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To her, Mycroft had always seemed down. That’s why she was intrigued about him in the first place--she wanted to make him smile. But the more she got to know him, she realized he wasn’t feeling sad; in fact he wasn’t feeling much of anything. She recognized depression when she saw it, so she kept a close eye on him, making sure he didn’t hurt himself, until one day he came into the morgue, humming and smiling at her as if nothing in the world could be wrong. “Are you okay, Mycroft?” she had asked.
“Better than okay, my dear,” he had replied. “I feel like I could take on anything!”
This had confused Molly to no end, but she wasn’t about to ask what was going on, or what “take on anything” actually ensued. Surely, surely it was hyperbole. Because the alternative was more than a bit not good. He’d been happy for 2 weeks now, visiting her every day for lunch, and she was enjoying the attention she was getting from this man-this significant person in her life-to the extent that when he came in sighing that day she actually did a double take. “Mycroft?” she asked.
He looked up to her and nodded. “Hello, Molly.”
She frowned. “You’ve been feeling really good lately. Are you sick?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine. Back to normal, I suppose. Are you still up for lunch?”
Molly crossed her arms and bit her lip. “Mycroft, what do you mean by ‘back to normal’?”
He gave her a world-weary look. “What I said, my dear. I was feeling ‘normal’ for a while, and now I feel the way I normally do. It’s really nothing to worry about. It happens.”
Molly blinked, shocked. “N-normal…?” How was what he felt those 2 weeks normal? How was being depressed how you normally felt? “Mycroft…” she tried to form a sentence. “What you’ve felt the past 2 weeks…”
He sighed. “I’d rather not talk about the good days, it makes me feel worse.”
“No. We are talking about this. I want you to explain this,” she waved a hand over him, “To me. Explain what goes on in that head of yours.”
Mycroft gave her a look.
“Mycroft, we’ve been friends for a month and a half now, and in that time you have showed me depression and something I don’t know that name of. What exactly is making you act like that?!”
Mycroft tilted his head to the side, observing her. Deducing her. “What do you mean? Feeling happy for a while then sad for a while is a basic human experience.”
“Yes, but not for weeks at a time,” Molly said patiently. “What’s going on?”
Mycroft shrugged. “Nothing is going on. I watched a movie last night, it made me sad. What’s bad about that?”
“You’re still sad, though. Or, you’re still not feeling happy, rather,” Molly explained. “Movies make you sad, but you’re supposed to feel normal after a few hours.”
“Hours?” Mycroft asked.
Molly sighed. “Okay. This will take a lot of explaining.”
Mycroft frowned. “No...no. It’s...I understand.”
“No you don’t,” Molly shook her head. “You just don’t want to talk about this.”
Mycroft shrugged. “Well can you blame me? Why would I want to talk about something as ridiculous as emotions?”
Molly bit her lip. She had talked about how she had felt about her day plenty of times with Mycroft at lunch. That was a pretty important thing, at least to her.”
Mycroft blinked. “Wait. No, wait, Molly, I didn’t mean it like that. I was talking about how I felt about how I felt.”
“I think it’s probably best if you left,” Molly said.
Mycroft opened his mouth, sighed, and left. Molly felt bad but she didn’t want to chase after him; she knew nothing good came from that. But, Mycroft Holmes, acquaintance for 3 months friend for almost 2 was in some sort of trouble she didn’t know how to explain. She pulled out her phone and dialed Sherlock. “Hey, Sherlock. Listen, have you heard from Mycroft lately?”
Sherlock scoffed. “Why would I want to hear from my brother?”
Molly bit her lip. “Listen, I think there’s something off about him.”
“Molly. He’s smarter than I am by a few IQ points. Of course there’s something off about him.”
“No, Sherlock, that’s not what I mean,” Molly bit out. “I think he has depression. I’m worried.”
“Why? Why would you care?” Sherlock asked.
“Because I’m his friend and I want to make sure he’s okay.”
Sherlock laughed. “A friend? Mycroft? Molly, I don’t know what gave you that impression, but trust me, he doesn’t have friends.”
Molly growled. “Well, he has me, and I want to make sure he’s okay. Check in on him for me?”
Sherlock huffed, which Molly knew to mean she had one. “Fine.”
“You’re the best, Sherlock.”
Molly didn’t hear from Sherlock or Mycroft for days. She was starting to get really concerned. She continued on with her work, but every lunch she felt terribly lonely. She chatted with Greg over a body, at one point, passed John in the halls another, but she felt isolated from her closest friends, and she didn’t like it one bit.
One day, once she had gotten lunch and sat down, a man sat across from her in the white shirt and pants that said he was an inpatient somewhere. “Hello, Molly,” he said. “Sorry I haven’t called on you lately, Sherlock found me in my bathroom and...overreacted somewhat.”
Molly frowned. “‘Found you in your bathroom’? What would cause him to overreact to you being in your bathroom?”
Mycroft sighed and rolled up his sleeves to reveal pink, raw skin. “This probably had something to do with it.”
Molly gasped. “Are you…?! Did you do that to yourself?!”
Mycroft crossed his arms with his hands curled into his fists. “I had an itch that refused to go away. There wasn’t even any blood, but Sherlock insist I be hospitalized for some reason. Today’s the first day I’ve actually gotten off the floor and down to the canteen.”
“Mycroft, they have a canteen on that floor for a reason.”
He shrugged. “Yes, but you don’t go up there and I reasoned you’d be worried.”
Molly took a bite of her food and offered Mycroft an apple, which he reluctantly took. “So, do you have a diagnosis?”
Mycroft laughed. “No. No one even tries to get close to me. The doctors gave me an analysis, but I haven’t heard anything since. I haven’t even gotten any medication.”
Molly frowned. “Let me talk to the doctors, I’m sure they’ll try to rediagnose you.”
“They tried. They say that I don’t open up enough for them to accurately diagnose me.”
“Well, you do have problems opening up to people, even with me. I do most of the talking, and when you say something, it’s always generic. You never say anything personal.”
“What do you want me to say, exactly?!” Mycroft asked in exasperation. “What could I possibly say that you’d like to hear?”
Molly’s eyes snapped up to Mycroft’s. “What do you mean?! Mycroft, I’d love to hear about your experiences and your life.”
Mycroft gave her a look. “No one wants to hear about my life. I’m not important.”
Molly stared at him. Completely blank face. Mycroft started to scratch his arms. “What, did I offend you again?” She didn’t respond. Mycroft dug his fingernails into raw skin. “I’m always screwing up,” he berated himself.
“Get your hands off your arms!” Molly barked.
Mycroft was so startled he listened to her and put his arms on the table. Molly winced at the damage. She rubbed them gently. “You’re not offending me. And you’re not always screwing up,” she insisted. “Now stop hurting yourself.”
His hands twitched relentlessly. “But…”
“No buts,” she insisted. “Now I will walk you back to the mental ward. I will explain what you were doing escaping from it, and that it won’t happen again. And you will get better.”
Mycroft stood up and shook his head. “No, that’s fine, I can go back up myself. Don’t waste your time worrying about me.”
“Mycroft Holmes!” Molly yelled, standing up. “You are never to say anything about wasting time by making sure you’re all right, do you understand me?!”
Mycroft hesitated. “It’s been nice seeing you again, Molly,” Mycroft says, walking away.
Molly turned red, then white, and runs after him. “Mycroft!” she calls. “Mycroft, come back!”
She finds him being stopped by security at the exit, and she sighs in relief at the fact that at least he hadn’t decided to hurt himself, just leave. “...Listen, gentlemen, you can check your records, but you won’t see me as a patient. You have to let me go,” he insists, and one guy goes to check, while the other grips Mycroft’s arm hard, which she notices is now covered by his shirt.
The security guard comes back, looks over Mycroft and sighs. “You’re free to go,” he grumbles, clearly not happy.
Mycroft releases himself from the guard’s grip and walks out into the street. Molly follows him. “Mycroft!” she yells.
He turns his head sideways to look at her. She runs up to him. “I’m calling a psychiatrist to help you, okay? Not an overworked understaffed doctor at a hospital, someone who gets to choose their clients. Okay? And I want you to be completely honest with them, or else I will find your bosses, somehow, and I will inform them of your little issues with your self-image and hurting yourself. And then you’ll be right back where you started.”
Mycroft laughed. “They won’t care. If I can work well, then they don’t care.”
“But you can’t with whatever you have, can you? Most of the time you can, but it’s hard some days, isn’t it? That’s how you know. You’ve been analysed before.”
Mycroft shrugged. “Are you honestly surprised?”
Molly sighed. “I suppose not. But, you think someone would notice something wrong before you knew how to answer the questions in such a way that you seem perfectly sane?”
Mycroft shrugged. “At that point they were just checking me for concussions.”
“Right, you’re coming home with me. Now.”
Mycroft spluttered. “Why?!”
“Because you need someone to make sure you don’t scratch your arms off!”
Mycroft gulped and nodded to make things easier for him. “A-All right.”
Molly got out her Benadryl from when she had an allergic reaction to that blouse and she didn’t know what was causing it, and gauze bandages. “Mycroft, sit at the kitchen, will you?” she called.
The scrape of a chair let her know Mycroft was listening to her. She got out to find Mycroft scratching through his shirt. She slapped his hands. “No,” she ordered. “Roll ‘em up.”
Mycroft reluctantly rolled his sleeves up and Molly put some of the cream on her hands, rubbing it thoroughly into his arms. “Enjoy the pain, Mycroft, because that’s the last I’m letting you get hurt for a while.”
Once done with the cream on both arms she wrapped them in bandages. “Is this necessary?” Mycroft asked.
“Yes,” Molly replied. “You scratch at your arms, so the bandages will stop that. Itch or no itch, now you won’t be able to shred your arm.”
Mycroft winced. “I did not ‘shred’ my arm.”
“You peeled off so many layers of skin you don’t have any dead layers left to protect you. To me that’s just as bad.”
Mycroft looked at the floor and didn’t say anything. Molly sighed. “I’ll find you a doctor, okay?”
“I’m fine without one,” Mycroft insisted.
Molly leaned over him, putting her weight on the table between them. “Mycroft, as a friend, I have to insist you get help from someone. I know that what you feel may be normal to you, but...it’s not to anyone else. And don’t put up some ‘goldfish’ argument, because I’ve never seen these symptoms on Sherlock. Do you know how long this has been going on?”
Mycroft shrugged. “I don’t know. I seemed pretty fine as a kid, from what I can remember. It started sometime a little before adolescence to puberty, I suppose.”
Molly bit her lip. “Great...so you have no baseline to compare it to. Would you rely on me to tell you that there’s a problem going on?”
“...” Mycroft considered. “...Yes. You know people better than I do.”
“Then listen to me, Mycroft, when I say that something is different in your head.”
Mycroft sniffed a laugh. “You didn’t say ‘wrong’.”
“Hurting yourself is wrong. Having something different wired in your head is just a fact of life. Now, hush. I’m calling a friend of mine from med school. She should be able to squeeze you in.”
Mycroft sighed through his nose and waved for her to go ahead. She dialed and waited for the line to pick up. “Doctor Jones,” the girl on the other end said.
“Meena! It’s Molly. Listen, I need a favor. I have a friend who’s going through some stuff, a lot of stuff actually, and he and I agree he needs to see someone. When can you fit us in?”
“You’re in luck! A patient just cancelled, I can squeeze him in tomorrow at 1. Does that work?”
Molly nodded. “Yes, that’s fantastic! Thank you!”
Mycroft looked up at Molly’s animated face and swallowed. Something told him that he would be on edge for a while.
Mycroft was sitting in the waiting room of Dr. Jones’ waiting room, fiddling with his hands, resisting the urge to scratch at something again. A woman came out and asked, “Mycroft Holmes?”
“Yes, that’s me,” he said, standing up.
She smiled at him and shook his hand. “Well, then. You’re very lucky I could fit you in so quickly, usually you have to wait at least 2 weeks. Let’s go back to my office, all right?”
Her office had several armchairs and a desk. She sat in one of the chairs and Mycroft slowly lowered himself into another. “Now, Mycroft, Molly said that she had felt you were depressed when she really got to know you?”
Mycroft winced and nodded. “I’m not surprised. Most of the time, in my head, th-there’s this hole, sort of. This-this void where my feelings are supposed to be. Do you understand that? It’s the best way I can describe it.”
Meena nodded. “Yes, that’s one way of experiencing depression. Do you have a decreased appetite, lack of interest in things you love, or trouble focusing during this time?”
“All three,” he admitted.
Meena focused on Mycroft’s arms. “Mr. Holmes, would you mind showing me what’s under your shirt sleeves?”
Mycroft pulled his sleeves back with a sigh. “Sometimes when I royally screw up I scratch my arms. Molly’s trying to get me to stop.”
“Molly is a good friend. That’s self-harm, and a serious sign of depression. Have you ever had suicidal tendencies?”
Mycroft froze. Meena looked at him expectantly. “...Only sometimes and it’s not that big a deal, no one would mind if I left the world anyway,” he whispered.
Meena looked at him in shock. “Of course people would mind! Molly would mind, I would mind! Your family would mind!”
“They really wouldn’t,” he sighed.
Meena frowned. “Well, you do know that can get you hospitalized if you try anything, correct? But being here, it’s a good sign for you. Now, I think you have a mood disorder, but whether it’s depression or something else remains to be seen. Molly also told me that you had this period of 2 weeks that she could only describe as ‘not normal’.”
“Those are the good days,” Mycroft said. “I feel like I can take on anything, I’m happy. My thoughts ram around the inside of my skull a lot, but for the most part it’s good.”
Meena nodded and wrote something down. “When you say take on anything, what do you mean?”
“I mean that nothing can get me down. When I think about it, it feels like not even traffic could stop me, even though I wouldn’t jump in front of it.”
“Right, well, Mr. Holmes, that is what we call a delusion of grandeur. You can not actually take on a car, understand?”
Mycroft nodded. “Now. But it’d be harder to argue with me then.”
“Do you have trouble sleeping during these times?”
“Falling asleep, yeah. Not staying asleep. And I still get on average 6 hours of sleep a night.”
Meena wrote something down, and consulted her diagnosis book. “How extreme are these ‘good days’?”
“Strong enough to keep me happy for 2 weeks.”
“Do these occur in waves?”
Mycroft lit up. “Yes! All the time! I’m constantly dealing with the cycle!”
“Well, Mr. Holmes, I have a diagnosis, but I’m not sure you’ll like it.”
Mycroft swallowed. “Tell me, please. Just get it over with.”
“I believe that you have Bipolar II disorder, a lifelong disorder, which commonly develops in the teenage years. I can prescribe you anti-psychotics and I strongly recommend therapy. If the medicine makes you worse, doesn’t work, or works too well, let me know and we’ll adjust your dosage or medication. Otherwise, I’d like to see you in 2 months for a refill.”
Mycroft blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s it! Just get your medication and take it once daily with food, and the swings should get under control. Now, I do strongly advise therapy, but it’s not required at this point.”
Mycroft nodded. “Thank you.”
Meena scribbled out a prescription and handed it to him. “Tell Molly I send her my best.”
Mycroft smiled and nodded, shaking her hand. “I will.”
He paid for the session and walked out of the building, where Molly was waiting with a late lunch. “How did it go? Got anything?”
“A lifelong issue, apparently,” he sighed. “But a prescription.”
Molly sagged in relief. “Good. That should help.”
Mycroft nodded. “Now that I know that I can get better, there’s something I’d like to ask of you.”
Molly looked at him expectantly. “Yeah?”
“Would you like to go on a date with me?” he asked.
Molly laughed and hugged him. “Of course! Yeah! That sounds like fun!”
Mycroft hugged Molly back and allowed himself a small grin. Maybe he could get his life back on track after all.