Chapter Twelve: Hospital Break
There were only two things that made Yuri feel less miserable: physical therapy and talking to Malcolm. Physical therapy was great because it gave him a chance to do things and feel like he was getting stronger. Unfortunately, it had been suspended after the surgery until he recovered from the massive blood loss and had the strength to actually do it again. This left him with nothing to do all day but wheel himself aimlessly around the hospital until he got tired (which happened frustratingly fast thanks to his low blood levels) or lie in bed and read. He'd had more fun in a jail cell and he'd never been in jail for two whole months.
And then there was Malcolm. Flynn, Estelle, Rita, letters from Karol, Judy, and Raven… they all tried to empathize with him. He didn't fault them for trying, but it inevitably came across as sympathy and Yuri was getting pretty tired of being pitied. It was nice, then, to be able to rant at a guy going through the same thing. There was never a concern that he was judging him, which was more than could be said of Call-Me-Sarah, who reminded him of what he should call her at least twice a session. She forced him to talk to her for over an hour every day, repeatedly psychoanalyzing his attempts to tell her to stop psychoanalyzing him.
"Have you ever just been… bored of being in pain?," Yuri said one evening. He sat in his wheelchair, leaning forward on the table in his room. Malcolm sat in a proper chair, because he'd come over with a walker. Yuri managed to bite down his envy and be happy for all the improvement his friend was making.
Malcolm wrinkled his brow in confusion.
Yuri massaged his back, which didn't do any good because he couldn't feel the part that ached anyway. He'd been feeling tired, nauseated, and sore for days, which supposedly was because he'd lost so much blood but that conversation always led to telling him that was why consenting to the surgery had been a terrible mood. "I've been in varying degrees of pain for two months and I'm thinking, ok, I get it. This is what pain feels like. It doesn't even hurt that bad today, but constant aching just gets old, you know?"
Malcolm nodded. "Mm… yes."
"Great, so it's not just me." He drummed his fingers on the table. There was nothing to do here. He'd never been so bored in his life, and when that boredom mixed with ever-mounting irritation it was amazing he hadn't smashed anything yet. "I've got to get out of here. Two months is way too long to spend in a hospital."
Malcolm shrugged and held up five fingers.
Yuri winced. "Ah, yeah, sorry. You've been here five already." If Yuri was still here in three months, he'd stab more then just his leg.
"Ah… really, I…" Malcolm frowned, struggling to find the words.
Yuri waited patiently. Even when he knew what Malcolm was trying to say, he avoided finishing sentences for him. Yuri hated it when people tried to help him without asking, so he was hardly going to do the same to someone else.
"Going to house. Soon."
Yuri straightened up. "You're going home soon?"
Malcolm nodded. "Staying with… people… family. Parents."
Yuri's face strained as he tried to keep a smile on. "Hey, that's great! You're going to stay with your parents, then? Where?"
"Um…" He tapped his finger on the table as he tried to remember the name. "H… hel…"
Heliord. Not even staying in Zaphias. It was great, and Yuri was happy for him. Malcolm was making so many improvements and it was good for him to leave and stay with his family until he fully recovered if he didn't need full-time support from nurses anymore. But… dammit, who was Yuri going to talk to from now on?
"Heliord," Malcolm finally managed to say and smiled, proud of himself.
Yuri smiled, too, refusing to let him feel guilty about healing. If he mentioned being lonely, Estelle would spend her entire day hanging out with him, but that was why he couldn't mention it. She had things to do; he didn't want to burden her with entertaining him all day. Repede wasn't allowed to visit, Flynn could only come by for an hour in the evenings, Rita was so caught up in researching blastia alternatives she forgot what day it was, and the rest of his friends were off having adventures in Tolbyccia and being productive members of society. Other patients came and went, but the majority of them were elderly nobles that weren't very entertaining to chat with. He was going to be left with no one to talk to by Call-Me-Sarah, which went completely against his efforts to do anything but talk to her.
"Give me your address before you leave. I'll write to you. Can someone read it to you?"
Malcolm nodded. "Yuri… thanks."
Yuri held up his fist. "It's been fun."
He reached over with his non-paralyzed arm and bumped Yuri's fist. "Yeah."
Malcolm was gone three days later. As Yuri had anticipated, this resulted in a marked increase in boredom levels. He was so desperate for someone to talk to (other than a shrink, whom he didn't consider an option), he didn't even care if he was pissed off at Flynn and looked forward to seeing him every day. When Flynn did visit, he noticeably avoided any mention of the failed surgery or forced conversations with a therapist. These topics were likely to start an argument, and Yuri was more than willing to avoid it. They had one hour together a day, and Yuri wasn't going to waste his single hour of proper conversation fighting.
A couple of days after Malcolm left, Yuri lay in bed, fuming. He'd finished another frustrating conversation with Call-Me-Sarah, and wondered why everyone said talking to her was good for him when it just left him pissed off. She kept telling him that he needed to think about why he was so reluctant to accept any kind of help, but he didn't want to think about that because it reminded him that he needed help.
The door opened and Cecilia arrived with dinner. "Good evening, Yuri. What's up?"
He rolled on his side. "Absolutely nothing."
"Hey, keep your chin up. You'll get your strength back in no time and then you'll feel better and can get back to working out. Do you want dinner in bed?"
He waved his hand. "Nah, put it on the table. I can get out of bed."
While Yuri pulled himself to the edge of the bed, she said, "Whatever you want. Let me know if you need anything."
"I need you to get me out of here." He slid along the transfer board to get into the chair. He'd almost managed to transfer without it before the surgery, but apparently losing half your body's blood supply made it hard to summon the upper-body strength to do that. "Who decides when I can get discharged?"
Cecilia frowned. "I'll talk to Dr. Burke about it, and he can discuss it with Flynn. They'll probably want to keep you here at the very least until your blood levels get back to normal."
Oh, right, Yuri's opinion didn't actually matter anymore. He wasn't competent enough to make his own decisions. "And what if I said I don't give a damn about my blood levels because they can recover just as well from home? Cecilia, this is nothing against you because you're pretty much my favourite person here, but I don't think I can handle one more day in this place."
She let out a small sigh as he rolled to the table, where his pre-cut dinner awaited him. "I really am sorry, Yuri. I wish there was more I could do for you, but discharge isn't my decision. If there's anything I can do to make you more comfortable while you're here…"
"No. You're doing a fine job as it is." He grabbed his fork and rammed it into a chunk of potato. He hated living here. He hated every person who worked here other than Cecilia. He hated being injured and he hated being bored and if he had to spend another two months trapped in here "for his own good," he would strangle someone.
It was approximately two in the morning, and Yuri was awake. He often found himself awake at this time after snapping out of a nightmare, but this time it was deliberate. Footsteps disappeared down the hall as the night nurse - he couldn't even remember this one's name - left after checking on him. She hadn't done more than poke her head in, because he was a low-priority patient now. Well, he'd always been low-priority to staff members like Grandma Smiley, but now even the ones who cared about him weren't too worried about him since he was stable and just here for rehab.
Satisfied the nurse was gone, he opened his eyes and sat up. Slowly, quietly, he moved to the edge of the bed and transferred to his chair. He had two hours before the nurse would be back. The sound of wheels rolling on wooden floors seemed cacophonous when he was trying to be quiet. At his dresser, he slipped on a jacket but couldn't be bothered with shoes; they were too much of a pain to put on.
Dressed, Yuri snuck to the door. He opened it slowly, glanced up and down the hall to make sure he was alone, and then rolled out. Before anyone else could come down this hall and catch him out of bed, Yuri hurried toward the exit. He couldn't go out the main exit because someone at the desk would see him, but there was another door around the back and he was pretty sure it had a ramp.
Certain someone would spot him at any moment, he rolled as quietly as he could to the hallway at the back of the hospital. It was a small building, so he didn't have to go too far. There was the door, which in his mind glowed like the gates of heaven. His heart beat a little faster as he approached; freedom was so close he could taste it. When he opened the door, freezing night air punched him in the face. After breathing the icy air, he saw something that deflated his heart.
There wasn't a ramp. But, there was only one step down to the street. If he could just get down this one step… well, why couldn't he? Going up a step was a little more difficult, but with gravity on his side, he was sure he could get down. He definitely wasn't going back to his room after getting a taste of freedom purely because of one rotten step. Cold air burned his lungs as he braced his arms against the doorway, and then push forward.
He wobbled as the front wheels passed the edge and his arms shook from the strain of staying level. Just gotta… ease down… his front wheels hit the street, and then -
"Hey, where are you going?"
Crap! He released the doorway in his rush to escape and rolled forward. The back wheels hit the ground hard but he was out. Running footsteps and shouts behind him couldn't stop him now, because he was out! He pushed, forcing snow under the wheels. It would slow him down but if he pushed hard enough he'd get to the main street, which was shovelled.
Someone grabbed the back handle. "Excuse me, are you supposed to be out here."
"Get off me." He twisted around to shove the person's hand away.
"Aren't you Yuri Lowell?" the man said. "You're supposed to be in bed. I'm going to need you to come back inside."
"Sorry, no can do." He pushed the man away and then pushed his wheels forward with as much strength as he could. He was going home and they couldn't stop him.
"What's going on?" A woman arrived, presumably the night nurse. "Oh! Yuri, what are you doing out here?"
"I'm going home so get out of my way."
She grabbed his chair and pulled him back. "You need to go back to your room."
Yuri twisted and grabbed her wrist, but as soon as he got her off, the orderly took her place. "Get your hands off me! This isn't a prison; I can leave when I want."
Shouts came down the hall as more staff arrived. Dammit, dammit, they were ruining everything. They had no right to keep him here. He gave up trying to get them off his chair and grabbed the wheels, determined to keep moving.
The orderly rounded the chair and grabbed his wrists. "I'm sorry, we can't let you leave tonight."
Instinct told him to kick the bastard between the legs, but that wasn't going to happen so he yanked his arms. The air burned his lungs and the crunch of snow alerted him to newcomers. Breath fogged the air from the handful of people now in the alley, and strong hands gripped the chair's handles, dragging him back to the door. He couldn't throw the orderly off and they'd almost got him back to building. In a desperate effort to escape, he threw himself forward and headbutted the orderly. The man grunted and stumbled back, giving Yuri an opening to pull his hands free. A solid punch to the gut knocked the man aside and an elbow to his right landed in someone's stomach.
His own head ached from the impact but this was his one shot at freedom. He grabbed the wheels, not even caring that they were freezing and he'd forgotten his gloves. There was no way in hell he was going to let them take him back to that hospital room. People were shouting but he didn't give a crap what they were saying. He couldn't tell any of the bastards apart because he was too focused on getting out of here to waste time looking up at faces. It didn't matter - he just had to punch and fight anyone who tried to pull him back inside.
He couldn't feel the syringe, but he saw it jab into his thigh. The nurse shouted when he punched him in the face and the metal needle flashed in the moonlight on its way to the ground. Shit, shit, they'd drugged him! He had to get out of here before it kicked in.
A man grabbed his right arm and someone else grabbed his left. No matter how much he fought and struggled, they were stronger than him and he couldn't get free. Without his arms free, he couldn't move. "Get the hell off me!" He twisted, pulled and fought, but someone behind him grabbed the chair and pulled it over the step. The warmth of the hallway flowed over him but he'd never been more angry to come in out of the cold.
Warmth wasn't the only thing flowing over him, though. His anger dimmed even as he struggled to hold it close. Lethargy sunk into his bones as the door slammed shut, cutting him off from the outside world. "You can't…" he breathed, "can't do this. I'm not… a prisoner." He just wanted to sleep and that almost drowned out his desire for freedom. He couldn't even will himself to fight as the group of nurses and orderlies pushed him back to his room, still holding his arms tight.
Flynn woke up at his desk. Well, that was not entirely accurate. Technically, he'd woken up in bed at home, had a piece of toast, gotten dressed, and walked to work. He'd done all that in a fugue state because his legs didn't need his brain's input to find his office, so he didn't really wake up until Sodia set a mug of coffee and a stack of envelopes on his desk. Just the fumes of caffeine drifting to his nose fired up slumbering brain cells.
"Good morning, sir."
His lips mumbled a good morning without putting thought into it. He hadn't been getting much sleep lately, because stress about Yuri and Carter clanged around his brain all night. His eyes drifted to the In box, where unopened envelopes from yesterday's mail still waited. After one tired look at today's mail, he tossed it on top of the pile.
"I thought you should know, sir, that a messenger from the hospital came by this morning."
His head snapped up while all remaining brain cells jolted awake. Messages from the hospital had become his greatest fear. "Yes?"
"They thought you should be aware that Yuri Lowell attempted to leave the hospital last night against medical advice. He's unharmed and was brought back to his room."
Unharmed. Thank heavens. Still, trying to leave? What the hell was Yuri thinking now? He rested his forehead in his hands; he had enough to deal with as it was. "When do I have a window of opportunity to visit the hospital?"
Sodia had apparently anticipated this question because she answered without even thinking. "At ten-twenty, sir. You have a lunch meeting with His Majesty at eleven but there's nothing scheduled between that and your earlier meeting with Captain Grisham about Mantaic. Shall I add this visit to your schedule?"
Flynn nodded. "Please." Sodia left, and he suppressed a groan. He loved Yuri, but sometimes he wanted to strangle that bastard.
It was hard to focus on his work all morning because half his mind was at the hospital already, but he managed to get everything done in time to go over it with Grisham at their scheduled meeting. He just hoped he wasn't obviously eager to finish it as soon as possible, because when he was finally free at 10:25, he zipped out. Rushing to the hospital with dread rising every step was becoming a habit.
When he finally reached Yuri's room, he only had fifteen minutes to talk before he'd have to head back for lunch, so they'd better make this concise. Yuri was in bed, lying on his back and pressing a pillow against his face.
"Yuri? Are you ok?"
The pillow lowered to his chest. "What are you doing here?"
"I heard what happened and wanted to make sure you were ok. What are you doing?"
"I got bored of staring at the room so I decided to try staring at the pillow instead."
Flynn sat by his bed. "I… see. So, I heard you tried to leave the hospital last night. What happened?"
He squirmed to pull himself upright. "I'm going to need you to arrest the staff or whatever it is you do because I'm being held here against my will. Getting locked up by the Knights for stupid things is bullshit enough, but I'm not going to take it from the people who are supposed to help me. They're not Knights - they have no right to hold me here."
"Actually, as long as issues of consent are given to me, it's not illegal for them to keep you here as long as I agree with them." He braced himself for a backlash.
"Oh, yeah, right." Yuri rolled his eyes so heavily they nearly disappeared. "I'm not 'mentally competent' to decide for myself, right?"
"Sneaking out in the middle of the night certainly doesn't do any favours in trying to look like a rational adult."
"I want out, Flynn."
Flynn met Yuri's glare evenly, not betraying any of his uncertainty. He knew Yuri was unhappy here, but he also knew Yuri needed help. "This isn't a decision to be made lightly."
"I'm not making this lightly. I'm going crazy in here. I can't handle this any more and the only reason I haven't tried to get out again is because they took my chair away and I decided I wouldn't get far crawling." His hands tightened around the pillow. "Every time I ask if I can go home yet someone tells me 'soon. Just a little longer. You still need to heal a bit more.' Flynn…" He paused, his face showing more vulnerability than Flynn could remember seeing in ages. "Please. I'm serious. I can't handle this any longer. They won't even let me leave my bed without an escort and this is killing me."
The look in Yuri's eyes unsettled him. Yuri truly was miserable and knowing he was responsible for keeping him in a place that made him so unhappy made Flynn feel like shit. But, it was for Yuri's own good, wasn't it? Yuri really did need help… but it didn't seem to be working. Bringing in a therapist just made him angrier and his hatred of being in the hospital drove him to self-destruction. Where was Yuri even planning to go last night? If the staff hadn't brought him back he might have ended up stuck in the snow all night in below freezing temperatures. He'd gotten as much recovery out of the hospital as he was going to get and keeping him here any longer was just going to make his mental state worse.
Flynn slowly nodded. "All right. I don't want you to be miserable. I'll tell Dr. Burke to approve discharge."
Yuri's grin warmed Flynn's heart. "All right! I can't wait to get out of here."
"But, we need to discuss where you're going to go."
"Hm? I was just going to go home."
"Your home on the second floor of the inn that is inaccessible without going up a flight of stairs?"
Yuri's grin faded. "Ah… right."
Flynn ran through options and came to a conclusion quickly. "You could go to Dahngrest, but honestly I'd feel better if you stayed in Zaphias at first. In case any complications come up, you should be close to the hospital for an emergency. I'm sure Lady Estellise would be more than happy to find room for you in the castle near her suite, but I hardly think you'd be happy in the castle. I think your best bet would be staying with me for a little while."
Yuri thought about this briefly and then nodded. "Yeah, I can't think of anything either. I could always find a new place to stay, but since I don't live here full time it seems like a waste. If I'm in town, I can just crash at your place."
"Right. So, you can live with me for a little while until you're used to living independently. We can figure out your next step from there."
"I'm down for that." He leaned forward and said, "Find someone to bring me my chair and we can go."
"Hold on." He rested his hand on Yuri's arm. "You can't leave today."
"Why not?"
Yuri's suspicion hurt, but Flynn tried not to hold it against him. "I need some time to get things set up for you, such as setting up a bed on the first floor. Can you give me two days to make all arrangements?"
Yuri frowned, but nodded. "Yeah, I can do two days. I've survived this long."
"Good." He glanced at the clock. "Actually, I'm afraid I need to go. I have a meeting to get to. I'll get everything arranged, so sit tight and please don't do anything reckless in the meantime."
