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Abed’s throat hurt.
Duncan was babbling on in front of the class, but Abed wasn’t paying attention. His head hurt and his neck hurt and his stomach hurt and he felt hot and feverish--in short, he felt like shit. If this was what he thought it was, he was gonna have a problem.
When class was over, he rushed clumsily to the bathroom. He looked sweaty and gross in the mirror. He leaned forward and opened his mouth as wide as he could to look down his throat. Shit. His tonsils were visibly swollen, and covered in disgusting little white spots. Tonsillitis. He swallowed a whine. Fuck, fuck, fuck, not cool not cool not cool, this was his ninth case this year. Panic buzzed in his bones. This meant he had to go to the doctor. This meant they had to take out his tonsils. Surgery.
The study group was supposed to meet in a few minutes, but Abed splashed some water on his face, drank as much as he could manage (it hurt to swallow, but he was dehydrated), and went to his dorm.
Abed didn’t want to go to the doctor. The idea alone was enough to make him want to puke. But his stupid tonsils needed out. Feverish and panicky, he searched blindly through his drawers for his old x-acto. It wasn’t a scalpel, but it would do. He pocketed it and walked as normally as he could to the communal bathrooms down the hall.
The bathrooms were never empty--there was always someone shaving and getting little bits of hair all over the sinks, or someone pooping and stinking up the whole place, or someone showering and letting the water seep out all over the floor. But by some stroke of cosmic luck, it was empty at the moment Abed walked in. Deus ex machina, he thought briefly to himself. He locked the door.
He leaned against the counter. He looked even worse than he had at Greendale, hair stringy and soaked with sweat, pupils small, looking almost crazed. He whined loudly, jerking his arms around. His brain was screaming at him, get them out get them out no doctors fuck don’t let them take you to the doctors it hurts get them out, and he weaved his fingers into his hair and pulled, hard. His skin felt hot and his breaths were short.
He was startled by his phone ringing in his pocket. He could tell by the special Star Trek TNG ringtone that it was Troy. Abed’s breathing quickened. Troy might bring him to the doctors. Troy might bring him to the doctors and Abed didn’t want to go to the doctors anything but the doctors. Abed hung up before the ringtone started over.
He pulled the x-acto out of his pocket and opened his mouth. The blade made him gag, and he swallowed some stomach acid that crept up his esophagus. His hand was blocking his view in the mirror, so he felt around blindly with the knife until he felt it touch one of his tonsils, the left one. He winced. He made more whining sounds, distress increasing.
He turned the x-acto and cut into his tonsil. He whimpered, mouth filling with blood. It hurt, fuck, it hurt, blindingly so, stabbing his entire head. He hadn’t meant to cut that deep. He spat some blood out into the sink, but more came, and it dripped onto his shirt, and he couldn’t get the knife in his mouth long enough to keep cutting without needing to spit again.
Abed was fully panicking now, blood all down his shirt, coughing and choking and leaning forward so the blood wouldn’t fall into his lungs, and it was at that moment that he heard Troy and Jeff outside the bathroom.
“He’s probably fine, Troy,” said Jeff’s voice.
“Abed would never ditch a study group meeting without texting me,” Troy replied. “And he hung up on me earlier. I’m telling you, something’s wrong.”
“Well, he’s not in his dorm.”
“Maybe he’s in the bathroom.”
Abed froze. Fuck fuck fuck not cool not cool not cool if they found him they’d take him to the doctors. Troy and Jeff jiggled the doorknob and knocked.
“It’s locked,” Jeff said.
“That’s weird,” said Troy. “It’s never locked.”
Abed spat into the sink again. He coughed, too loudly. Suddenly Troy was banging on the door instead of knocking.
“ABED?? Is that you? Are you in there?” he yelled. Abed would have been whining, screaming, had he been able to without choking. No no no no no they’d take him to the doctors no no no!!
He spat out almost a mouthful of blood. The pain in his throat was screaming at him, and he coughed harder.
“Stand back!” shouted Jeff, and the door came crashing down. He and Troy barged into the bathroom.
Abed imagined this would be the moment that the camera, after a series of close ups in short clips, would take a moment to zoom out and show Abed from Jeff and Troy’s points of view--sweaty, frantic, shaking, covered in blood, holding a blade. A scary image. He looked like a madman.
Then a reaction shot. Troy immediately started crying and shrieking, rushing towards Abed with his hands over his mouth. Jeff was even faster than Troy in crossing the bathroom, taking the blade from Abed with his eyes wide and scared. Abed didn’t protest as Jeff lifted him up and started running out of the bathroom. He felt disconnected. He realized idly that his heart was pounding. Blood was flowing out of his mouth. His throat really hurt.
And then Troy said the word ‘hospital’, and Abed crashed back into his body. He squirmed in Jeff’s grip, unable to scream, let alone speak.
“Abed, Abed, Abed,” Troy said quickly, but he was still crying, and his voice was thick with it. “We’re going to the emergency room.” Abed fought harder, but Troy took his hands. “I know, I know, buddy, I know, but you’re, you’re b-bleeding. We have to take you to the h-hospital.” Troy’s voice shook. Abed didn’t know what to do.
They put him in Jeff’s car, and Troy sat next to him, holding his hands and muttering assurances Abed heard but didn’t understand, words muffled as if he were underwater. He felt himself shut down again, and he thought about all the blood he was getting all over everything. The dorm manager was going to be pissed about the bathroom, not to mention Jeff. He coughed, spraying blood all over the seats of the car. He hoped it wouldn’t stain.
He felt the car stop and Troy try to pull him out, and suddenly he was back, conscious again, and he shook his head violently, breathing speeding up. No, no, no, no, no, not the doctors, they’d drug him, they’d put him under surgery, no no no no no no--
Jeff grabbed him out of the car and ran him to the hospital building.
Abed probably could have fought off Jeff normally. But both blood loss and tonsillitis had weakened him enough that Jeff was able to let the doctors take Abed away.
The last thing he saw as they put him under was Troy’s worried, tear-streaked face.
-----
He woke up slowly in a dim, quiet room. He immediately became aware of the pain in his throat, but it hurt much, much less than it had before he passed out. The next thing he noticed was the needle sticking out of his wrist. He stiffened, following the cord up with his eyes to see the IV fluids bag next to him. He held his arm perfectly still. He was half on edge from being in a hospital, half relaxed from having just woken up, and also maybe whatever meds he’d been given.
“Abed?” said Troy. Abed turned his head to see Troy, Jeff, Annie, and his dad sitting in chairs next to a window that had its blinds closed. Upon seeing that Abed was awake, they got up and gathered around his hospital bed. Abed stared blankly at Troy’s face. He was crying.
“Abed,” said his father, uncharacteristically soft, “how are you feeling?”
He started to say something, tell his dad he was okay, but it sent dull stabs of pain through his throat when he tried. Annie scrunched up her face in what Abed thought might be a sympathetic grimace. “It might hurt to talk for a little bit,” she said. He nodded mutely.
Troy handed him a pad of paper and a pen with enthusiasm even as his face was wet with tears. “We can do the communication over notes trope, though!”
Abed smiled, or at least he thought he did. He felt weirdly out of it. He took another look around the room. The walls were a clean, sterile, hospital white, and the air had that distinct hospital smell that made his stomach hurt. The chairs his friends and his dad had just vacated were hospital blue, and he’d been changed into a hospital gown, the kind that tied from behind. He felt naked and uncomfortable. At least they’d let him keep his underwear.
A heart monitor displayed little spiky lines on the other side of his bed, across from the IV fluids bag. It wasn’t beeping. He decided to focus on that instead of the hospital smell and the hospital gown and the doctors that were sure to show up soon. He picked up the pen. Why isn’t the heart monitor beeping? he wrote.
Troy took a second or two to read the note before breaking out into a grin. “I asked them if they could turn it off, since I knew it’d probably upset you. Turns out they can!” Abed knew for sure that he actually smiled this time.
“They don’t really need the beeping,” Annie added.
The lack of heart monitor beeps made the scene feel much less like a classic hospital sequence, which was definitely a good thing. He wrote, Where are my clothes? What time is it? He paused before adding, Did they take out my tonsils?
“I have your clothes here,” said his dad, holding up a translucent bag with Abed’s name on it and his bloody shirt, hoodie, socks, shoes, and pants inside. “I brought you some clean ones too, because these are trash.”
“They had to cut off your shirt, but your hoodie and pants are okay,” Annie said apologetically. “It’s the next day; you slept through the night. And yeah, they took out your tonsils. And gave you antibiotics.”
Jeff, who hadn’t said anything yet, suddenly spoke. “What the hell, Abed.”
Abed jumped at the harshness in his tone. Annie hit him. “Jeff!”
He ignored her. “What the hell were you doing with a blade down your throat?!”
Abed wrote quickly, and Jeff read aloud. “‘I didn’t want to go to the doctors’?? So you, what, tried to, to, fucking bleed out before someone took you?” His voice cracked a little, and Abed’s eyes went wide.
I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, he wrote. I was trying to get my tonsils out myself. It was stupid.
“You’re damn right it was stupid,” said Jeff, looking up at the ceiling and blinking rapidly, crossing his arms.
“For once I agree with Whitey McFly,” Abed’s dad said, words back to the fast, forceful jabs they normally were.
Troy looked like he might cry again. “You looked so scary in the bathroom, Abed.”
Abed looked away. I’m sorry, he wrote simply. He didn’t know what else to say.
“The important thing is you’re okay,” said Troy, taking Abed’s hand. Abed smiled at him.
“Yeah,” Jeff sighed. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
-----
The nurses came shortly after, and Abed stayed perfectly still while they flitted around him, full of anxiety. But soon, they wheeled him out of the hospital, and Abed was riding home, his non-dorm, dad’s house home, in his dad’s car. Troy sat next to him in the back seat, holding his hand.
They watched The Breakfast Club on the couch and shared a blanket. Abed ate lunch, soft foods only, and he was so glad he didn’t have to stay long in the hospital.
Leaning against Troy, holding hands under the blanket, he felt safe.