Chapter Text
When Dan wakes up, he is not in his room. Waking up is a fuzzy term, anyway. He feels somewhat conscious, but not entirely. There is something coating all of his senses, something cotton-y and soft. What gets through to him is the sharp scent of antiseptic and a lot of white. White walls behind white curtains, white sheets, white bedframe.
It does not take all of his limited brainpower to know he is in a hospital. Now that he has deduced that, he also notices other signs. A constant beeping, and muffled voices. A pressure on his index finger that he assumes to be the kind of medical device that supervises your vital signs. A light breeze from a window that is opened just a crack. When he focuses his eyes, he can see a tree in bloom outside, just behind the bars — wait, bars on the window?
It clicks into place then. This is not any hospital. He did not have an accident or a heart attack, something through no fault of his own. This is a mental hospital, and Dan’s stomach clenches at the thought of what he did to get himself in here, drugged up and without a memory of the event. It must have been bad. Bad enough for someone to call the police. He wishes for the drugs to pull him back under, but they are not so merciful.
Trying to escape his thoughts, he looks around, turning his head from left to right while inspecting the white-in-white room. He doesn’t want to look at the barred window anymore. In the corner of the room, just at the edge of his vision, he can see one of the shadow people for just a second, before it vaporizes. The next thing he notices is an actual person, apparently asleep in the bed next to his. A middle-aged man, if Dan can judge correctly from his drugged-up vantage point, but the bald head is a pretty good indicator.
The man snores lightly, and Dan wonders what time it is. Not that it matters. From previous psych ward experience he can say that some people tend to sleep all day here, at least on the sectioned ward, where he probably is at the moment. All this thinking makes his head hurt. He briefly wonders what medications they have him on, but that leads too close to wondering what he did to get himself locked up. There is a painful wall where the memory should be, and Dan squeezes his eyes shut against the wave of nausea that rolls over him at the thought. It’s like a missing tooth, memory loss. Touching up against a hole where something should be makes you feel sick, but you can’t stop worrying the gap with your tongue. Dan wonders what happened, he was fine just a week ago, he thinks. Dan wonders —
———————————
The next time he wakes up, there is a face close to his. He startles, but only a bit, because he knows the face is probably not real. It is only when it doesn’t disappear after blinking a few times, and he can smell the slightly stale breath of a real person that Dan recognizes the man he saw in the other bed earlier. Not a hallucination, then.
“Wakey wakey,” the man grins, “it’s dinner time soon, so I thought I’d wake you up.”
“Yeah, uh, thanks,” Dan mumbles, trying to sit up without bumping faces with the stranger.
“Dinner is prob’ly gonna be shit,” the man says, “but it’s one of the few things that happen around here, so it’s worth waking up for. What’s your name by the way, son?”
Dan bristles at the overly familiar nickname. It has been a while since anyone has called him ‘son’.
“I’m Dan,” he says, finally, “em, can you tell me how long I’ve been here?”
“Rude,” the man says, but he smiles. “My name is Andrew, even though you didn’t ask. And they brought you in late last night, so must be about twenty-two hours now. You’ve been zonked out for most of it though.”
“Em, thanks, Andrew, sorry,” Dan rubs the back of his neck.
As if on cue to interrupt the awkward break in conversation, there is a knock on the door. Before either of them can answer, the door swings open. A nurse pushes a trolley with several trays of cloches on it. “Dinner!” she announces chipperly.
Andrew hastens to help her with the trays, which she acknowledges with a grateful smile. Before Dan can ask her any questions, she has left the room as quickly as she entered. Andrew deposits one of the trays on Dan’s bedside table and hops back on his bed with the other in his lap. Dan glances over at the table with two chairs, a look which is immediately recognised by Andrew.
“Oh, you wanna eat at the table like civilised folk? I personally prefer to make the most of my subhuman position.” Who is Dan to argue with that?
He lifts the cloche from his tray, and finds a plate with some grainy brownish mush on it, with a side of overcooked broccoli and stringy beef. Hospital food. Dan swallows and takes up the plastic fork. No knife. The meat is hastily pre-cut.
Andrew has the same unappetizing concoction on his tray, but he is hungrily digging in when Dan looks over to him. Again, he notices Dan’s glance and smiles over to him, but doesn’t say anything. It seems to be Dan’s turn in the conversation that had been briefly interrupted by the nurse.
“So,” Dan says, then hesitates. He has been in this exact situation enough times he should know what to say by now. But it never seems to get easier. Asking Andrew why he is here is a no-go. So is anything about his personal life outside, because those stories tend to be pretty fucking depressing. Talking about the future is also out of the question; nobody has a future on a locked ward. The present it is, then. He might as well find out more about his circumstances while he can.
“So,” he repeats. “What hospital are we in? What ward?”
Andrew chews his mouthful of meat, swallows, before answering: “Park hospital. Ward 6.” And then, when he sees Dan’s grimace, “Yeah, you’re in with the bad boys.”
Dan had been right, then. He is on a sectioned ward, the one in the big hospital, known in urban lore as the place violent men end up in that can’t be put in prison. Dan decides he does not want to know what Andrew did to end up here. Or himself, for that matter.
Still, for some reason, the conversation flows easier after that. Mostly because Andrew does all the talking. He tells Dan about the other patients, who are mostly boring; about the nurses, who are mostly nice, but chronically understaffed and therefore stressed; about the ward doctor, a dynamic young man named Dr. One (yes, really), who is also nice and doesn’t hand medications out quite as freely as some other doctors Andrew has met. Still, when 9pm comes around, a different nurse appears with two cups: one for Dan, one for Andrew, both filled with pills.
Dan wants to ask what they are, but at this point he is so exhausted by some shallow conversation and his own thoughts that he’ll take anything just to be able to sleep in peace. So he swallows them down, smiles obediently at the nurse and then at Andrew as they wish him a good night, and turns back to the window when the light is switched off.
The darkness is a problem, though. Makes it more difficult to ignore the shadow people with their glowing eyes. But Dan is used to them by now. As long as the fire doesn’t return — the fire! There was something with the fire that led to him being here — something was on fire! His hands! Oh god, his hands, melting away, consumed by flames. He wants to scream, but he can’t, he’s already wrapped in cotton again, and he is being pulled under, under, under.
———————————
A headache is the first thing he notices this time. Probably a side effect from the meds. Bright spring sunlight filters through the doctor’s office-style curtains, does not let him forget about the bars casting shadows on his face. Next, there is a queasy sensation in his stomach. He was on fire again. That’s the telltale sign he is in full-blown psychosis again. Has been for days now, probably. He must have done something crazy to land him in here with no memories. Hopefully today, he’ll get to talk with the doctor, who must be able to shed some light on how he got here.
Andrew already seems to be up and about, at least he is neither in his bed nor anywhere else in the room. Dan doesn’t mind. Although Andrew is nice, and from experience, most psych ward patients seem to be, Dan has no desire to meet anyone. He is not here to make friends, necessarily. He mostly keeps to himself on his visits; he just wants to get his meds adjusted and go back to the real world as soon as possible.
Breakfast arrives, again served by a chipper nurse, who informs him he might want to join the others in the common room to eat, but doesn’t press the subject when he declines. So he enjoys a solitary toast and jam, and after, he waits. He doesn’t know what for, exactly. Mental hospitals, especially sectioned wards, tend to involve a lot of waiting. This isn’t Dan’s first rodeo. The disadvantage of waiting is that he has time to focus on his thoughts, which is something he does not want to do. Because thoughts, in his state, with the night meds worn off, mean delusions.
The shadow people keep to the corners, but his racing thoughts, he cannot banish. He keeps checking the room for cameras, although he knows there are none. He doesn’t have his phone, or any other of his personal items for that matter, which is good, because he knows the phone especially enables his delusions.
Just when Dan is about to get lost in a thought spiral about messages in the pattern of light that filters through the trees, he is interrupted by the door opening.
“Mr. Howell?” the nurse who brought him breakfast asks, “Doctor One is ready to see you now. Would you please come with me?”
Dan gets up from the bed slowly. He feels rusty and gross, having spent most of the last two days in this bed, in the pyjamas he has been wearing presumably for a while longer even. The nurse waits for him patiently and holds the door open with a smile.
She leads him into a room at the end of a long corridor. The plaque next to the door introduces “Dr. One, head psychiatrist”. Seriously, does this hospital number their doctors? Before he can think about the weird name any further, the doctor is right in front of him, separated by a desk. He is quite young, especially for a head doctor, maybe early thirties. His hair is long and blonde and stylishly unkempt, and he is wearing a necklace with a wooden flower dangling from it. Overall, Dan would be less surprised to see him surfing at a beach somewhere than in a hospital office. He gets up to shake Dan’s hand and introduces himself. Dan doesn’t; doctors already know your name.
Once they have both settled down in opposite chairs, the doctor asks, “So, do you know why you’re here?”
“Not... really,” Dan answers.
“Hm, I thought you might not. The paramedics knocked you out quite a bit, and I fear we didn’t make it better.” He taps a ballpoint pen to his lips before continuing, “Mr. Howell, you seem to have suffered a psychotic break, thinking yourself to be on fire. Does that sound familiar?”
Dan sighs. “It’s one of my recurring hallucinations,” he admitss.
“But you can’t remember the specific event two days ago? What triggered it, maybe?”
“No,” Dan says, and it’s the truth. The last thing he knows, he was fine, going to work, living his little life. Maybe there were some dead birds, but not enough to worry, really. This episode must have come on fast.
“Are you experience any hallucinations right now? Delusions? I read in your file that you are unusally self-aware, so you might be able to help me out here,” Doctor One says.
“I— Yes.” Dan’s eyes flick to the shadow person hovering in the corner, then to the sky outside, which seems to be made of cardboard, then he thinks of his earlier spiral. He takes a deep breath, “Yes, I am experiencing both. But it’s not too bad, for now the meds are working and I have it under control.”
“Okay, right now you are on quite a heavy dose, so I was hoping you wouldn’t experience them at all. But if you feel you are in control, that’s a good sign. We’ll have to play around with the meds a bit, and, since you’re a recurring visitor in sectioned wards, I think it would be a good idea to talk about some more longterm inpatient therapy.”
Dan winces at that. He doesn’t want more longterm inpatient therapy. To be quite honest, he has given up on therapy. Especially behavioural therapy seems more like a temporary fix, a bandaid for his very serious and permanent problem. It can be controlled with medication, but Dan has done all the therapy that can help him. More isn’t going to help.
“I don’t think that’s necessary. I just need to adjust the dose of my antipsychotics and then I’ll be out of your way for a few months again,” Dan says, attempting a reassuring smile.
“But that’s no way to live, is it, Mr. Howell? Ending up back here every few months. I believe it is possible for you to actually get better.”
The smile plastered to Dan’s face falters. “I don’t,” he says.
“Well, you’ll have to trust my professional opinion then, won’t you?” Doctor One swivels in his chair before standing up with an air of finality. This seems to be the end of the conversation. Before he can protest, Dan is handed over to the nurse again, who escorts him back to his room.
The rest of the day passes slowly, viscously. Time is like honey. Andrew drifts in and out of their room, Dan drifts in and out of consciousness. Whatever meds they have him on make him groggy, but they also make him calm. He is long used to — and no longer scared of — the presence of the shadow people; they are there even if he isn’t having an active episode, but right now, he is not scared of anything else either. It’s nice. He can examine his own thoughts from a distance, with a great sense of calm, like they are specimen in a fishtank.
He observes, for example, that somewhere in his sluggish subconscious, something is still attempting to race. He observes a dulled panic, like seeing someone struggle to break out of a room you have locked them in. He feels no compassion for this struggling, racing part of himself. He only feels calm.
He observes that he would really rather be dead, that his existence is pointless. It’s okay. He won’t kill himself. He’s too calm. Is this what all the therapists mean with their talk of mindfulness? Has he achieved enlightenment?
Uh-oh, enlightenment. That’s a dangerous thought. The thought of someone in psychosis (or someone enlightened, presumably). Dan almost laughs at himself. He knows he’s not enlightened. He knows he’s just crazy. Maybe this is the time he’s crossed some final line into insanity. But then again, he wouldn’t be so aware of it, would he?
Nothing much happens; Andrew was right about that. Dan spends the rest of the day observing. Whenever he gets too close to dangerous territory — enlightenment, fire, birds — he simply places his thoughts elsewhere. By the time they get their night meds, Dan feels like he has thought every possible thought. Again, he is exhausted. He is dimly aware of his desire to leave this place, but he’s too calm and tired to ask anyone how long he will have to stay. A few days, most likely. And then maybe a few weeks on a different ward, if Doctor One means what he says. Not so bad, really. More time for thinking. Dan will endure it. That’s his strength: He has a capacity for endurance. He will do what is asked of him, won’t let anyone too close, will get back to his life. Until the cycle repeats.