Author's Note: How Lewis Nixon wound up in the hospital. Prologue to the collaborative hospital AU between me and mols.
Warnings: suicide attempt.
After his parents divorced, Lewis Nixon was put under the care of his father in New Jersey. His little sister Blanche was to move in with their mother in California. Lewis had little say in the matter, the words of a child not yet seventeen years old unimportant in the eyes of everyone involved in the matter; his parents, his grandparents, the judge of the divorce case. So he said goodbye to his mother and Blanche one blustery November evening, in the stiff, impersonal way the Nixons always did, and did not allow himself to cry until he was safe in his bedroom; his childhood nursery, furniture from his mother's home hastily moved in, boxes of his clothes and belongings left unopened.
Only then did Lewis curl up on the bare mattress and muffle his cries into a pillow, ashamed of his own weakness.
Stanhope Nixon was an absent father to Lewis; he had taught him to sail, and nothing more, expecting him to figure it all out himself. It was the Nixon way, Stanhope said, and Lewis' every failure as a person was mocked and belittled over dinner on holidays. Lewis had friends in Santa Barbara where he'd been living with his mother before the divorce; in New Brunswick he knew no one, and found it difficult to reach out. He broke apart slowly and silently, though the signs were there, no one paid them any mind.
He'd planned it out, how he would leave this world, and he would have succeeded if Stanhope Nixon had not forgotten the paperwork he needed for a business meeting that day.
Lewis had broken into the liquor cabinet months ago, tempted by the promise of forgetting; this night he had taken all of it and drank until his stomach felt swollen and his throat burned. He curled up in his bed and struggled not to throw up as it hit him all at once. He was burning in his own skin, drowning, gasping for air, and when Stanhope found the liquor cabinet open and called for Lewis, furious, Lewis could not reply, caught in the midst of a seizure.
He was taken to the hospital and had his stomach pumped, and when he awoke he was alone, his family too busy- and too ashamed- to see him at all. A doctor asked him questions about how he felt and why he did it, and Lewis refused to answer any of them, curling on his side and staring at the wall.
Lewis stayed there for a week, eating and sleeping mechanically, and never once spoke. He was released from the general hospital only to go to the psychiatric hospital under suicide watch. Lewis wasn't stupid, he heard what they said about him, knew what they were thinking. But he couldn't bring himself to care. When he was shown to his room, anonymous roommate absent, he crawled under the covers of his bed and slept.
He dreamt of a ship sailing at sea; an ocean storm blowing in and swallowing the fragile ship whole; its splintered carcass washing onto an island shore.
When Lewis awoke, he saw blue-grey eyes, like the ocean in his dream, and brilliant copper hair. The boy was sitting on his bed, just watching Lewis. His grey wool sweater and blue jeans seemed to swallow his lanky figure; Lew wondered if he was there for an eating disorder, but saw that his face looked fine.
"Hi," the boy said eventually, smiling a peculiar smile. "I'm Dick."
Lewis blinked, sitting up.
"I'm Lewis."