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Is it just me or does Chase make way more jokes about suicide than he used to? :/
> No, it’s definitely not just you. I’ve noticed it too and its really bothering me. Hope its nothing serious he’s hiding from us.
> lol so what. peoples sense of humor changes over time get over it.
> some ppl are just worried asshole, chase honestly seems like he’s been having way less fun lately
This was why Chase didn’t read comments anymore. He slammed the laptop shut before the urge to tell them off hit him. Sigh. Why did he bother trying to keep up with his channel anymore?
Feeling another bout of nausea coming, he leaned down to grab the “Coke” he’d just bought, taking a few deep swigs and feeling the ickiness in his stomach and brain melt away. When he felt the bottle reaching emptiness, he refilled it with another whiskey he stowed under the bed. If this was going to kill him, at least he’d die in a decent state of mind. Or asleep. That’d be nice. Maybe it’d even happen tonight.
But just in case it didn’t, Chase crept out into the kitchen, shoving the bottle under the mound of other trash and praying no one else would notice anything.
“Anti, for the last time, stop digging in the garbage!”
Trash was strewn out across the kitchen tile - sandwich bags, half-eaten food, an old shoe, Keurig cups, by God, it was disgusting.
“You ain’t the boss of me, Sheepy.” Anti tilted the trash can towards him and stuffed his hand down past some leftover casserole - eugh.
“What are you even looking for, anyway?”
“I heard some glass rattling in the bottom that wasn’t there yesterday- Found it.” Anti pulled out two empty bottles of whiskey. "Yeah, somethin' tells me Seány-boy didn't buy or drink any of this."
Henrik’s heart sank. Fucking hell. He just tried to quit.
Bang bang bang! “Chase!”
"What?" he snapped back.
“Open the door!”
The ambient sounds of his video game paused and his feet stomped towards the door. It flung open, revealing his ratty hair, dark circles under his eyes, and trash strewn about the room. A half-empty two-liter Coke bottle and an open bag of cheddar cheese Ruffles accompanied the grimy PS4 controller. And both the room and Chase’s breath reeked of booze. “What do you want?”
Very curtly, Henrik pointed to the Coke. “Show me what’s in that bottle.”
“Why?”
“What makes you so defensive, Chase?”
“Get the fuck out of my room!”
He blocked Henrik, shoving and slapping and biting and yelling until he backed away. The door slammed shut.
“Chase, I just want to know what hap-”
“Leave me alone!”
Henrik flinched, and felt the urge to scream as loud.
“I’m at a loss.” Henrik picked at his lunch, failing to find the hunger he just had. "I should've known it wouldn't have worked, the way he was acting."
“Same.”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full.”
“Okay, Mom,” J.B. said, mouth still full.
Sigh. Resisting the urge to argue with him about petty things like table manners, he continued: “How long do you think he’s been drinking again?”
“Well, a few days ago, he came home with groceries in the middle of the night and yelled at me for trying to help put them away, so...”
Henrik raised an eyebrow. “...And you didn’t say anything about it?”
“I wasn’t gonna have a screaming match in the middle of the night and-”
“No, I mean, you didn’t let the rest of us know that something suspicious was happening?”
J.B. was caught on the spot, swallowing and saying, “I mean, I- I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Henrik...” J.B. put his fork down. “You gotta understand, man, that was the third time we tried to get him to quit, and you remember the hell it was trying to get him to agree to stop doing it anymore.”
He did. Chase threw a plate at Jamie’s face and gave him a solid bruising, and sent another shattering against the wall. He remembered the ear-piercing screams, the profanities he hurled and the sick names he called Jamie. All because Jamie had tried to coerce him into going back to therapy by pouring the water bottles filled with vodka down the sink - well-intentioned, but nowhere close to good or helpful for Chase.
“I’m just saying,” J.B. continued, “at some point, I just got the feeling that he really doesn’t want to get better. You should know as a doctor that that’s kind of an obstacle in the whole recovery process, right?”
Henrik and J.B. locked eyes and let the statement hang in the air for a moment. He wasn’t wrong. And yet... “That just means we have to make him want to recover.”
“Henrik...”
“So the self-proclaimed superhero is going to give up? Do I have to do your job, too?”
J.B. bit his lip and sighed. “Fine.”
"I’m not helping.”
“Anti.”
“Let the fucker drink himself to death if that’s what he wants so badly.” Anti brushed them off, refusing to take his eye off whatever Netflix action show he and Marvin were watching this week, Marvin located on the other couch, draped on top of the back. “You think I wanna waste my time and energy forcing us all to go through all this bullshit again when the dude just wants to die whether he’s drunk or not?”
Translation: You think I want to keep putting everyone in pain? But Henrik knew better not to make fun of him.
Anti finally grabbed the remote and paused the show, sitting upright, leaning on his thighs. “I’m betting the dude’s not gonna get better unless he gets his kids back, but he ain’t gettin’ his kids back until he gets better. And I guess he just looked at that vicious cycle and decided, ‘Fuck it.’ And if he wants to die, then I guess he’s just gonna have to die; at least then he won’t be out there ruining everyone’s lives anymore.”
Tears dripped down Marvin’s cheeks, and steam came out of J.B.’s ears.
“Are you fucking serious, Anti?” he barked, towering over him. “I get if you want to give up, but do you have to be so fucking callous about it? This is our fellow ego we’re talking about here!” Spit fired onto Anti’s forehead, which he either didn’t notice or didn’t care about.
“I’m just practical, is all.”
“Marvin?” Henrik softly asked, ignoring J.B.’s huff and stomping exit. “What about you?”
Marvin was almost too tearful to speak, rubbing his eyes and hiccuping. “I wanna save him.”
There was a hidden but in there that Henrik could sense. “Do you want to try and help us?”
“I don’t think we can!” Marvin broke down upon saying those words. “I wanna help him but I can’t! I can’t!”
Henrik sat down on the couch and put his hand on Marvin’s shoulder.
“I don’t want him to die,” he blubbered, “I don’t want him to die, I don’t want him to die...”
“He’s not going to die,” Henrik murmured into his ear. Not if I can help it.
"Look, man, I don’t really want you to be doing this any more than anyone else.”
"Honestly, I don’t either.” Sip. “It’s more like I just have to. I’m just so sick and so sad all the time and this only makes life tolerable.”
"But you know how much trouble you’re gonna get in if you’re drunk all the time, right?”
“I know.”
"Like, if not death, you’re definitely gettin’ prison time. Or the hospital. Either way they’re really gonna make you fix your shit.”
"I know."
Sip.
Sip.
“It’s just hard to care. So I can’t really get mad at anyone for not caring.”
“You saying you’re not gonna stop caring until something super-bad happens? ‘Cause that’s... kinda the shitty thing Marvin and me wanna avoid.”
“.......”
“Whatever. Your life, your- Wait, shh.”
I should stop drinking so much coffee before bed.
Well, of course he wasn’t going to stop. It was just caffeine. Caffeine that admittedly caused his legs and feet to wiggle on their own accord throughout the night, and filled his bladder at record speeds. How hypocritical of him, the frequency with which he tells his clients to reduce their caffeine intake while doing this.
As he walked down the creaky floorboards of the hallway back to his bedroom, Henrik swore he heard some clinking of glass in Chase’s room as he passed by. It made him stop in his tracks. No light showed under the door, and whatever he heard stopped. Either his ears were going kooky, or Chase knew he was there and silenced himself.
No need to force him into anything at this time of night. Henrik kept walking, though now he’d have another reason to have difficulty sleeping.
“ANTISEPTICEYE!!”
Seán’s yelling startled Henrik out of his sleep - oh, he managed to get some after all. Fuck, what was going on? That type of screaming was reserved for something a little more serious than dumpster-diving. Henrik threw the blankets off and stumbled out of bed, though taking care not to cause too much of a ruckus and make it seem like he was desperate for the drama.
He couldn’t make out what Anti was saying, but Seán was giving the guy a verbal whaling for “enabling” Chase. The fuck did he do?
Henrik peeked over the banister, catching Anti’s back in view. The other egos were nervously and curiously gathered around, except for the alcoholic himself. Of course. Guy was still probably in his bedroom sleeping it off.
“What were you thinking?” Seán bellowed.
“That he’s fucking hopeless? He didn’t even last a week this time.”
“Because of you!”
“I didn’t start it! He bought it himself!”
“When?”
“The hell would I know; I just found empty bottles in the trash yesterday!”
“Psst.” Henrik whispered over to Jamie, the farthest from the group, and moved in close to his ear. “What happened?”
Jamie whispered back, “Anti drank one with Chase last night.”
Shock and anger coursed through his chest for a split second, interrupted by Anti's screeching voice rattling his eardrums, and a thump-thump-thumping down the stairs.
“He doesn’t fucking want to get better! And I’m sick of giving a shit!”
Chase bolted for the front door, Seán, Henrik, and J.B. on his tail. The door slowed him down enough for Henrik to grab him first, then J.B. Seán forced himself into Chase’s line of sight, and Chase kicked and thrashed and flailed as hard as he could to get away. Yet he was weakened from his years-long need to consume whiskey and vodka and whatever other poisons he could get his hands on over attending to his basic needs for food and sleep. Thus, Henrik and J.B. had no issue holding him in place.
“Lemme go!” he screamed. “I want out of this fuckin’ house!”
“No, Chase,” Seán said, calmly but firmly. “I can’t let you do that.”
“Why can’t you guys just stop caring and leave me alone like Anti and Marvin and Jamie do?”
“Why should we?” Seán was trying his damndest to suppress his frustration and Henrik was impressed. “Can’t speak for these guys, but I can tell you-”
“Yeah, I know, your brother’s life is so much better now and he’s got a great relationship with his wife and kids and you and blah blah blah, I get it, you don’t need to tell me for the fiftieth time, I fucking get it.”
“But don’t you understand that that means I know there’s hope for you?”
“Shut up, fuckface.”
Chase wasn’t thrashing anymore, but Henrik refused to let his guard down.
“Good for him, but I’m a different person. Someone without a reason to quit. I don’t fucking feel better when I quit. I only feel worse.”
“That’s withdrawal,” Henrik chimed in. “That’s a normal side effect of quitting. And we can help you figure out ways that work best for you to combat that, but you have to be willing to try.”
Chase quivered in his arms. J.B. shifted between Chase and the door. Marvin, Jamie, and especially Anti kept their distance for now.
“And you know what? We’re all getting therapy,” Henrik commanded, gesturing around the room. “This isn’t just about him. We all need to learn how to help and support him and each other.”
Chase slipped out of Henrik and J.B.’s grips, and they let him collapse onto the floor, silently sobbing. Marvin seemed to want to join him down there.
“We’ve all fucked up in some way; now let’s just leave it in the past and fucking work! All of you!"
The ring of his voice silenced the egos, save for Chase’s hiccuping. More calmly, he added:
“There’s a colleague of mine who specializes in behavioral health disorders. The first step I want you to take is to go to her. I assure you she’s a sweetheart and very easy to open up to about everything you’re thinking and feeling.”
Between sobs, with blurry eyes, Chase asked, “How come you can’t help?”
“I can help you, I just can’t diagnose or treat a member of my own household. There’s issues surrounding that sort of thing.”
Chase seemed to accept the answer. If only due to being defeated and tired of talking and listening.
Marvin knelt down beside him, laying a hand on his shoulder. “Chase? You gonna try for us? Please try for us.” He started to break down again.
“I thought you gave up,” he barely squeaked out.
“I don’t wanna! Please, Chase, please try one more time! I wanna go back to the way things were, I want my best friend back, I wanna make cool shit with you again, please!”
Chase blinked, and forced himself up into a sit, rubbing his red eyes and letting Marvin wrap his arms around him. “Yeah. Okay. I will. One more try.”
That’s more like it. We’ll get it this time.