Please note that this chapter has had some slight changes in order for it to work better with the one coming in the next few days.
The one thing that I will always remember about this time in my life is not the chemical smell of disinfectant that assaulted my senses. After all, growing up as a street rat on L2, one becomes desensitised to the vile odours surrounding you.
Instead, I will remember the colours. Faded magnolia with a light blue trim on the walls, which someone had attempted to match with the speckled lino that reached up the walls. If they had been trying to go for an uplifting glitterball effect, then the designer desperately needed to look for another profession. Though the chosen flooring was probably there to disguise the myriad of bodily fluids that would likely have stained it over the years. The corridors and rooms were lit by the same acrid fluorescent lights that cause migraines. The windows were plastic and externally covered in a metal barred frame. The doors to the bedrooms though, they gave us no privacy, understandable considering the circumstances. But each door only locked from the outside, keeping the crazies in.
Everything here is meticulously scheduled. You wake up when they say so. You eat when they say so. Therapy when they say so. And most importantly, when you were to take your medication. They check you have not palmed them, hidden them beneath your tongue, or had used any of the other skills I had yet to acquire. Though I had heard others brag about. Half-melted tablets were the secret unwritten currency here. I had seen what happened to the people who had fought against these prescribed tablets that almost look like candy. Powerful orderlies would hold you down and your mouth open as nurses would wash them down their throats. In the two weeks that I had been here, I had seen one person who was so skilled and determined, that they had managed to stockpile their medication, only to overdose with them later.
The ward is 'baby-proofed.' Even our, I am not sure what to call them, they are less than clothing, they are almost like a prisoner's uniform. They are apparently 'safe.' We all matched; females and males alike. We wore paper-thin shorts and a short-sleeved shirt fasted with press studs. Nothing we could damage ourselves with. The idea of strangling myself with trouser legs seems incredulous to me now. We even wore the same uncomfortable plastic slippers which gave you blisters if you walked around in them too much. But like I said, I think I would prefer these over the questionable flooring condition.
Part of me wondered that if I had originally agreed to Dr. Willows's suggested inpatient time, then things would have been better, rather than on this suicide-watch ward. As much as I tried to convince them that I was not suicidal, they had decided that this was where I needed to be, at least for the time being. And I had little to no energy to fight back with the strength I used to have. And I bet there was something in the medication that fuddled my mind like this. An extra ingredient perhaps in this chemical cocktail.
I remembered little of what had been said at the last appointment I had had with her. No doubt the hospital would have informed her of my unfortunate situation. Though I do remember her encouraging some sort of supervised structure /what you really need is death/. Fuck, they would not even let me have the medication that I would usually take when I desperately needed to shut this voice up!
At first, I had fought against the doctors wanting to admit me to this ward. Heero had stayed oddly quiet but held my hand tightly. It was only once the nurses had finally removed the bandages and gauze that I eventually agreed to it. I rolled to my side hiding them from view in shame, my stomach still empty lurching painfully. With Solo's pocket knife, I had accidentally laid a vein open on one arm, and done some horrific superficial damage to the other arm. For someone like me /a complete and utter fuck up/ to say that there were bad, then they were horrendous. They had all needed stitches, and I had needed a transfusion for all the blood that escaped me. It explained why the cannula had been so blood-stained.
If Heero had not found me when he did then I would have been dead, bleeding out on the bathroom floor from cutting too deep. If he had not known trauma first aid from the war, then I would have died in his arms. Somehow the perfect soldier had attended me the best he could while phoning for an ambulance.
I had not done it on purpose. I was not – I am not suicidal, not anymore at least. I mean, I kept cutting because I couldn't feel anything. I couldn't feel the way the flesh stung when it was parted. The throbbing that came as the blood almost bubbled out. Or the way the warm thick liquid would run over my skin. All the feelings which would ground and anchor me to the moment, and would usually let me shake out of the moment. But this time I had felt nothing. And so I had cut more, I had cut deeper, over and over again, trying to trigger what I needed. But again, I felt nothing until the light-headedness made me collapse into the ever-growing pool of thick crimson liquid around me.
The cuts itch now. The skin is puckered and sore, the stitches only being removed yesterday. New battle scars from a war that I was fighting in my mind. We were allowed nothing but creams and plasters. Bandages of course are a suicide risk as people would hang themselves with them. This means that mine were uncovered and sensitive. And all I could do was inspect them with sick fascination.
So many of my fellow, patients I guess, were here with a myriad of creative but failed suicide attempts. There were so many here showing the signs of self-inflicted wounds and laid open wrists who would try in vain to hide their scar tissue. But I just could not find the energy to hide mine. Our arms and legs were always checked at medication time, to make sure we had not picked them apart again. When I did catch the eyes of another cutter, then their cheeks would turn as crimson as their escaped blood. It seemed like all the cutters on this ward were ashamed of the damage that they had done to their skin, failing to hide their scar tissue under the inadequate material of our uniforms. Perhaps my history as a Gundam pilot meant that cuts and bruises were nothing more than an outcome of war and I had never been ashamed of them, or wanted to hide them. They did not know me, they hadn't even tried. Why should I care what they think? Only Heero, Hilde, Professor G, and Dr. Willow had seen the actual damage I had done. And only Heero had an inkling of what went on in my mind to cause my own.
Another thing that disturbed me about this ward was that I was no longer seeing Dr. Willow. If I had known that in advance, then I would not have agreed to be institutionalised, locked up, committed, whatever you want to call it. All this new doctor had known were the notes on my file. A full year of notes showing all of my highs and my lows, and all the things that I had said in confidence to her. Dr Willow was, unknown to me at the time, exclusively treating outpatients. However, I now wore the medal of being an inpatient instead, and I wondered if that meant that I would never have our weekly chats again. I had been seeing this new doctor for two weeks now. And all I wanted was to go home to my Heero. To be in his embrace and let him stroke my hair until I would fall asleep.
The Dr I see now (I care not what they are called), focuses on the symptoms instead of the underlying cause. They see the cutting and not the desperation in my life which leads me to perform such deadly execution upon my skin.
Without access to my blades of course I wouldn't be able to cut. I could not cut here; I am terrified that would mean I would be here for longer. But I had that familiar need to punish myself for hurting the people that I care about, for hurting Heero. But I can't find anything sharp. I'm a Gundam Pilot, a trained thief, but I found nothing of use. Here the staff were meticulous about the tools they had available, and I never saw a single item out of place or not secured. If I was caught scratching or picking at the trauma on my arms, then something, I know not what would happen to me, more time incarcerated or more therapy sessions perhaps.
Visiting times are limited. And for 30 uninterrupted, but supervised, minutes every other day, I am allowed to see my love. My heart aches thinking about Heero and the separation anxiety that haunts him. I was causing him so much pain, but at the same time I was trying to quietly guide him away from his intense fear of losing me, and I think he understood that.
He looks thin, thinner than usual. He's not taking care of himself, and he's probably spending every night awake and worrying about me. But he can at least see that my arms show no new wounds. Though I can feel him inspect the ones that landed me into this situation. He would gently stroke each one carefully, committing them to memory just as he does for the others. His touch on them makes my skin crawl. Not because I hate him doing it. But it is the intense itch that it causes. I want to rip off every single scab. To dig my nails in and rip them off but it takes all of my self-control not to do it. So I focus on my loves presence instead. I cannot help but laugh at the idea of self-control. If I had any then I wouldn't be in here in the first place.
The nurses would let us cuddle on the couch, me resting against his chest while I pestered him about his day, trying to get him to relax and work on his own emotions, more of a distraction from my own currently monotonous life. I get characteristically few responses from him, other than the physically familiar desperate hug and neck nuzzle where I let him breathe in my scent, albeit one tainted with the hospital's chemicals.
"How much longer will this last," I can hear him mutter quietly into my neck. "I need you with me. I just- You're all I can think about…" His arms around me tightened, just as they always did whenever he was nervous.
"Oh 'Ro, It will be okay, I promise. Soon, I promise." I honestly felt unsure of myself as I answered him. I hadn't any real idea what was happening. Two weeks already felt too long for us to be apart. I gripped tightly to his shirt, clinging like a child to its mother. I hadn't the slightest inkling of what the Doctor was thinking in our therapy sessions or the observations the nurses on the ward had made. I was terrified that I would be locked up here forever.
"Why didn't you say how bad it was?"
"Because I didn't know," I sighed, always struggling to find the best words to explain just how much of a fuck up I actually was. "I didn't do it on purpose. And I never, ever, meant to hurt you. I just- It happened." I'm not going to cry. I am not going to have the nurses write that I cried. That just being with Heero made me cry. It just wasn't worth it, so instead I found myself chewing on my bottom lip. "I'm here for a reason 'Ro. I am going to get better." Though it felt like a lie.
Those beautiful ocean-blue eyes of his glistened with his own unshed tears. I think he understood why I was trying so hard not to let my own fall. Emotions were always recorded and scrutinised here. "I just want to help, and I just don't know how," he sighed. "Things were always so much simpler during the war. And it hurts so much to be apart from you."
"I know." I captured his lips in a brief chaste lip. We both needed much more, but this was neither the time nor the place for what we both needed. "I love you 'Ro." Those smiles of him always sent butterflies through me. The genuine ones that are reserved only for me.
As the clock buzzed the ending of our precious time together, we untangled ourselves, wishing desperately that we could stay together for longer, but I knew that the ward orderlies would usher him away from me. He leaned in and placed one of his feather-light kisses on my own lips. "I love you too." As he walked from me, it was all I could do to rest my fingers on where his lips had lingered.
I was nearly hospitalised in late May early June 2023. My auditory hallucinations were getting the better of me. They had changed from groaning metal to screaming. Recently they have changed to indistinct voices of a walkie-talkie with interference. On the odd occasion, I have had deafening tropical bird songs. I spent some time talking to people who had been on the ward that I *might* have been spending some time in. I was beyond fecked. They changed some of my medication around. It's not as good, but it is easier to get hold of.
Anyway. Figured this chapter would be harder to write than it was. I have some ideas for the next one too. If you missed Fight or Flight, that went up last week. Same universe but set after Bound for Hell. I would really really appreciate a review. It helps with the motivation to get this finished, rather than it being an incomplete emotional rollercoaster.