Chapter Text
The transfer is like a siphoned breath, a partial loosening of his cuffs. Part of the change is in appearances--from fresh air within the bounds of a walled yard to campus walking access, locked doors to which he has no right of way to the illusion of passage in buildings designed more carefully to look like they might on the outside.
From a straight-up nuthouse to a mental health retreat for the rich.
Paperwork demarcates the change. When Kendall is moved from the ACU to River House, he’s seated in a quiet corner of the empty common room with his social worker and a form and a pen and a big fucking mental block, a cloud of confusion that is part meds, part regular old Roy-brand familial politicking.
In a moment of patient faith his social worker--May, he thinks? He’s trying to keep all these names straight but there’s so many, nurses and psychs and therapists; the drugs make it difficult--watches his pen hover over the form before clearing her throat, gentle, and speaking.
“Kendall? Do you need any help?”
He brings the nib of the pen down and then up again, distantly understanding how fucking stupid he looks but still very stuck on this, says, “No, I just. My siblings. I don’t--I feel like I could maybe put them in order of age? But Connor first, that feels--will they see this? Maybe I put Shiv first. Bygones. I don’t--are you writing something down? What--what--what are you writing down?”
“Just making a note.”
“No, you’re putting this on my file. Are you putting this on my file?” Self-deprecating and desperate, Kendall laughs. “Don’t. Don’t. This isn’t--don’t psychoanalyze this.”
--
Kendall doesn’t really register Rava until she says his name, coming up beside him where he sits gulping water out of a plastic bottle at one of tables inside the campus center. And he has to shake the zaps out of his brain to look at her, but when their eyes meet in recognition and he lurches forward in a silent request for a hug she lets him come, and he’s back inside himself, held together by her arms.
“Hey,” she’s saying, rubbing circles in his back. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“How are--I mean, I don’t… know what to say, even.”
Self-aware, Kendall leans back to give her a sheepish smile. “Yeah, there’s--there’s a lot.” His eyes feel all watery, and he uses the sleeve of his hoodie to swipe at them. “Sorry.”
“No. No, you’re good.”
“It’s the… the cariprazine, I think? Um. Antipsychotic.” He laughs weakly. “I cry at everything. Which I guess isn’t actually that big a change, all things considered.”
Seating herself on the other side of his table, Rava laughs in soft concurrence. “So…”
“So,” Kendall agrees. He manages a smile, but it’s tired. “I just… wanna start off by apologizing.”
“Ken, you don’t--”
“I was--all kinds of out of line, after the election. The day of the funeral. I feel so, so fucking ashamed, and… and I hope you’re good, and I really hope Soph’s good, with the re-vote in Milwaukee--” his voice is wavering, impossible to ballast in what feels like a sea of burgeoning tears.
“Sophie’s fine. Iverson’s fine. We all are. We’re okay. We’re just worried about you.” Rava reaches across the table to take Kendall’s hand. “When Shiv called last week, I was--what was it, a relapse? I was--I was beside myself. I’m just so glad you’re out of Inpatient. That I could come see you.”
“I was gonna kill myself,” Kendall admits, looking between them, at the stilted twine of their fingers.
“Oh, Ken…”
“Rome and Shiv got ahold of me,” he goes on, “the day I was planning for. It’s ‘cause of them I’m in here.”
“Shiv said you admitted yourself.”
“Well, yeah, but it was--their idea, for the most part. I don’t know. I think it’s sort of bullshit, maybe, but--”
Rava squeezes his hand. “How’s it bullshit?”
“Y’know. Diagnoses left and right.” He tries to sound dismissive, but Rava’s eyes sharpen with interest. “Dad should’ve gotten into pharmaceuticals if only to get a cut of all the shit they’ve the inmates on here.”
“Diagnoses?” Rava prompts gently.
Kendall thrums the fingers of his free hand on the tabletop.
“Kendall.” Rava’s voice takes on a hint of a warning tone, a little humored, and it irks him. He slides his hand out from under hers.
“Bipolar 1. Rapid cycling. Allegedly,” he snaps. “It’s a confirmation bias thing. You come in here and they expect you to act crazy, and then when you do they slap a label on you and pump you full of drugs and--what?”
Rava’s face looks strange, moony, and Kendall can’t tell if it’s his supposed psychosis or lighting or something else entirely.
He rubs his eyes, shakes his head again--no brain zaps to clear, and everything in the room around them looks normal, so…
“Sorry,” Rava says slowly after a long moment of looking him up and down. “No, I’m just… processing. I… I know that must’ve been kind of a shock, hearing that.”
Kendall shrugs. “I’m taking it with a grain of salt.” He decides not to mention the day-long crying fit that followed that particular meeting with his assigned psychologist--before they’d put him on cariprazine, even. “You seem… not--don’t you think that seems, uh, severe? Maybe?”
Rava is nodding, very slowly. “It… it is a big diagnosis.”
“Are you being weird? I feel like you’re being weird.”
“Sorry. Yeah. No. I--Kendall, I feel like, maybe…” Rava lets out a self-conscious laugh. “Maybe, to me, that sounds… like it makes sense? Just--knowing what I do. Which isn’t a lot, granted.”
“Well--” Kendall frowns, gesturing sarcastically: there you have it .
“Yeah. No, I know. Was there--is there anything else?”
Kendall scoffs bitterly. “They asked if either of my children were autistic, since it’s--hereditary, sometimes. Which, yeah. But obviously Iverson didn’t get it from me.”
Rava allows herself a grin, ducking her head in modesty. “Yeah, I mean--autism genes so strong you can still pass ‘em on to a non-biological heir, maybe? Through osmosis?”
Kendall feels flustered, embarrassed, but it makes his stupid, traitorous heart happy to see Rava laugh again, even if it is at his expense. “What, you think that one makes sense too?”
“Um--Kendall, there’s a reason people say your son’s the spitting image of you when you don’t look anything alike.”
“Oh, come the fuck on. That’s just a thing people say,” Kendall rolls his eyes.
“Hey. Hey.” Rava reaches across the table, fingers imploringly spread. Reluctantly, Kendall lets his hands rest inside hers. “You know how happy it’d make Ives to hear that?”
Kendall huffs out a shaky breath, sort of a laugh, sort of a soft sob. “I don’t--I’m not--I-I don’t think this place is right for me. I feel like, now that I’m out of inpatient, I should talk to Dr. Detscher and tell him I think they should let me out early. Right?”
“Ken. Hey. Slow down.”
“I-I want--I don’t think I should--” And fuck him, here come the tears again; Kendall blinks them furiously back. “I just feel like maybe I should go home. I don’t think this was… I don’t think I made the right call.”
“Kendall,” Rava murmurs, “you checked yourself in here. You knew what you needed. You have to trust yourself.”
Kendall can only shake his head. The back of his throat is all salty and tight.
“You’ve only been here a week. Residential for, like, a day. Of course it’s not gonna feel right starting out. You’re homesick. They’ve got you on new medications; I’m sure the side effects are really hard right now.”
Kendall sniffles loudly, nodding.
“Yeah? What have they got you on? Walk me through it.”
“Um--it’s changed, a little, but--lithium, for--as a mood stabilizer, and the--the cariprazine, the antipsychotic. And, clonazepam, I think, still? For now. For--sleep, I can’t sleep. And… there was--I think that’s it.” Kendall rubs his eyes, chuckles weakly. “Uh, no--guanfacine, also. Stimulant.”
Rava nods along with him.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be in Inpatient. Just Residential. But since I--because of the active suicide attempt within the last twenty-four hours--when I told them about that, they put me in the ACU.”
“ACU?”
“Um--Acute Care Unit.” Kendall rubs his eyes again. “But they moved me out this morning. Sort of like a dorm situation now. Some people are rooming together, but I, uh--shelled out to not… do that.”
Rava laughs. “Well, when you’ve got cash to burn.”
Kendall allows himself a smile, nodding.
“It’s… they say they think I’ll be here a month, depending on how I do. I don’t know. It’s a long time,” Kendall mutters.
“It’ll be okay.” Rava’s voice is gentle in a way that is unfamiliar to Kendall on a personal level but still tickles at something in his memory. “One day at a time, right? It’s not forever. It’s just--something new. I mean, we can at least rest assured you won’t come out of here dead , so--why not also bet on you coming out for the better?”
A lightbulb blinks on in Kendall’s brain, and his brows knit together, wobbly smile drawing across his lips. “Hey. You remember when--Ivey, in second grade, when we transferred him from Buckley to Horace Mann?”
Rava wears the same smile as he, feigned innocence. “Where are you going with this?”
“You remember talking him down after his first day?”
“Jog my memory.”
“Jeez, I dunno, uh-- it’s a big change, it’s not gonna feel right starting out, take it one day at a time … can’t find something you like until you try something new . Sound familiar? Maybe? Like maybe something you’ve heard in the last thirty seconds, Rava?”
Rava is laughing; such a good sound, so like the sound of home. “Listen, if it ain’t broke…”
Kendall puts his face in his hands, moans against the skin of his palms, “I’m getting the autistic second grader treatment and it’s working .”
“So maybe--yeah, take the diagnoses with a grain of salt, but… not too much salt?”
Kendall’s smile wilts a little, and he takes another drink of water, fiddling with the plastic cap. He offers it to Rava, who declines with a polite shake of her head.
“The lithium, it makes me so fucking thirsty. All the time. This is like my fourth bottle today.” He finds a dark spot in the grain of the table between them and studies it, feeling hot, fidgety. “I don’t… I don’t want to think of myself as someone who is--who has this… this stuff. Being called an addict, that’s bad enough. Addict is--addict is as addict does, right?”
“Well,” Rava says carefully, “I mean, there is a predisposition at play, right?”
“Eh.” Kendall cocks his head a little, this way and that. “They say that, but… I mean, Dad wasn’t. Rome and Shiv aren’t. So clearly it’s a willpower thing. Right? It’s something I can choose to stop doing. Being. Whatever.”
“Well, that philosophy hasn’t worked for you so far,” Rava says drily, a little sharp--Kendall feels the sting, and his eyes flick up to her in insulted hurt. “Sorry. But you know I’m right.”
Kendall finds his dark spot again, the cross-cut of a little knotted burl.
“If, theoretically, you were bipolar,” Rava cautions, “that would… kind of explain a fucking lot, wouldn’t it? The ups and downs. The… lack of impulse control, let’s call it.”
Kendall pulls a little deeper into himself, shameful offense burning in his belly. “Yeah? Should we? Should we call it that?”
But to Rava’s credit, she retreats where once she might have pushed. Searches Kendall’s face with calm eyes. “I’m not here to validate or--I’m not… here to play any part in what’s going on, your process here. Leave that to the professionals. I just wanna say--” she opens her hands appeasingly-- “keep an open mind. There’s a lot you stand to gain here, I think. Even if it’s just… a break. Breathing room. Yeah? You deserve that. But maybe, getting this language to understand yourself--whether or not you end up using it--I don’t know. Could be valuable, right? Moving forward.”
Softened, Kendall sighs. Looks out the windows beside them to watch snowmelt run through the Silvermine, bloated and cold. “I can’t even think about moving forward,” he admits. “I can barely wrap my head around my future in here.”
“Hey. One day at a time,” Rava says again, and Kendall eyes her.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “Did--did I say that already?”
“You did.”
“Because I--I am, I really, really am. For--being in here, too. I know it fucking throws a wrench in settlement shit.”
Rava barks out a surprised laugh. “Wh--Ken, that’s--it’s nothing. You’re sorry for being in here? You being in here is the nicest thing you’ve done for me, for them , in… God knows how long.”
Kendall keeps his voice low and tempered, tears threatening again like bile on the back of his tongue. “If you need anything--I don’t have, I don’t think I have access to my accounts right now, but if you need anything, you can call Shiv and Rome, say I gave the okay--”
“Ken, we really are fine.” She reaches across the table to clasp a hand on his shoulder, hold him steady. “We don’t need money. You don’t need to deal with legal stuff. You want to see your kids, I want you to see your kids, they want to see you--that hasn’t changed. We’ll figure it out when it needs figuring.”
Kendall bites down on the inside of his cheek, hard.
“You can cry,” Rava whispers. “It’s okay. You can.”
He breaks, soft sobs hidden against his sleeve. Rava rubs his shoulder, thumb brushing against the hunched meeting of his neck and jaw. “Sorry, the--the fucking meds--”
“I know. I know. Hey.”
“I feel like they’ve got me just--torn open, laid out on a table in here,” Kendall mumbles into his hoodie. “They’re picking me apart. Into pieces. Dad, and Mom, and my siblings, and my brain, and you, and--and all of it’s pieces of me that make me me and I--I-I don’t know; I don’t know who this--who these pieces add up to.”
“Yeah. I know,” Rava murmurs. “It’s hard, Ken. It’s hard work. You’re doing good. You are.”
“I just wanna go home,” Kendall sniffs.
“Yeah.” The movement of her comforting hand is a rhythm into which he sinks, hypnotized into calm. Kendall wipes his face clean. “You got Roman and Shiv visiting soon, maybe?”
Kendall nods. “Roman and Con--um, a couple days, I think. Wednesday. What day is today? Shiv a little later. I think my--my team feels like I should get more settled into my routine before I see her. There’s…”
“There’s baggage,” Rava concurs.
“Yeah. Yeah.” Kendall sniffs again, fighting futilely against what feels like endless leakage from his nose and eyes. He’s a mess, can’t remember the last time Rava saw him like this--or if she ever has. “I can’t decide if I should have someone tell Stewy. Since he’s still--”
“Yeah. Maybe--take a minute on that one.” Rava shrugs. “But I’m sure he’s worried about you.”
Kendall can’t even think about Stewy right now. The hazy formation of his face in Kendall’s head takes him right back to the boardroom, a place to which his team of therapists have advised he not return lightly--post-traumatic stress, they say, which is strange because isn’t that sort of thing reserved for people who have been in combat and natural disasters and whose first option after the towers fell in 2001 wasn’t fleeing in company cars to a vacant estate up in the Catskills?
“Ken, do you think, maybe,” Rava pulls him from his musings, “you’d want me to come again sometime in the next few weeks?”
Kendall nods fervently. “Yes. Yes, Rava, of course.”
“And bring Sophie and Ives?”
“Wh--no, no, I don’t think--no? No, they shouldn’t… I don’t think they should see me like this.”
“I think, very specifically, they should,” Rava retorts gently. “They’re so much more grown up than they were when you went to rehab, Ken; they know you’re… they know something’s going on with their dad. And they’re really, really worried.”
“Do they know I’m here?” Kendall’s voice cracks beneath the weight of fear.
“They know you’re in some kind of hospital. That’s all I told them. But they’re smart, Ken, too fucking smart; you know that. Sophie at the very least knows all about the GoJo sale; she knows you and your siblings are out. If she doesn’t already know what that means for you, she--honestly, I think she deserves to.”
Kendall’s head is shaking, meaningless--he knows this conclusion is foregone, but he wants to stave it off, if only for these next tense moments. “I’m so… I’d be so--mortified,” he confesses. “They’ll never look at me the same way again.”
“They barely look at you any way,” Rava says.
The floor opens up beneath Kendall’s feet, and he imagines his chair pitching into it, the stomach drop of insides following belatedly after outsides.
“If you want to be back in their lives,” Rava continues with finality, “you have to let them into yours.”
The paralyzing warmth of them, the purifying love of them. Kendall dreads it. He nods, hesitantly, and then with conviction.