16 Dougie's POV
After Harry talked to Tom, there was a small change in him. He smiled more, and spoke up more. He was writing songs again too, whenever he had time. It was great to see, there was more Tom in Tom, instead of a shell.
But it still wasn't right. His smile wasn't real, he only said things that were necessary, he still wasn't talking to us. It still felt like he was going through the motions, doing what was necessary to keep going and make it seem like he was okay. I couldn't help but feel like all of this was him acting, pretending that it was all okay so he didn't fall apart.
Tom just looked so fragile right now, like the smallest gust of wind could make him fall down and shatter. He'd never looked like that before, no matter how much weight he'd lost, or how low his mood went. He'd always still looked strong, but now he looked like he was breaking apart, while still desperately trying to hold it together. And none of us could understand why. It wasn't just the divorce; it couldn't just be the divorce.
The divorce wouldn't stop Tom playing with Buzz, wouldn't stop him talking to us, wouldn't stop him from being himself. This wasn't him, this wasn't the divorce, but what was it?
"He's apologising a lot." Danny pointed out, chewing on his nails. He was going to have no nails left soon.
"He is." Harry agreed, because Tom was apologising. Whenever he thought he'd done something wrong, he apologised. Even if it was just getting the wrong brand of a certain food. None of us cared if it was a different brand, or anything like that, but he apologised so much it was like he thought it was one of the worst things he could do. Everything he did that sounded slightly wrong, he apologised for, with such a panic it was like he was scared we would be really angry with him.
"And he's only speaking when spoken to, or when it's absolutely necessary." I continued, getting agreements there too. I missed Tom, the real Tom. This wasn't the real Tom, this was some cheap imitation.
"Looks like we'll have to get him to the psychiatrist, see if he has any insight." Harry did not look all too happy about that. The idea of Tom and psychiatrists always seemed bad. Even after all the positive effects of being helped by psychiatrists, it had never been easy. And held some bad memories for me and Tom both. It was hard, and uncomfortable, and scary.
"Tom's not going to be happy." Danny sighed, at least he wasn't arguing like he was last time.
"He's not, but if we can get to the bottom of whatever this is, then isn't it worth it?" Harry asked, it would be a good thing, to sort that out. But Tom didn't want to go, he would be so angry with us. He'd gone in secret last time, hadn't told us about his diagnosis until I'd had mine, hadn't wanted to appear like he wasn't completely together and in control. Us taking him to the psychiatrist was us basically saying that we didn't trust him, trust how he saw his own mental health. We did, we just... he wasn't okay, and maybe he needed help to see that.
Would he though? He wasn't exactly the most emotional person right now. Would he hide his feelings? Pretend that he was fine with it all? That didn't make sense. None of this made sense.
"I guess, but, can we really hurt his feelings?" I didn't want to hurt Tom more, he was hurting enough as it was.
"But he's already got his feelings hurt a hell of a lot. We can help fix it with the psychiatrists help." Harry explained, "We have to try, alright? We can't just let him carry on like this."
"Fine, we'll take him, but if it doesn't work, we'll have to think of something else." Danny gave in, though I could tell he wasn't happy about it. None of us were happy about it, really. We had no choice though, did we? We couldn't let Tom carry on like this; we had to get to the bottom of it. The psychiatrist could help, even if it upset Tom at first. I was for the greater good, we had to believe it.