Chas hadn't moved from John's kitchen table all day.
John left mid-morning, waking Chas up in the process, and when John got back in the afternoon Chas was still sitting at the table doing nothing. The boy had only gotten up for twenty or so minutes of scrubbing, but when he found that he'd been scrubbing the exact same spot for the whole twenty minutes, he figured it wasn't worth the effort.
"Chas…you've got to do something," John said, lighting up a cigarette. Chas didn't answer, so John offered him a cigarette…and got no reaction. That was when he knew something was really wrong.
"Come on…eat, throw things, yell, do something. You're making me nervous."
Chas sighed.
"That doesn't count," John said, annoyed, moving the Chinese he'd brought home from the counter to the table I front of Chas, hoping that the smell would elicit some kind of reaction from the teenager.
"Come on. I went to all this effort to deal with those confusing Chinese people, I won't have you blowing off the effort," he said, nudging the bag of Chinese food closer.
"M'not hungry," Chas mumbled.
"You haven't eaten since yesterday evening."
"M'still not hungry."
John sighed heavily. "Listen, I told your mom I'd feed you and make sure you didn't kill anybody. So I'd have a lot of explaining to do if I had to drag your starved carcass back to her doorstep."
Chas shrugged. "She doesn't want me anyway."
"Is that what this is about?" John asked with a groan, sitting down at the table and beginning to serve out the Chinese food anyway. "Look, Chas, your mom doesn't hate you. It's just…you're a high maintenance kid, okay? She needed a break."
"She needed time alone with her new fuck toy, the stupid whore."
"You shouldn't talk about your mother that way. Bad karma."
"Fuck karma."
John shook his head and dropped a plate of Chinese food under Chas's nose, and then started eating some himself. "You need to just calm down, relax, and stop being so damn spastic and paranoid."
"Oh, and you're so much more stable?"
"Hell yes, I'm stable. Not sane, but perfectly stable."
Chas half-smiled, poking at the rice on his plate. "You're weird."
"So I've been told."
Chas and John's gazes met, and for a moment they just stared. Something changed then, something small…but it was interrupted by a knock on the door.
John got up to answer it as Chas finally began to eat, and in the hallway stood a middle-aged woman in a nice outfit, with thick black-rimmed glasses and a briefcase.
"Mr. Constantine?" She asked, and John quirked an eyebrow and nodded. The woman hesitated, and then continued. "A Ms. Kramer sent me here. I'm a psychiatrist, she wanted me to speak with her son."
John almost laughed, but then opened the door the rest of the way and gestured to the boy at the table, who'd overheard everything.
"I don't need a shrink," Chas muttered, stuffing another forkful of Chinese into his mouth. The woman stepped in and sat down across from him.
"I'm just here to talk with you a bit, Chas," she said. "My name is Dr. Matthews."
John shifted his weight uncomfortably, and then grabbed his jacket.
"I'm gonna go down to the diner and let you kids have your fun," he said, walking out the door and closing it behind him.
Chas watched the psychiatrist with a suspicious glare as she pulled out a notebook and a pencil.
"How are you feeling today, Chas?" she asked.
"How do you fuckin' think I'm feeling?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
Chas growled. "This is shit."
"Why is this shit?"
"Why do you have to keep asking stupid questions?"
The psychiatrist wrote down a few things on her paper as Chas simmered. Then, she looked up and said, "Why did you attack Nicholas at the restaurant?"
"Because he was being an asshole, that's why."
"By flirting with your mother?"
"It's only been six fucking months!" Chas yelled, standing up. "Six months, a-and she's bringing that asswipe into our house? Tell me I don't have a right to be pissed, I fuckin' dare you!"
"You do have a right to be angry, Chas, I'm not saying that you don't. But maybe physical violence isn't the best way to go about this."
Chas snorted, walking to the window. A few moments of silence, then Dr. Matthews spoke again.
"Do you feel threatened by Nicholas?"
Chas actually laughed at that one. "Didn't you hear, lady? I beat the shit out of him. I'm not scared of that scrawny freak."
"I didn't mean physically. I meant…do you feel threatened that your mother might be taking a liking to him?"
Chas's fists tightened. "It's been…six…months."
"Some people have different stages of grieving, Chas. It doesn't mean she didn't love your father if she's already ready to start the healing process."
Chas remained silent. He didn't agree, but there was no point in arguing about it. He heard Dr. Matthews scratching a pencil across the paper once again.
"Did you talk to her?" Chas finally asked.
"Yes. Yes, I did."
"When is she going to let me come home?"
A pause. "Chas…your mother was scared half to death by what she saw and heard from you in the restaurant that night. Until I make a diagnosis and have some suggestions for treatment, she'd really like for you to stay here."
Chas felt anger and the feeling of betrayal welling up in him again. "That bastard is still staying at our house, isn't he."
"You put him in the hospital. He has a concussion and a broken nose."
"Good."
"Hurting Nicholas isn't going to solve anything. This whole problem is between you and your mother."
"Yeah, and I guess she likes him better anyway."
Dr. Matthews wrote down stuff for another minute or so, and then she stood up.
"I'll tell you what, Chas…I'm going to come back here tomorrow, and I'll bring some prescription medication with me that should help stabilize you. We'll talk some more, I'll chat with your mother, and we'll see what happens, alright?"
Chas didn't answer, didn't even look at her. Even when he heard the door shut, he didn't look away from the window.
Medication. That was it.
"If she fuckin' doesn't need me, then what the hell," he muttered, turning and walking into John's bathroom. He opened a cabinet, searching around until he found what he was looking for.
An old prescription of Vicoden pain pills, written out to John Constantine. The bottle was half empty, but there was still a good amount of pills in there. He emptied them onto his hand, staring hard at them.
She doesn't need you. She has Nicholas. Nobody needs you anymore.
He took the pills dry, leaving a horrible taste in his mouth. He leaned down and used his hands to cup some water from the running faucet and drank it, but it barely helped.
He gripped the sink with both hands, looking up into the mirror. He didn't look any different, but his eyes looked simply dead. And he knew it.
A few moments, and his hands were suddenly trembling on the sink. A few more, and there was a growing pain in his abdomen.
He tried to remember how many pills he'd taken, couldn't do it. He couldn't concentrate at all.
Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
The thought came a little late. By the time he decided he wanted to get to the phone, the room was swimming around him and the pain was blindingly intense. He stumbled to the door of the bathroom, ran into the doorframe, then used it to stay on his feet as he moved into the kitchen.
He heard the door open and shut, and he looked up to see two Johns…no, three Johns. The multiple Johns rushed to him, and he suddenly felt hands holding up his violently shaking body.
"Shit, kid, what did you do?"
The voice was a bit distant, but understandable. "V-Vicoden."
"Oh, no. You didn't. Fucking hell," John said, and Chas utterly collapsed against him. John grabbed for the phone with his free hand, quickly dialing 911.
Chas could barely hear John talking on the phone. All he knew was that John sounded a bit panicked, and that he was slowly being lowered to the floor.
"Hang in there, Chas," he heard John say, and he felt a hand in his hair, gentle. He tried to answer, couldn't form words.
"Chas, answer me. The ambulance is coming, but you've gotta talk to me."
Those were the last words Chas heard before all his senses failed him.
The next few days were a myriad of nothingness for Chas. Mostly dreams, bad, painful dreams. Once in a while he would hear quiet voices, or a soft, mechanical beeping. Those times, when he could hear those things, he could feel the heaviness and numbness of his body, the sensation of something in his mouth and throat, a tube.
He heard John's voice more often than anyone else's, even his mother.
It wasn't for three days until he finally came to. He could suddenly feel his fingers and toes again, some of the heavy feeling gone.
He forced his eyes open slightly, blinking a few times to get them to focus. He was in a dimly lit hospital room, and John was sitting in a chair by his bed, flipping through a book.
John glanced up and noticed Chas was awake, and he set the book aside and leaned forward.
"About time you came to," he said, and Chas tried to speak, but it hurt too bad to try.
"Your mother was here a few minutes ago. She'll be back later tonight," John said. "You just don't try and move or talk, okay? Relax."
Chas didn't have to be told twice. It seemed to be exhausting to even be awake. He closed his eyes, and the last thought he had before falling into sleep again was that his mother was probably out on a date with Nicholas.
He had nightmares again.