Chapter Text
It's unexpected that Waylon gets called in but, to be honest, his free days always end up like this; someone calls in sick and there are so much therapy classes to lead that they just need him to be there. But, while a day to rest and sleep in would be nice, he loved this job.
Back in the day he worked with only machines until a heavy break up had changed his life and he decided that he had to work with people, be more involved with them, help someone and after a lot of school he ended up here.
Of course he didn't take the route of studying medicine to become a psychiatrist in his mid-20s and after having learned an entirely different profession before, but had become a medical assistant instead.
It was exactly what he wanted.
Like this he was the fun guy, he did art and music therapy, and by now he also helped out with some group therapy things but mostly he was the guy taking troubled people for walks and playing games with them, having conversation about recent happenings and reading newspaper together.
Some patients he also helped out with cleaning their rooms and brought them food, depending on if they could eat with other patients or alone, he'd also stay with them and drink a coffee while they ate or had his own lunch with them.
All in all he had no fear of getting closer to people, no matter how troubled they were, no matter if they were a little weird or had mannerisms that were unusual. There was no fear and he understood how lonely some of these people were; when their families were glad to have them locked up, out of their perfect life, just because they needed help to get back on track and live their life in the concept that textbooks and doctors called ‘reality’.
He arrives at the clinic at around 8 am, having a coffee in the bureau to look through his schedule for the day and frowns a little. There's a name on it he can’t link to a face, yet he can remember hearing it before, but it clearly is nobody he's gotten to know yet. Humming in tune with a song on the radio he picks out the patient files to see what they need and learn a little more about his surprise patient.
"Let's see...Eddie Gluskin..." he reads out loud.
"Ugh, don't you try to do your usual 'best friend' thing with that guy." someone sighs and he recognizes the voice of one of his colleagues and has to chuckle a little at the tone she uses.
"Oh, he doesn't like you, Susan? Well, you can't have everyone here." he answers cheekily.
The nurse sighs.
"Not just me, Waylon. He hates EVERYONE. He's violent and he's fucking creeping me out...he will not speak to anyone for more than a few sentences where he's just very polite..."
"Oh no, god forbid someone here is nice…" he says with an arched eyebrow.
"You don't understand!", the brunette insists, "He's TOO polite. It's like the calm before the storm. He uses that gentleman act like armor, nobody gets anything out of him and his file reads like a fucking psycho thriller - we don't really know how he reacts to men after he tried to assault a doctor, he's usually treated by women and at least there's not been another violent outburst."
That silences him for now. It's always a little tricky to judge violent patients who are so deep inside their own head that it's hard to predict what they'll do but Waylon also knows that whenever they have someone like him on the station, there will be a little judgment towards them before anyone gets to know them. Sure, it's creepy when people get hurt but on the other hand just a little glance into the file of the guy makes Waylon feel bad for him. According to the paper he’s been abused all his life and that’s just the bit of information they got out of him.
"I'll just be like I always am...if he hates me, that's alright, I'll just have him for as long as Anne is sick. But I will refuse to just push a tray in the room and leave. Worst case there's the alarm and also I think I can defend myself fine - but I'm sure it's gonna be okay." he says finally, closing the patient file and finishes his coffee to gather what he needs and to get going.
"...your optimism will be the death of you." he hears his co-worker sigh before she leaves the room to go back to work.
First he visits the easy patients; an old lady with severe dementia, who always seems to confuse him for his son who had died serving in the army.
It's sad to see her in tears and hugging him but he knows that she will forget about this until the next day, so it's pleasant to bring her some breakfast and hear her talk about her past and her husband who passed away before he has to leave her and visit his next patient who is a young girl with an eating disorder.
It feels good to see her being a little better and getting food down without pushing it around the plate for half an hour. A year ago she looked half-dead but by now she had regained light in her eyes, her cheeks had filled out a little and she loved expressive art therapy, it was fun to work with her and Waylon was sure that he wouldn’t have to visit her a lot more times if she kept making steps forward every day.
Generally he has easy cases, people who visit the fun therapies, who have themselves together enough to be able to go back to being social, so he's a little nervous to read on Mr. Gluskin's information that he's not allowed to leave his room by himself and does only single and very intense therapies with doctors.
The pills on his medication list are also pretty scary - just half of this could knock out a horse. But it's understandable that aggression builds up when he's barely allowed to see the outside of his room, the blond guesses.
After taking a deep breath and giving a soft knock to the door, Waylon steps in.
"Good morning, Mr. Gluskin! My name is Waylon Park. I know you've been promised to meet Miss Howitt today but unfortunately she's down with the flu, so I'm here in her stead. Sorry for the sudden change of plans." he says, with a calm smile on his face.
To be honest, he does understand some of the distress; the man has very intense light blue eyes and the kind of wild-animal-like stare you get when you're locked up and stuffed full with medication, probably even against his will.
"You know, usually we write down what patients like best for cases like this, but I've not found any notes, so I just put something nice together for you - if you would like something else better, I can get you something else though, no problem!" Waylon explains while setting down the tray.
He really went all out, with egg-in-a-hole toast and some cereal with yogurt and a small bowl of fresh, cut up fruit. All he can offer to drink is orange juice pretty much, since caffeine isn't good for most of the patients, especially not the ones who aren't allowed to move around a lot.
"I can also bring you some tea if you'd like! And I also brought the newspaper, in case you want to read."
With those words he smooths out the newspaper on the table and turns around to give the man sitting on his bed another smile.
"If you need help with something, don't hesitate to ask me."
He looks around the room just to see that it's pretty neat - of course, when it's all the man can do to keep himself busy, why wouldn't it be?!
With a little frown Waylon looks at dried-up flowers on his bedside table - wow, good job on keeping the room positive and pretty, everyone. It's apparent that everyone has been a little wary of the man and didn't do more than they absolutely had to.
"Would you like to eat alone or have me around? We don't have to chat but if you'd like to, I'd be happy to stay!"
For a moment the man just stares at him with empty eyes and says nothing and Waylon isn't sure if it is because the pills just leave him too empty to process any of his babbling or if he isn't ready to give him even a simple 'Hello'.
Then he gets up, never taking his eyes off Waylon and that makes him admittedly feel a little unsettled. While he doesn’t want his patient to notice that he’s a little intimidating, he also can’t stop himself from watching his every move, just to be ready should he try to jump him. But nothing like this happened; he just clears his throat and speaks.
“Thank you, Mr. Park.”, he says with a wicked grin on his lips that makes a shiver run down Waylon’s spine. “I’ll gladly accept your offer. Please, make yourself comfortable.”
For a second he isn’t sure anymore where he is. Gluskin talked like he invited him to his manor and offered him a Mojito in his fancy foyer and not like he was trapped in here right to the moment he had opened the door.
“Thank you.” He says anyways, almost automatically and takes the chair across from where he set up the breakfast while his patient also sits down, quietly praises the meal he brought and starts eating.
While some people here just straight out gave you a ‘weird’ vibe, he just seemed weird because he behaved like this was absolutely normal, so self-confident, but right now he could not sense any danger. Not yet at least.
Only now he realized that music was playing softly and realized that there was a small radio on the bedside table, right behind the vase with the dead flowers inside. Soft jazz filled the air and he had to admit that it calmed his nerves, just a bit.
Eddie didn’t speak throughout his meal, but their eyes met sometimes and it was a weird kind of tension in the air. Just when Waylon thought that he had enough and couldn’t take this anymore because he felt like he drowned in those meaningful stares he couldn’t translate and the soft jazz making him more dizzy with every minute the man spoke again.
“It was delicious, thank you, Mr. Park.” He says and Waylon gets up.
“I’m glad…I’ll be coming again later and bring you lunch and some new flowers, yes? If you’d like to I could also bring a card game or something, to pass a little time.” He blurts out, without really thinking about it.
Did he want to spend more time here? Probably not. But Mr. Gluskin was a patient here like everyone else…he might be lonely as well and it was his job to take care of him.
“I’d be delighted by that, Mr. Park.” He gets back along with a weird stare he would almost describe as…predatory. It’s unsettling enough to make him grab the tray and get out of there as quickly as possible after stuttering a quick goodbye.