Chapter Text
Bright ambulance lights glared into Dazai's twitching eyes. It took him a moment before he realized where he lied: a stretcher. His right arm was uncomfortably pressed against a glass cabinet filled with various medical supplies, and his left was in danger of dangling off of the stretcher. He let out a drawn groan, which was rendered barely audible thanks to the noise of the ambulance bumping and rattling along the road. The jolting every which way of the ambulance didn't help with his nausea. It felt like having to keep a massive floodgate from busting open.
'Damn it,' He thought, wriggling weakly with irritation. 'It didn't work this time either..!' It seemed like 15 Benadryl and 26 Tylenol tablets wasn't enough to kill him this attempt. The truth is, if Mori hadn't found Dazai lying limp on his apartment floor after throwing up the entire night, he may have actually succeeded in his suicide. But just like the last 6 times, Mori has always managed to find him on the brink of death. Dazai always asked him why he was so insistent for him to live, and each time his answer was something along the lines of "I can't let my most precious asset and successor die on me!" Then he would flash him a (supposedly) reassuring close-mouthed smile.
He sometimes wondered if Mori viewed him as something more than a tool, maybe a son. He often chalked that up to wishful thinking— and then chalked that up to foolishness. After all, wishes and hopes were for real humans, were they not? He preferred not to linger on it too much, and instead thought about the pleasant fact that he would now get somewhat of a vacation from work.
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After what Dazai estimated to be somewhere around 15 minutes, the ambulance arrived at the front of the lofty, drab-looking hospital building. The metal doors at his feet opened, revealing the chilly, inky night beyond it. Two paramedics wheeled him out of the ambulance on the stretcher and into the building. Dazai was too weary to look around the place, and he pretty much knew what this hospital looked like anyway. He's been here so many times that he could draw a diagram of it from memory; winding hallways with tastelessly put together colors running across the walls in some attempt to make the building seems less dull. You could argue, however, that he shouldnt be one to judge, since he's the one that lives in a literal shipping container. The stretcher came to a stop as a paramedic mumbled something to the woman at the counter. She directed him towards another corridor and again Dazai was pulled along with him, this time also joined by a nurse. They took an elevator up to the 13th level of the establishment.
The elevator chimed, and the doors slid open. In the corner of his eye, Dazai spotted a ginger-haired boy in a hospital gown walking along the patient hallway. Something about him seemed to pique Dazai's interest. He turned his head and craned his neck to keep his eyes locked onto the back of the boy's head until the stretcher came to an abrupt stop.
"Alright, can you hop off of there for me?" The nurse asked Dazai. He nodded meekly and heaved himself up, his house slippers landing on the hard floor with a tap. Next, the nurse measured his height and asked him to step on a scale, on which the numbers that appeared were too high again. Dazai mentally beat himself, but on the outside his expression remained indifferent. He sat back on the stretcher and was then asked a couple of basic questions about his eating and sleeping habits and whatnot before he was wheeled into the room. This room had mostly off-white walls except for one painted an interesting shade of teal. A large hospital bed was positioned square in the center of the east wall, and a wooden bathroom door on the west wall directly in front of the bed. There was a vast window spanning the entire north wall, and right below it sat a long cushioned couch.
He was transferred to the hospital bed and hooked up to the hospital's IV drip, and by the time he had been introduced to his nurse, Miyako, he was struggling to ignore the urge to vomit. The bumpy amulance ride only served to nauseate him all the more. Dazai begrudgingly choked out, "I think I'm gonna throw up..." Miyako, hearing this, handed him a bag before he started retching into it. The feeling of warm bile forcing its way up his throat and out of his mouth served to be even more emetic, and as a result he kept hurling up whatever was left of his previous meals. This torturous cycle lasted for about 4 minutes before he didn't have anything else to sick up, and breathed a sigh of relief through his nose, since his mouth had yet to be rinsed out. Miyako handed him a cup of water, to which he gratefully took in both hands with a quiet "Thanks," and he dragged himself along with his IV drip to the bathroom to gargle it.
Two hazy days passed, and eventually Dazai recieved news that he would be transferred to a mental hospital in the afternoon. He ordered scrambled eggs and a cup of strawberries for his breakfast that morning. The eggs were quite dry and stuck together in the cardboard tray, so much so that he could actually pick up the entire pile as one chunk. He gnawed at it on his fork, left half of it, and moved on to the strawberries. The stawberries were surprisingly sweet, with no more than two sour ones in the batch, so he finished the cup quite quickly. For the rest of the day leading up to the transfer, he watched a movie and read some of his books that Mori sent someone to bring. He finally got to remove his IV drip, wincing a bit as Nurse Miyako peeled off the sticker on top and pulled out the needle. The sensation of being able to move his right arm at the elbow again after it was practically immoblized for nearly three days was enough to make him let out a giggle. He waved his arm back and forth, but it was still a little sore, so it felt like he had a stick tied to it. Eventually, 2:00 in the afternoon came, and some transporters came to pick him up with another stretcher.
"Really? I can walk just fine now, why do I still need a stretcher?!' It didn't seem like he had much of a choice, though, so he climbed up onto it anyways. He thanked Miyako and bid her goodbye, and was wheeled out of the room and back into a rickety ambulance outside. Thankfully, this ride wasn't as nauseating as the last one had been, since the drugs had been just about washed out of his system. The ride wasn't as long either, they made it to the mental institution in less than 6 minutes. The doors opened once again, and they rolled him out. It was unexpectedly stable and smooth, given the rocky, uneven ground he was being rolled on. But it felt a bit unnecessary, keeping him strapped down to a stretcher just to enter the building. At least it was sort of comfortable? He was finally let down when they reached the front desk and the attendants left. A Port Mafia employee (most likely sent by Mori) checked in for him, and Dazai was left in the waiting room, sitting on a vintage dark teal armchair tip-tapping his toes and twiddling his thumbs. A few minutes passed and a lady called his name, beckoning him to come to the back with her. He followed, and was led into a clean looking white room with a beige medical reclining chair in the center right.
"We're just going to ask you a couple questions, alright?" The lady informed Dazai.
"Okay," Dazai responded reluctantly. Usually nothing good came out of little assessments when they start with telling you they'll "ask you a couple questions." The questionnaire went on for a few minutes; he wasn't bothered enough to give answers that were too personal or in detail.
He blanked hard when they asked him why he attempted suicide. In all honesty, he had lost sight over the years as to why he found so much despair in the concept of living. The only thing he knew at this point was that he wanted to end it. End the continuous cycle. End the root cause of his inhumanity; life itself. But he couldn't tell them that. Even if he tried, he wouldn't be able to even get the words out of his mouth without choking halfway. He would sound like a madman. But why did he care? Why did he care? Why would he ever care. Only humans would care about what other people thought of them. He couldn't possibly be the same species as the lady in front of him, or anyone in the Port Mafia for that matter. He simply wouldn't believe it, he never has.
Ever since Dazai was little, he never seemed to be able to organize his thoughts verbally or physically. The only form he was able to express them as were jokes. That's what he's been doing his entire life: making jokes, being funny.
He gave the lady a vague answer, something about feeling like life would continue being a cycle of despair, or something edgy like that. They lady concluded the questionnaire with a squat and cough (to check for drugs) and skin check (to check for scars), which was arguably one of Dazai's least favorite part of the admission process. She instructed him to turn around, lower his pants just a bit and cough, and Dazai obliged, rolling his eyes scornfully when his back was turned. Then for the skin check, he just had to take his shirt off and turn around 360 degrees. He pulled his shirt off, leaving him in just his binder. He spun around once, and the lady noted down the scars up and down his arms and stomach on a notepad. He put his shirt back on, and rolled up his pant legs, revealing the scars on his thighs. The lady noted those down too.
"Alright, thats it! You'll be assigned to Unit 2. Follow me," Dazai followed her out of the room and into a hallway behind a crash bar door. "This will be where you're staying for the next few days."