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Henrik’s had a difficult few days.
His anxiety issues are getting bad again. Between the constant hand-washing, the organising and re-organising and re-re-organising the lab or his room, the turning the light on and off six times in a row… John doesn’t know how he manages to get Henrik to bed at reasonable times anymore. It’s practically a miracle that Henrik gets any sleep.
Or that he gets out of bed, or leaves the building, or makes it to class on time.
John hardly has any time to study for himself. So much of his time lately has been spent trying to comfort Henrik.
John would do anything for Henrik. He never wavers on that. But, selfishly, he does sometimes hate that he feels less like a medical student and more like Henrik’s caretaker. He really does try to remind himself that this isn’t ideal for Henrik either and that Henrik didn’t ask to have OCD, but he still gets frustrated by it all.
If Henrik is so worried about his health, he could start by drinking less alcohol or quitting smoking (though John’s throwing stones from a glass house there). That would probably do him a lot more good than washing his hands ten times in a row, logically speaking.
But if there’s one thing this illness is definitely not, it would be logical.
There isn’t a hint of logic in Henrik flipping light switches an even amount of times to preserve his well-being… there’s only a glimmer more of logic in Henrik washing his hands after touching almost anything. It’s not like a textbook will make him ill. It makes more sense in a hospital environment, John will admit, but when Henrik can’t even get to bed because he’s scrubbing his hands raw...
Henrik doesn’t want to be this way. But nor will he accept treatment – so there’s not much John can do for him on a night like this where he won’t stop trying to organise the lab the ‘right’ way.
Roxanna and David had been in here with them earlier. When they left on account of it being 2:30am and them both needing sleep, Henrik had told them he’d stay behind to put everything away. John knew what that really meant, and why Henrik couldn’t do it until David and Rox left: he didn’t want them to see him like that.
It’s 3:05am now, according to John’s watch, and he’s still stuck here. He can’t bring himself to leave until Henrik does. That means he’ll be here until God-knows-when.
Henrik has been opening and closing the same drawer over and over for nine minutes. He seems to be on the brink of tears by now.
It’s exhausting John almost as much as it must be exhausting Henrik. John has to keep reminding himself ‘Henrik’s ill, he can’t help that’. “Henrik – come on. You can stop, I promise. You need to go to bed.”
But it seems John said something wrong, because all that does is push Henrik into breaking down crying.
“Henrik? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you—”
“You need to go to bed, John! Stop staying up for me! I’ve got it under control!”
It borders on laughably unconvincing. Henrik’s got tears in his eyes and he’s been slamming the same drawer for a sixth of an hour. Yet he’s claiming to have ‘it’ under control, whatever ‘it’ means. John won’t point that out though. It wouldn’t help, Henrik would probably feel judged. “There are only a few more things that need to be put away. What if I did it instead? Then both of us could go to bed.”
“But I—” Henrik begins but he seems to immediately give up on explaining what’s going through his mind. He sinks into one of the chairs and takes a deep breath.
“Nothing bad will happen. You know that really, no matter how much you doubt yourself, don’t you? Well, I think you can trust me.” John doesn’t think he’s really supposed to be enabling this, but it’s 3am, he needs to sleep and Henrik needs to sleep. And if either of them have any chance of getting any sleep at all, they need to get to bed now.
After a moment’s contemplation, Henrik finally answers “Okay, yeah. Thank you.”
John gets up, quickly sorts everything back to where it was when they came in. It only takes him a handful of minutes, though admittedly Henrik had done most of it already.
“Thank you,” Henrik repeats.
“Don’t mention it,” John replies.
Henrik pulls himself up from the chair with a sigh of exhaustion. John gives Henrik a worried glance, but Henrik looks away.
John opens the door for him but Henrik turns away from it. “I should – I’ll just wash my hands first,” Henrik explains.
What John thinks is ‘please don’t, neither of us need you washing your hands ten times in a row right now.’
What he says is “I don’t think it will do you any harm if you don’t. You washed them earlier and you’ve hardly touched anything since. Not anything that could be a risk anyway…”
“Better safe than sorry,” Henrik replies.
John sighs, as quietly as he can, but doesn’t try to argue any further. It won’t work anyway. He doesn’t even bother going back to his own room. Henrik’s too likely to need him.
It’s not one-sided help. Henrik has been there for John too, after exceptionally bad nightmares John can’t deal with alone or when John’s worried he won’t pass an exam and starts convincing himself he should have never bothered trying to become a doctor.
But it would be very blatantly untrue to call it an equal relationship.
John hears the tap running. So far, so normal, but then after a few minutes Henrik turns the tap off… then on again… then off again about a minute later...
When Henrik turns the tap back on again, John thinks he knows what’s happening – exactly what he predicted: Henrik got stuck in a loop.
“Henrik?”
“Shouldn’t you go to bed, John?” Henrik replies dismissively
John doesn’t bother saying ‘no, I need to be here for you’. They both already know it. “I’ll go to bed when you do.”
Henrik, still standing at the sink, seems to snap at that. In what John could only describe as Henrik’s best stage whisper, he says “Leave me alone!”
“If I believed I could…”
“You can. I’m fine.”
“Nothing about this looks like being ‘fine.’” That much is obvious to John. Henrik’s hands are cracked and have been for days.
“Even if I weren’t, is it really your business?”
Yes, John thinks. Henrik knows that. Henrik has made it John’s business. If he hadn’t, he would never let John see him like this at all, like he never lets David or Rox. “You’ve hardly slept in days. I’m worried.”
Henrik doesn’t seem to have a good response. There are only so many ways one can say ‘I’m fine’, John supposes, especially when they’re not.
“Your hands are almost bleeding. Open wounds on your hands could raise the risk of infection, which would be counterproductive, wouldn’t it?”
“It would,” Henrik agrees. He’s still scrubbing his hands with the soap.
“I just want to know if there’s anything I can do to help…”
“It’ll get better on its own eventually. It always does.” Henrik puts the soap down again and starts running his hands under the tap.
“It’s been this bad before?”
“When I was sixteen—” Henrik either decides the topic isn’t worth explaining or that John’s already heard enough about Henrik’s history. John decides not to push the question further “It doesn’t matter. It will be fine, that’s the important thing.” Henrik goes back to focusing on washing his hands.
“When?”
“A few weeks. Will you stop distracting me?”
The last thing John wants to do is make Henrik spend even longer washing his hands, so he will go ahead and leave the topic alone for now.
By the time Henrik finally turns the tap off for the night and dries his hands with a paper towel, it must’ve been about fifteen minutes. “Sorry. I’ll let you wash your hands now.”
John shakes his head. “I washed them earlier. I’ll be fine.”
Henrik doesn’t say anything to that. He doesn’t quite seem to believe John, but he doesn’t seem interested in dying on this particular hill.
John turns off the light as they leave the room to spare Henrik the bother.
John follows Henrik out of the lab and up the stairs then all the way back to the door of Henrik’s room. John counts himself lucky that no one really notices the two of them on the way there. John would hate that. Henrik would hate it even more.
It’s only once they get back to Henrik’s room that John decides to make another attempt to address what’s going on. “Henrik, maybe you should talk to someone…”
“It’ll sort itself out. Besides, I thought you don’t believe in psychiatry.”
“I’m just worried about you putting your health at risk.”
“That’s what I’m trying to avoid.”
“This is getting in the way of your studies…”
“The same was true when I was doing O-levels,” Henrik replies, “but I still pulled through.”
“You weren’t working in a hospital then, though.”
“Point taken.”
“At least think about it.”
“I will,” Henrik promises. John knows that doesn’t mean that Henrik will actually do anything about this. He’ll think about it, and then he’ll decide to keep dealing with it on his own.
“You just seem so exhausted—”
“Why are you still here talking to me then?!” Henrik snaps. “Sorry. Sorry… I know this isn’t your fault.”
Henrik has a good point though. John suddenly feels bad for keeping him awake. “No, you’re right. I know the last thing you want is to put the patients at risk…”
“I don’t think you particularly want that either.”
John nods. “Night, Henrik.”
“Good night, John.”
As John turns to leave, he hopes Henrik is right that this will go away on its own.