"So this is a teaching hospital, right?" The man who had picked Castiel up from the emergency room had been babbling since their introduction, going on and on about a bunch of different topics that started with how much he liked Castiel's cardigan and kind of trailed off from there in a disjointed way. Now it seemed like the orderly, Garth, was actually focusing in on one topic much to Castiel's relief.
"You're going to see a lot of interns and grad students, but don't let that scare you we all know what we're doing and there are like, real doctors supervising us and stuff so we're not going to prescribe you some crazy meds that zonk on you out or anything. Unless you need that kind of thing..."
Garth glanced down at the admitting papers that Adam had given him, shuffling through them until he came across the reason why Castiel had felt like he needed to sign away control of his life for a bit.
"Oh, suicidal. Huh, well then I guess that's one less rage-a-holic that I might get punched by. Anyway, you're therapist is going to be Dr. Mosely and she's a great lady, stern when she needs to be but very perceptive. She's not in on the weekends so you won't see her until tomorrow, but all of the groups and stuff are during the week anyway so we just kind of chill on the weekends."
"We?" Castiel asked hoisting his bag on his shoulder as he watched the numbers for the elevators flash above him, climbing higher at an agonizingly slow pace.
"Yea, the staff and the patients. There's some art therapy stuff and every now and then we put a ping-pong tournament together, music therapy is every other week so next week for that and on the weekends we don't have that we do a movie night. I think they're watching Caddyshack or something else with Bill Murray tonight."
"I don't watch a lot of movies," Castiel admitted, crossing his arms protectively over his chest when the elevator doors opened, revealing a large sign proclaiming 'Adult Psychiatric' with a big arrow pointing towards a set of double doors with built in windows on the left. "I'm usually too busy with schoolwork."
Garth strode up to the door and knocked on the widow, getting the attention of a blonde girl about the same age sitting inside at the nurse's station. "I forgot my badge again! Let me in!"
The girl got up and walked to the door, pointing a stern finger at the male orderly through the glass, "What did I say, Garth? Next time, you're gonna have to chase down Rachel and explain to her why it looks like I open the door for every yahoo who wants onto the psych ward. So go find her, I'm not getting yelled at again because of you."
"Jo, I have a patient with me." Garth complained, shifting back and forth on his feet and throwing an apologetic smile in Castiel's direction. "You're making me look bad, open the damn door."
The woman side stepped until she could see Castiel on the other side of the door, taking in his posture and appearance with a scrutinizing gaze that made him slightly uncomfortable. He would never get used to the faces some girls made at him, like they knew something about him that he didn't.
"Say it and I'll let you in," Jo told Garth through the door, earning a groan from the other man.
"No, Jo. You're being really unprofessional right now."
"Blame it on me already having to track down two patients who were just wandering around the hospital. I bet you let them do it too. You're such a sucker, Garth. So say it because it's the only way you're going to get thorough these doors."
Garth sighed heavily and glanced at Castiel before leaning in close to the glass, his breath ghosting over the square wires embedded in it as he spoke. "Joanna Harvelle is the Jedi master of all nursing staff and I am her padawon learner. Now open the door."
Castiel watched as the girl smiled at Garth toothily before going back behind the desk and hitting some button that made the door buzz so they could push it open. The orderly motioned for Castiel to follow him as he went behind the nurse's station and sat down heavily at one of the computers that were there. He grabbed one of the rolling chairs for himself and settled his bag in his lap as Garth pulled out a couple of sheets of paper from one of the filing cabinets under the desk.
"Fucking Jo," Garth muttered to himself, snatching up his name badge and clipping it on to the dark gray hoodie he was wearing with a pointed look towards the woman in question. "Women man, can't live with 'em and they won't go on a date with you for nothin'."
"Yea," Castiel agreed, not really understanding because his one and only girlfriend had been in junior high before all of the girls in his class had started developing in ways that he couldn't keep up with but couldn't stop gawking at either. "So um...how long to do I have to be here?"
"Well, the usual stay is anywhere between two weeks and two months. It's never more than two months, after that you're either discharged or transferred to a residential treatment center somewhere." Garth replied, passing the stack of papers to Castiel.
"Two weeks? I can't be here that long, I have school and tests and other things going on. I have a life that I can't just put on hold. Isn't there like a condensed version of therapy or something I can do to get out of here faster?"
"I've seen people get a discharge plan from their doctors in a week," Garth said with a shrug. "But treatment doesn't just stop because you leave the hospital, you'll still have to check in once a week for a month after you go and find a doctor who can provide continuing care."
Castiel could feel his heart racing and his stomach churning, he'd had no idea what he was signing up for by doing this. He had figured maybe a week, with spring break coming up he could just take his time in here separated from the stuff that was stressing him out and get some work done for school. But more than that? No. That was just not going to work for him.
"I have to go," He said quickly, standing up and dumping his bag on the tile floor forgotten in his rush to try to get some air that wasn't stale and chemically smelling and suffocating. Castiel went to the double doors and pulled on the handles desperately, part of him had known that they weren't going to open but he still had to find a way out of here and this was the most obvious way.
"Castiel," Garth said gently, coming up to pry his hands off the door. "You need to calm down, it's too late to change anything right now."
"It can't be too late!" Castiel said urgently, turning towards the other man as he brought his hands up to his head to tug on his hair in an effort to ground himself to the situation he had put himself in. "There has to be someone you can call, tell them this is all a mistake. I don't need to be here, I'm not like these people, I'm not crazy!"
"Can you keep it down?" A wan sounding male voice piped from farther down the hallway. Castiel noticed for the first time a smallish man with pale skin sagging off of his skeletal frame and dark circles under his eyes wearing white pajamas under a blue housecoat watching him along with several other people who had poked their heads out of the various doorways that lined the ward. "Some of us are trying to sleep."
"I'm sorry," Castiel said deflating in the face of someone who was clearly much worse off than himself. "I just...I don't know what I'm doing here."
"C'mon Castiel," Jo said moving from her place behind the desk to put a comforting hand on his arm. "I know that this is probably a lot for you to take in. But we need some information before we can get you settled, do you think you can handle answering some questions?"
Castiel just nodded like an ashamed child and let himself be led back to the chair that he had been sitting in, resolutely ignoring the stares of the other patients even though he could feel their curious eyes studying him like he was an ant under a magnifying glass. Jo rolled her chair over near his, probably to be closer if he tried to do something irrational again, but it seemed like she was also trying to make him feel better because she kept smiling at him and it reminded him of his mom a bit so he focused on that instead of the way his chest felt like it was imploding.
"So, Castiel," Garth began again, shooting Jo a wary look as he picked up the papers that Castiel had dropped on the floor next to his bag when he had gotten up. "I know that you aren't feeling so hot right now, but we need to know if you did anything before coming here?"
"Well I rode my bike around for a bit," Castiel said picking at his jagged fingers nails that he had taken to biting down to the quick when he was working on homework late into the night.
"No, honey," Jo said soothingly, making an apologetic face. "He means did you hurt yourself before you came to the hospital? Did you try to go for the good sleep?"
"The good sleep..." Castiel repeated slowly. "You mean did I swallow a bottle of pills before deciding that I needed to be here? Wouldn't they have pumped my stomach or something in the ER if that was the case?"
"Sometimes it takes a while for it to become obvious that someone has done something like that," Garth said, ticking something off on a sheet of paper that he had sitting on his desk. "Okay, um...do you have any special dietary or religious preferences that you would like for us to accommodate?"
"Not really," Castiel muttered shrugging slightly, why did everyone have to be so PC these days? Institutions like colleges and hospitals weren't supposed to care if you kept Kosher or were vegan, at least none of the ones he knew about cared.
"Great," Jo said as Garth ticked off another little box. "Last one Castiel, promise. This is the important one, do you feel safe having a roommate or is there a reason why you need to not be in a room with a specific gender?"
"Why does it matter?"
"In the past, there have been issues..." Garth said hesitantly. "With people being triggered because their roommate reminded them of someone who had hurt them so we try to avoid retraumatization by just asking up front if you have been abused or hurt by someone of either sex and if so we'll make sure that you feel safe so that you can focus on the treatment the doctor plans for you instead of protecting yourself. That's our job, to protect you. You're job is to get better."
"No," Castiel said feeling even more horrible about himself for taking the place of someone who might really need to be in a place like this. "I've never been abused. You can just put me in a room with whoever, it's not a big deal."
"That's great," Jo said brightly, standing up and moving briskly to a closet behind the nurses' station where she pulled down a medium sized clear plastic tub with a lid. She moved back to Castiel and set the container down on the chair where she had just been perched. "Now if you have anything sharp I need it. A pocket knife, keys, your belt, do you have shoelaces?"
"You need my shoelaces?" Castiel asked standing up and dumping his keys into the bin with a jangling clang, pulling his belt from his belt loops and slowly wrapping it up before putting it in the tote also.
"Yea," Garth said hefting Castiel's messenger bag up onto the desk and patting it a couple of times. "Just anything someone might use to hurt themselves with. And we'll have to go through your bag here too and then you can have the stuff out of it if you need it. The rest will be kept locked up back here until you discharge."
"I'm going to need more clothes and shoes and stuff," Castiel muttered more to himself as he fiddled with his phone, scrolling to hover over the contact he had for Gabriel, he had put his brother down as his emergency contact because he felt like the other man would be the least judgmental of all of his siblings and he sure as hell didn't want the fact that he was in a psych ward to get back to Balthazar or Meg.
"Well, we can call someone for you," Jo said gently taking the phone out of his hand and thumbing it off before nestling it up against his belt. "But you can't keep that with you, confidentiality and too many people making fake calls to the police."
"Is that all?" Castiel huffed irritated as he bent over to remove his laces from his Converse with agitated movements. "Want to strip search me too?"
"Is there a reason to?" Jo asked archly.
Garth ignored the other woman and scrawled out Castiel's name on a sticker, last name first which he then slapped onto the side of the tote. He glanced up and bit his lip, "You're glasses are plastic right?"
"I need them to see." Castiel deadpanned.
"You can have them," the other man said quickly, raising his hands in defense. "Just know that if it becomes an issue we're going to have to keep them with us."
Castiel just sighed, feeling more tired than he had in a really long time. He felt like maybe he could sleep and the nightmares wouldn't plague him like the normally did and maybe his brain would stop worrying for long enough that he could take a fucking nap.
"Alright!" Jo said clapping her hands together and steering him down the hallway with a guiding hand on the small of his back. "I think you've had just about enough of us, right? Let's get one of the others to show you around and we'll get your room set up."
They stopped in front of an open common area that had worn, comfortable looking couches and chairs scattered around. There was a television mounted in one corner of the room and morning cartoons were buzzing softly in the background, a scratched ping-pong table stood off to the side and there were two small bookshelves full of broken spined paperbacks and tilting vinyl records that had a record player sitting on top.
The room was mostly empty with just a dark haired woman wearing sunglasses standing in front of one of the two windows in the room, arms crossed over her chest and muttering to herself. Castiel thought he heard something about angels and ghosts, but he didn't want to eavesdrop so he just turned his attention to the two people who had their backs towards him on the couch. One had to be a girl with red hair flowing down and over the armrest that she was laying back on, Castiel could see a book peeking over the top of the couch in her hands and he smirked when he saw that it was a copy of The Hobbit. The other was a man with short, dirty blonde hair whose own head was titled up towards the television as he sipped a cup of coffee.
"Guys," Jo said getting the attention of the early risers who were in the room. Castiel could see from the clock that it was just after eight; Balthazar and Meg probably weren't even up yet. "This is Castiel. I need a volunteer to show him around while Garth and I get his room together. Anyone?"
The girl on the couch sat up, poking her face over the couch and lighting up when she saw Castiel standing in the doorway. It was the girl from the emergency room, the one that he had thought was a doctor only now the scrubs and long white coat were gone, replaced with a black shirt that had the Hogwarts crest on it and a brightly colored plaid over shirt. She hit the man on the couch on the shoulder excitedly until he finally turned his attention away from the television as it went to commercial.
"Come on guys, do me a solid here." Jo whined, gesturing up and down Castiel's body like he the grand prize in the Showcase Showdown. "He's not going to bite. You're not a biter, right?"
Castiel shook his head, feeling his stomach clench as the girl leaned in to whisper something into the man's ear, covering her mouth so that he couldn't read her lips. The other man's green eyes widened as they roved over Castiel and he turned to the girl with his brow furrowed slightly.
"You think?" he heard the man ask quietly, his face clearing when the girl nodded at him and rolled her eyes before she settled back down where she had been laying down on the couch.
The man jumped up quickly, scrambling over the back of the couch and earning a half-hearted reprimand from Jo who had already started walking off as he rushed over to where Castiel was standing in the doorway.
"I'll do it," the man gushed, sticking a hand out to Castiel in greeting. "Name's Dean Winchester. Welcome to the loony bin."