Chapter 37: Unplug Me

A/N: I've been bombarding my readers on Unbreakable really badly xD xD so I decided to do Overachiever instead. I wrote this listening to Evanescence's songs. 'Oceans' 'Swimming Home' 'Bring Me to Life'... you'll see Oceans cropped up in there xD xD xD And oh my god, one thousand reviews :DDDDD I can't believe I hit this many :3 this was almost a one shot, remember? Way back in the distant land of 2013 (horrible writing time for me, actually - I was an awful writer back then holy crap like omg) Anyway, I reread this story and omg! I've spent so long hating it, but you know what? I like it. I freaking. Like. This.

Voices.

They sounded loud, like people were talking right above me. I thought I was dead at first, but the bright lights were fluorescent, and I didn't think God had electric lights in heaven. So I resigned myself to the fact that, for now, I was still alive. The people above me, they were saying words that had meaning deep in my soul, but they didn't reach my ears quite right. They just sounded kind of garbled, like I was listening to them with water in my ears.

"Maybe rehabilitation for his eating disorder?" one of them asked quietly. The other agreed slowly.

"What about his father?" a new voice spoke, inquiring anxiously.

"The man's completely off the map. He's not answering his phone, and according to Oceans, he wasn't in the waiting room for longer than ten minutes before disappearing."

I sat upright. I might have been barely in my head, I might have been unable to breathe and shaking from a sudden chill that gripped my body, but I kept my eyes fixed on the people in white coats at the foot and head of my bed, twisting to look at them all. "What's going on? What's happened to my father?"

"Sweetheart…" It was that blonde woman again, lips parted in a glass smile, ready to deliver the iron verdict of the only solid thing in the world to grip onto. "Slow down. Take a breath. Rest."

"No, what's happened to my father?" I was suddenly scared. I might have felt angry with him before doing the deed, but I never intended for him to get hurt by what had happened. And what if he had hurt somebody else? What if he had gotten drunk, and started hurting somebody else, one of the people in the room right now?

But no, I realized, looking at them all quickly. I knew enough about my father to know that those fists left nasty marks. None of these people were bruised – they all looked a little surprised by my sudden speech, but they looked unhurt.

"Hiccup," the doctor moved forward suddenly, putting a hand to my shoulder. Heavily built, like my father – when he reached for me, I couldn't help flinching back. He seemed to notice, because he dropped his hand. "Your father is not available for you at the moment."

Here, at last, was all I'd wanted. The truth. Not somebody fussing over me, or whispering words like "rehabilitation" like they thought I couldn't hear. "Why isn't he available? Has something happened to him, is he hurt?"

"He was unhurt," one of the nurses started to speak, but I interrupted.

"What do you mean, was?"

"You need to rest," the doctor persisted. So much for telling me the truth. "You've been through a lot in these past twenty-four hours, Hiccup. You need to lay down and sleep."

I don't remember anything after that, so I'm guessing they put me to sleep without my knowledge and when I awoke again, the hospital room was dark, completely dark. At any other time, I would have been scared. But I couldn't dredge up enough feeling to be scared, so I just rolled over and tried to fall back asleep. No luck. I couldn't stop thinking about my father, and what might have happened to him. He didn't deserve whatever they were doing to him. I couldn't think past this. I'd tried to do the world a favor by killing myself, and somehow I'd ended up in an even worse mess than before. I couldn't even kill myself properly. I was so stupid. I was so screwed up, so messed up that I'd tried to kill myself and for a long while, I'd happily considered this thought. I was so goddamn useless, and I was stupid, stupid for thinking I could do anything right, stupid for entering that art competition, stupid for not reading the directions on the bottle before taking them, stupid for breaking down in Ms. Delaney's class when I should have just kept my head down and turned off my thinking entirely. I had become so good at lying, at covering up and pretending not to be sad, or angry. Why hadn't I been able to do it then, to hide everything I was thinking and feeling?

I remembered her telling me that I was a pot, that soon enough I would boil over, and I had. And I'd been wrong when I'd said that I'd boiled over quietly, too. This, the doctors and nurses telling me to rest, me lying on the kitchen floor vomiting, my father staring at me, Astrid's blue eyes looking right through me… This was not quiet.

I closed my eyes, listening to the quiet beeping of monitors and machines all around me, the only things keeping me hooked up to life. I wondered if, when I slipped into sleep this time, anybody would do the world a favor and unplug me.

When I awoke again, the lights weren't dimmer by any means, but I could now look up at them without gaining a pounding headache to add to my discomforts. Nobody was at my bedside, and I couldn't help but look at the empty space, all this space, all this space and room I had to share, and suddenly I felt like crying again. I had space to share. I had room, but I wouldn't let anybody past the front door. The last person who'd gone beyond the front door had taken over the space and filled it with bruises and Xs and beatings, terrible words whispered in my ears, telling me over and over that if I ever told anyone about this, he'd kill me.

I had shut my door then, locked it up tight, bolted it securely so I no longer ran the risk of anybody ever getting inside. Every time someone had gotten close to figuring out the pass codes, I changed the locks. And now, because of that, here I was alone, in a hospital bed, having fallen so far that not even my dad could see me anymore. My dad, who had fallen farther than I thought possible. I had fallen farther than him.

The door opened suddenly. Somebody else entered the empty space. I swallowed, lifting my eyes to meet the doctor's. The man who looked like my father, but wasn't. Did he know that the last person who had entered my emotional empty space had beaten me and taken every good thing I had, twisted it until it was something perverted and ugly?

The doctor – his name tag dangled in front of my eyes for just moments before he sat down in the chair beside my bed, and I saw that it had something with a D in it – and then he seated himself. "Hiccup."

"Yes?" I looked up from the bed, meeting his gaze again. His eyes weren't like my father's at all. Where my dad's were cold and hard and angry and gray, the doctor's were kind and gentle and blue.

"Ms. Lydia is going to come talk to you in a few minutes," he said, clearly choosing his words carefully. "And she's going to ask you a few questions, inquire about the state of your emotional and mental health—

"Is she going to ask if I'm crazy?" I interrupted. "Because to be honest, I don't really think I am."

The doctor shook his head. "I don't mean mental health in that way, Hiccup. What I mean is, she's just going to ask you a few questions, and I urge you to answer as honestly as you can, okay?"

I frowned, tugging at the hospital gown that covered me. "Who…who is Ms. Lydia, sir?"

"She's just checking up on you," he promised. "There's nothing to be afraid of, I promise."

"What, is she gonna give me a shot?" I tilted my head to the side. "Because I don't need anyone to hold my hand while that's being done, sir. I'm fine."

I guess my brain was moving sluggishly from all the medications I'd taken, but I didn't connect the dots until the door swung open again and a woman with long brown hair and dark eyes came striding into the room. She didn't wear a white coat, like the other doctors and nurses I'd seen here – she was dressed in black, and looked oddly out of place in such a brightly lit room.

The doctor quickly vacated the seat as the woman offered me a smile, taking the seat he'd just left.

"Hello, Hiccup," she began speaking as the doctor left the room, shuffling some papers around on her clipboard and adjusting her skirt. "I just wanted to ask you a few questions – is that okay?"

I shrugged. "I guess."

"The doctors have been examining your medical history, and the reports they've gotten back on you over the last few days," she explained, taking a pencil out from behind her ear and scribbling on the clipboard. "According to them, you're very underweight?" She ended it openly, like a question.

I just stared at her.

She drew her chair a little closer to the bed. "Don't be afraid. I'm here to help you."

Ms. Lydia wasn't a doctor, not even a therapist, I realized as I regarded her. She was a social worker.