."
Sollux thinks he heard Karkat say something in reply, but he couldn't quite make out what it was. He was still tired, and he wanted to sleep for as long as he could.
AN: I literally had a 'mind blown' moment when they first brought up Alternia's name. Alternia - Alternative. I'm so lame, because I totally giggled at it when that first came up in one of the updates like, forever ago.
This is an experiment. I'm not sure if I should continue this though...Thoughts?