Sometimes the only pay-off for having any faith
Is when it's tested again and again everyday.
I'm still comparing your past to my future.
It might be your wound but they're my sutures.
I try to picture me without you but I can't.
9:25AM - Eddy and Double D arrive at Noreighton, a commuter town just outside Peach Creek. They step off the bus. Eddy suggests they stop at a fast food place on the walk over from the bus station for coffee. Double D says he is too nervous for coffee, and also that they should really get a move on, even though it is only five minutes to 9:30, and the Hopstop app said the walk was four minutes.
9:29 – Eddy and Double D arrive at The Right Way Adult Assisted Living. It turns out to be a huge, gray, modern-looking building, with very unfriendly angles everywhere that try very hard to be aesthetically daring. Double D comments that the architecture is like a failed offshoot of the Modernist movement of the early to mid twentieth century in Europe. Eddy comments the building looks like a Minecraft turd. They acknowledge, without verbalizing, that Ed likes Minecraft, and enter the building.
9:30 – the signs say that Reception is down the same hallway as outpatient group therapy sessions. Double D faintly hopes that they will just stumble upon Ed there and not do the reception routine. The idea seems foreboding enough that he might puke his morning nutrition bar on these high gloss floors. Then he remembers that Ed is not an outpatient, and that emotion is a hell of a drug for making him mix up simple words like that.
9:32 – the faint pang in Double D's throat is for the fact that the receptionist would be very attractive to him - tall and dark and angular like the building's exterior – but his face is filled with such pure vacancy, from when he took their IDs to when he indicated the seats with a tilt of his chin, that Double D misses Jack more than he ever has before.
9:40:12 – Eddy goes up to the desk. "So what are we waiting for? Are they in therapy or something?
9:40:16-9:40:21 – vacant staring from the receptionist
9:40:22 – "Visiting hours don't start until ten."
9:40:30 – "Oh…. My, uh, Hopstop thing on my phone said you open at 9:30."
9:40:39 – "It must be outdated." He turns his brooding back to the computer and that's it. Eddy goes back to the seat. They turn to watch some morning talk show.
9:51 – Eddy asks, "Do you think Anna Kendrick's hot?" Double D does not respond. Eddy snickers, then: "I forgot. I swear."
9:59:00 – Double D walks up to the counter. "Are we allowed in yet?"
9:59:01-9:59:20 – the receptionist alternates between focusing his dead zombie eyes on Double D and his computer clock. Finally, he says, "At ten."
10:00 – Just as Double D heaves a sigh of relief and Eddy pops out of the chair, they flinch when the receptionist's paging device emits a shrill beep. He looks at it. An actual emotion (though unidentifiable) crosses his eyes. Double D curses this delay and tries to figure out what exactly that emotion is.
10:01 – "This'll be a moment. My manager is coming."
10:02 – the two Eds, now two minutes late to see their third, attempt to focus on the Today show, which is now in the hour that people are basically brought in to drink wine.
10:05 – "Hey, when are you coming? … Yeah, well, I've got two… I know, and apparently some website lists it as 9:30."
10:06 – He hangs up and before turning his attention to the computer, this time the slightest hint of emotion is directed at the Eds. Double D becomes more worried than before (if at all possible) when he registers that the emotion he just saw was a hint of sympathy. It was so small, Eddy probably missed it, but Double D has been facing it from every coworker since who knows when. It gets old.
10:10 – a man in similar clothing to the receptionist comes out of a very official-seeming pair of double doors. His hair is painfully short and painfully blond. He whispers to the receptionist in a commanding tone. His response is – surprise – a vacant stare.
10:12 - Blond spots Double D right away and strolls over. "Are you Eddward?" Double D is a little infuriated by the way his eyes just skimmed over Eddy. He decides addressing it can wait until after they are a trio again.
10:12:something – "I am. This is Eddy. We're here to visit a patient named Ed."
10:12:when? – "I'm afraid there's been a little hiccup today. I don't know how good an idea it is to visit your friend today, necessarily."
10:12:no – "What does that mean? What happened?"
10:12:impossible – "He isn't here."
10:umpteen, who cares – Double D sits down next to Eddy, who had the premonition to sit at the start of the exchange. Double D has probably never felt so defeated so fast. The Blond guy moves to sit next to them and either Double D or Eddy or the both of them, he can't even tell anymore, shoot him a look so vicious that the guy recoils. He hovers and mutters placations to them about legalities, privacy, and setbacks, but Double D just stares at him. He is struck by a few things. This guy looks like the receptionist, but with small teeth, and a halfway attempt at emotion. He also looks too young to be running the show, or maybe the part of Double D that is still living with his parents realizes that it is not too young for someone with the kind of intelligence and drive that Double D has.
10:31 – rephrase that: the drive he once had. Now he has nothing. He has two jobs with half the pay that ONE job should get him. No degree, just wasted scholarship money. And now just one friend instead of two. Because they locked the second one away. Because he let the second one get locked away.
10:32 – the Blond guy has gone back behind his glass-and-metal torture chamber doors, like some bleached cross between Nurse Ratched and the Wizard of Oz. With nothing else to do, neither Eds say anything.
10:33 – as they walk back to the bus stop, more than a little numb, Eddy says, "Wanna hear something stupid? I just wondered if it would have gone better if I did all the talking."
Double D says, "Do you think it would have?"
Eddy says, "Yeah, but I'm wrong."
Between 10:33AM and 3:04pm, they stop for iced coffees that go mostly untouched on their way home. The middle parts blur and don't matter.
Dear Diary!
This is not a diary. This is a yellow-lined notebook I found in the awkward cabinet under Jack's TV. Who the fuck has a cabinet under the TV?
I felt bad earlier when we got back and Double D suggested journaling. I don't think he meant it. He said it to get me to leave him alone.
I guess journaling is one of those disgusting things you would do in therapy or something when whatever happened to you sucks too much to think about it consciously
So you like write it down in third person so it doesn't matter
It doesn't matter that two idiots tried to break into a mental institution and get their retard friend out and failed
It doesn't matter that the other idiot has been rotting in his idiot boyfriend's room all morning
and that whenever I walk by it's just silent
but I can tell that they wanna say shit to me like IT WAS EASIER BEFORE YOU GOT HERE
It doesn't matter that I have no one to talk to except a journal
It doesn't matter
Really nothing matters
haha