Mordecai and Rigby walked slowly across the parking lot. Mordecai wanted to say something, or do something; anything to seize the moment. But it was like picking up a friend or a relative from the airport – there were five minutes of enthusiastic, pent up greetings, but then plenty of uncomfortable silence afterwards. You wanted to say something, anything significant, but it would never come.
In any case, they got in the car wordlessly, and drove off.
Rigby put the window down, closed his eyes, and let the wind flow through his fur. The sun warmed his body, while the wind tempered the heat; he shifted around on the car seat, and felt the leather on his back and his sides. His tongue lolled around outside his mouth, like a pet canine.
"All right, dude?" Mordecai asked, on edge.
"Yeah. Everything just feels so good," Rigby said. Rigby didn't have to put up with the thin, cheap felt seats back in the hospital anymore. And for the first time in weeks, he could feel the sun, and the wind on his skin. It had never felt so good before.
The car rolled down the avenue, the bright color of the imported palm trees, the flashing signs of stores and services, the milky blue of the sky, and the deep gold of the hills rising up around the natural border of the town – it came together brilliantly, and suddenly the whole world seemed like a circuit board, with each little component flashing in it's place, just as it should.
It was impossible to take the eyes away from the complexity of it all. Newspaper stands at every few feet along the sidewalks, the print of the newspaper visible, but completely intelligible, the telegraph poles rising up inches away, a small bug on a plant in the display running along the center of the avenue, someone moving around in a hair dresser's. It was too much, yet it wasn't enough.
Rigby almost felt like he was tripping. He kept standing up on the car seat, or holding the windshield pillar, and turning his body to look at something they just passed – a darker color of bitumen on the road where it had recently been repaired, or a bizarre arrangement of leaves on a plant.
"How about we get you some real food? The stuff in there must have sucked" Mordecai said suddenly. Rigby turned round from his street gazing to face him.
"Yeah, that sounds good" Rigby said simply, before Mordecai pulled into a strip mall parking lot.
In the restaurant, Rigby slurped on a bowl of chicken noodle soup, straight from the bowl without a spoon. Mordecai worked on his own soup in silence. It felt like there was a barrier between them, some kind of unidentified elephant in the room. They both desperately wanted to break the tension, but at present, nothing came to mind.
Mordecai was still nervous that Rigby might be mad at him for getting him stuck in the hospital in the first place.
Unfortunately, these kinds of things, reunions, meetings; they never tend to go quite as well as one pictures in their head. That's what Mordecai found most frustrating, as he absentmindedly played with his spoon in his empty bowl.
He was interrupted when Rigby extended a bulging envelope towards him.
"Huh, what?" Mordecai said, having not heard what Rigby had apparently said.
"I said my doctor wanted me to give this to you. I don't know what it is"
Confused, Mordecai accepted the envelope, and peeled it open. Inside was first a note on a small torn out lined notebook page.
Mordecai,
As Rigby's primary caregiver, I need you to know that he is in no state to be released from hospital. However, treatments that usually work have appeared to worsen his state, which is why I have endorsed his release. Please, make sure he takes the medication I have enclosed, as opposed to the ones he has been presently prescribed. Do not let him see this note or the medication. The medication can be dissolved in liquids for easy and discreet administration.
Mordecai quickly glanced back up at Rigby, who was focused on his main course now. He glanced down at the pill bottle in the envelope. Triflupromazine Butyrophenone.
Mordecai pulled out the accompanying instruction leaflet. The side effects were pretty severe, including 'Tardive Dyskinesia,' and 'Extrapyramidal Symptoms; Various' along side the usual nausea, anxiety and hunger changes.
"I'm going back up, man" Rigby said, referring to the buffet.
"Oh, okay dude" Mordecai said absentmindedly. But once he was gone, Mordecai raised his head, and looked at Rigby's glass of soda. He could easily slip in the pill right now. But, thus presented itself the moral dilemma. Was it right to go slipping medication in Rigby's drinks without him knowing? Then again, he didn't want Rigby having another episode and winding up in the hospital again. That thought, he couldn't bear.
In the end, he pressed down on the bottle lid, twisted it open, and slipped a pill out. It wasn't like any pill he had ever seen – it was rectangular and gray. Who would think such a small thing could have such a large effect?
Quickly, Mordecai looked over to the buffet. Rigby was waiting, tapping his foot impatiently while a large woman loaded up on fried crab claws. Mordecai then turned away, and without thinking, dropped the pill into the soda.
However, he began panicking when the pill appeared to be dissolving very slowly. Rigby had finally gained access to the crab claws, and would probably be coming back afterwards.
But the pill was still only about a quarter dissolved, and now Mordecai could see Rigby coming back to the table. The little pill was still releasing little bubbles into the drink, half dissolved.
Mordecai felt his stomach sink; he was caught for sure. But as Rigby sat down, the pill sank further into the glass, and the bubbles merged with the carbonated bubbles of the soda, making them indistinguishable
"Hahahaheeeey, dude" Mordecai said.
"Hey." Rigby said at first, not doing anything. He appeared frustrated for a moment, before looking away, apparently searching for something. His head quickly snapped back though.
"Listen, Mordecai… thanks for visiting me. When I was in there, I mean" He said.
"Oh… it's no problem, dude"
"Really… now that I'm out, and all that stuff is over… I have more clarity. I mean… I guess what I'm trying to say is that I said and did a lot of stupid and, or embarrassing stuff over the past few weeks. And you could have totally washed your hands of me, and no one would have blamed you… but you didn't. And… I don't know what word to use, cause 'thank you' isn't enough, but… thank you." Rigby said. Mordecai was taken off guard by this sudden sereneness and insightfulness. Rigby wasn't renowned for either - especially not lately. But he was touched deeply by Rigby's gratitude nonetheless.
"You're welcome, dude. I…it may not seem it sometimes, but I, like… care about you a bunch, and my life would probably be a lot suckier without you around" Mordecai said. This caused them both to blush, and look away from each other very quickly. At least now the ice between them had been broken.
Though now Mordecai was rethinking his decision to put the medication in Rigby's drink.
Rigby grinned before raising his glass to his mouth, and taking a long gulp. Mordecai winced. He had somewhat expected Rigby to notice an altered flavor, or anything wrong with the drink, but he put the glass down without commenting anything.
They pulled up at the park house about thirty-five minutes later.
"What the fuck happened here?" Rigby asked.
"What do you mean 'What the fuck happened here?' – everything's fine" Mordecai said, almost defensively.
"Uh, Mordecai…" Rigby said. Mordecai didn't like Rigby's suspicious tone, but looking around, he could see what he meant.
For starters, the park house, completely unshielded by the elements, required a new coat of paint on the porch every month. It had not been done for some time, evidently, because the paint was chipped off in many places, probably from stray sand carried by the wind.
Secondly, the grass was greatly overgrown, at least by Benson's standards. Park rules stated that the grass should never exceed five inches in length, but it was looking closer to ten, and even fifteen in some areas.
And third, it was empty. There were no visitors whatsoever. Even with everything that tended to happen at the park, there were usually a couple visitors, at least. But now there were none in sight.
"So, uh… what happened here?" Rigby asked.
"I-…I don't know." Mordecai said.
"Dude, Benson's truck isn't even here. It's like… I mean, it's Wednesday, right?"
"Yeah, I guess it is…wait a minute…where are Muscle Man and Fives?" Mordecai said. He suddenly remembered that other workers at the park existed, and realized he didn't recall seeing them at all over the past couple weeks.
Mordecai suddenly felt like he'd been drugged the past month. He couldn't recall doing anything, not a single interaction with another person. He could have been told he had terminal cancer the previous week, and he wouldn't have remembered.
"Shit, shit, shit, shiiiit." Mordecai said, gripping at the steering wheel. And that's another thing – where did this car come from? He could barely remember getting it as a perk of a promotion he had got directly from Mr. Maellard. But what had he done since that time. He could remember vague details about setting up some kind of shindig for peers from corporate, just before Rigby went into hospital… then nothing.
"Okay, this isn't good." Mordecai said finally.
"What?" Rigby asked.
"I… I don't really know what's going on right now." Mordecai said simply.
"Oh…hey listen." Rigby said, slouching over slightly. "I don't feel well," He said. He was sweating lightly, despite the air conditioning in the car. Mordecai recognized the symptoms as a likely side effect of the medication he'd slipped Rigby. Why did he do that again? He couldn't remember.
They got out of the car, with Rigby already suffering tardive dyskinesia. The kind you always associate with crazy people – a classic sign of anti psychotics. Rigby would rub his arm above his elbow, and then appear to wring the arm out, and shake it violently. It wasn't normal.
"Mordecai I think I'm dying." Rigby said hurriedly. He felt hot and cold at the same time, not at all like a fever with the chills, but more literal. He could really, really feel both at once. It was bizarre as it was indescribable.
"You're fine, trust me. Let's go inside." Mordecai said. They entered the house, and Mordecai sat down on the sofa, leaning forward, knees almost to his stomach, his wingtips pressed against his temples.
The house felt cold, and unlived in. It was uninviting, and it didn't even feel real to either of them. A cold sensation ran down from Mordecai's chest to his stomach. Whenever he got this feeling, it meant something big was changing in his life. He never had responded well to change. But this time, he didn't even know what the change was.
The late afternoon sunlight came in through the bay window, and struck the room in an odd way, giving a different context to all of the colors in the room that neither Mordecai nor Rigby had ever seen before – making the whole room seem alien to them.
After sitting there for five minutes, trying to think, but being unable to, something came to Mordecai suddenly, without any prompt. He finally sat back on the couch, and rested his hands on his thighs.
"Mordecai, this doesn't feel right. Please tell me this doesn't feel right." Rigby said. That emotional high he felt when he got out of hospital was gone. Now he was defenseless, in the open, cold, and he couldn't function properly.
"This doesn't feel right." Mordecai confirmed.
"What happened, man? I was really getting into the life we made here, and now it's fucking gone, and we don't even know what fucking happened to it. What happened to ditching work to go to the arcade, and the random shit, and the coffee shop… and even Margaret, she's gone too, right? It doesn't feel right with all this shit gone…. Is this because I got sick, Mordecai?"
"No, I think this was a long time coming." Mordecai said.
"But you're getting sick too"
"I know."
"We don't belong anywhere, do we?"
"No, we don't."
"So…what do we do now?"
"Get some rest. When you're feeling better, we're going to Mesa."