Chapter Text
“Simon. Simon.”
The voice that belonged to Jack Merridew was calling out. Tiny whispers of Simon’s name were being made, ones that sounded desperate and sad. They were both deep into the catacombs of the dormitory, where Simon left his door open a crack and there was light spilling through it. He said he would.
The room was hard to see much out of, but Simon remembered how he left it. There was one drawer that had a singular jacket hanging out of it, and the rest of the room was spotless. Simon did not have many belongings, so there was nothing to dirty up. Jack’s dorm was a different story.
“What, what is it?” Simon replied from his bed, scrambling. He had just woken up and the room was quite cold and dark. Jack sounded afraid, which was not uncommon. The only reason Simon knew who woke him up was because of two things - one, who else would be waking him up - and two - the light that creaked in the room allowed him to see the tiniest speck of Jack’s yellow hair.
“It’s happened again. Simon, help me.”
“Oh,” Simon said simply, hearing the news and immediately sinking back into his bed. It was simply instinct. He did not mean to. “Jack.”
“Simon?”
“No.” Simon let out, quickly. “---That’s not it, don’t worry,” He dismissed Jack’s worry as to not raise any more nervousness in the air and as Simon seemed to finally wake up, he shifted in his position in the bed until he was sitting upwards.
He reached, letting out a grunt, for the lamp. A hand caught him mid-way, a hand that was shaking and trembling ever so slightly. It was cold and caught Simon off guard. “Ah,” he murmured, Jack’s arm not letting go. “No, don’t turn on the lamp, Simon,”
Simon knew what that meant. It meant Jack was crying. He did not want him to see.
“It’s worse than usual, today, I see,”
“No. I— I mean, yes.”
“I need to see, Jack.”
“Don’t look at me.” He pleaded.
“I won’t,” Simon swore.
The light was on with the flip of a finger, illuminating the tiny room and Simon had to squint his eyes to protect them for a moment as he opened the drawer of the nightstand and picked up the said jacket hanging out of it. He backed off, immediately after acquiring it, flipping the light off and flooding the room with dark again. “What— what time is it?” He asked aloud, not knowing if Jack would hold the answer.
He did. “It’s just past midnight.”
Simon nodded. “Okay.”
Simon shifted in his bed until his body hit the wall, in which the bed was connected to. Jack scrambled his way onto the bed and then cozied himself, criss-crossing his legs and not looking Simon in the eyes. Simon was criss-crossing his legs, too, so their knees bumped together accordingly. It did not bother either of them.
“Simon, Simon, please tell me a story.” Jack’s voice pleaded, spitting out orders more frequently than usual, but not in an angry or upset way, just more desperate.
“Do you not want to talk to me about it first? You. . .”
“No.” Jack said it almost too quickly. He looked at Simon, sad and quiet, and pursed his lips before he spoke. “No. I don’t.”
“Well. I’d have to turn the light on.”
“No, I just want you to. . . make it up.”
“Make up a story?”
“Anything.”
Over the span of the past week, Jack Merridew has come to learn one thing: hospitals really, really fucking suck.
The staff shove him off whenever he is wandering down the hallways when he is not supposed to— but he’s sure he’s seen two deceased people just passing by their rooms.
“What the hell was that,” Jack would ask with a breathy laugh to a frantic nurse trying to lead him back to his own room. She would only mutter something without so much as making eye contact with Jack himself and then run off to her duties, and then it’d be two minutes before Jack was up and running and trying to find somewhere or something to ‘cause mayhem with’. Those were the words of the children’s coordinator— his name was Robert Allen, and he had not grown to like Jack.
Jack had come to know that hospitals were just dull and empty, despite the amount of people flooding its capacity. Maybe the wording would need to be switched; it felt empty, despite being full. But even then, it wasn’t full. Jack would have to think about another way to say it sometime else.
Disinfectant overflowing almost anyone who stepped in the place’s sense of smell was common. The only people who seemed immune to the odor were the employees that, Jack noted, had been working there for years (most who didn’t complain had over a decade of experience), and were well used to it. The odor was a result of the fact that no one ever stopped cleaning; after all, it needed to be clean. It was so clean, even, Jack wished it wasn’t so. You could see marks on the corners of cabinets from how hard they’d been scrubbed.
Jack had hated it since the moment he walked in a week ago. “Lemon.” He said, the smell immediately breaking contact with his nose. “Ugh. I hate that. Great.”
He’d whipped and prodded at his nostrils for an hour hoping it would go away, but it never did. He even tried to test his luck by simply trying to forget about it, for if he had stopped thinking about it, the smell would go away quicker. In the end, he did not end up forgetting.
The actual part of the trip that was meant for counseling and therapy and getting better was a little more on the rocky side. The real time that was spent by him and the other boys actually including themselves in counseling work and group therapy sessions (ugh) was quite little, which did not add onto the fun of the hospital. Save for looking at said scrubs in great detail, there was almost nothing to do.
Actually, this was not true. There was the oddly large amount of Sudoku packets plastered throughout the huge central room for the children— that no children actually occupied— there was an unfriendly atmosphere throughout it that strayed away any children interested in actual entertainment from the place— and the rotting paint on the walls did not help— No, nevermind, Jack was right— there was squat to spend one’s free time.
It did not help that the hospital was disgustingly clean, and white, and hurt to look at. You could mention the cleanliness in text, but it was hard to actually put into words how clean and white it really was to give it justice.
Wherever you looked, nowhere in a hospital was a good sight. Jack was striding through the hallways, taking in such facts as he went. In one room, there was someone dying, over there was another one of the ‘deranged’ patients throwing something and oh— there was the spot where that one nurse was just looking for him over there.
She spotted him for a split second, squinted her eyes. Jack had pretended to be a statue. Then once she had set her eyes on him, she jerked her body forwards for just a moment, and then retreated, kind of just pretending not to see, or perhaps she only realised that it would be no use because he would set back off once she’d return him back to his ‘dorm’ within a minute or two. So, instead she went back to whatever it was she was doing.
Jack wondered if she’d get in trouble for not finding him, but shook it from his head and then continued to wander through the halls.
Such is what he’s been doing for an entire week. Either just to pass the time or to avoid one of the ‘tasks’ they’d assign to him— ‘they’ being the therapists and counselors swarmed to their sides in hopes of something working— but there had not been much luck when it came to such help— Jack Merridew had become accustomed to the sights and feels of Allen Hospital, which, if it wasn’t obvious by now, was white and clean and boring.
Typically, the tasks that he was assigned, usually by Robert— with a grueling grin on his face that Jack could just see the anger seeping out of— were helping out a specific nurse, or, if you’d been more unlucky with your chores that specific day, a kind note to one of the other boys about something stupid. Jack did not get the chance to see exactly what it was they wanted him to write, just saw ‘write a letter to one of your peers’ and threw the postcard in the nearest trashcan.
The staff is what made it the most boring. They’d describe Jack with such silly words— slippery, childish, immature. What was the harm in a little fun, he’d say, and tried to say, but to his dismay, the other boys had fallen victim to the hospital’s trap and become all the more silent. Even his choir, his beloved and orderly choir, would not listen to him anymore. He did not know the reason, as almost anyone who was dropped off at this place could see exactly what it was they wanted— to fix, to treat, to cure. Why was it his choir that fell victim? And cure bloody what?
“Jack. I’m sorry, I can’t.”
“Well, why not?”
He did not get an answer from Maurice, who looked at him with pity and sadness. Jack pleaded, begged for him silently to please come along with him and fought very, very hard with his brain for those pleads and begs to not become truly real as Maurice let out a shaky breath and he shut the door in Jack’s face, not even making eye contact.
Why? Jack wanted to know. He’d just wanted someone to talk to, someone to play with. He did not understand why he did not want to play games anymore. They had before, he had no reason to assume it was any different now. So what if they had been on an island, now? What was the difference from when they’d played then and now?
That day, he wanted very badly to knock on Maurice’s door again until he finally said, Yes, Jack, let’s go. He did not give a care to how long it took, or how stupid he looked begging. He just wanted something, someone to help him break the endless cycle of boredom, and spend his time doing something other than wandering the halls again.
He lingered his knuckles over the door. He hesitated, pursed his lips, and almost knocked again. If he was not so stubborn, he would have admitted to the fact that his hand was shaking, just a bit.
Why, Maurice?
But instead of walking away with a newfound playmate, Jack ended up walking away alone.
He cursed, and instead of wandering the halls again, returned to his dormitory angry and sad. Hypnotised, he was sure the other boys had been. What else it could have been, he didn’t know. Yes, he was sure, it was hypnosis. Either by the atmosphere of the hospital– hell, he was sure he was going to go insane if he woke up to the sight of it one more day, so he would not blame them— or perhaps the counselor’s words, the group therapy sessions that had been shoved down their throats— somehow, working for them. For some odd reason.
And how dare they! Now Jack was left alone in his dormitory and, if he wasn’t doing that, being chased around the hospital by another nurse for simply wanting to do something fun. Fun. Fun, fun! It’s all he wanted. Was it so much to ask for?
Jack had let an involuntary tear out from his eye, which he screamed and begged in his head to go away. No, no, he pleaded to God, I don’t want to cry over something as stupid as this.
But in the end, he would anyway, every single time. Jack Merridew was sensitive, as much as he hated himself for it, sensitive he was. He tried very much to get over the fact, but there was something about it that was simply, unfortunately, just a part of himself that would not wipe itself away. A part of his heart, zipped up like a bag and labeled ‘sensitive’. He could not reach it, he could not fix it, he could not cure it.
Don’t look at me, Father God.
He did not know how to deal with it, because his friend Simon was the one who usually calmed him down in such situations. His solution that he decided upon was to kick at the wall until he stopped crying— or, in other cases, until a nurse asked him what was going on very frantically and worriedly. He’d opened the door and just hoped he looked somewhat fine, or presentable; and thankfully she did not bat an eye, other than to ask about the sounds of the wall being kicked, so he assumed he did look okay.
Or at least, he thought so, until she asked about the redness of his face. Now the nurse had seen him crying. Now she knew Jack Merridew was sensitive. He was sure she was going to run off and tell all of her friends all about the satisfaction she felt looking into his bloodshot eyes. Now we have something to fix you for, she would say, now we have reason to believe you are weak.
Instead of answering about the reports of the kicking, Jack scoffed and ran off from the dormitory rooms, saying he was going to try to find something fun to do.
The scheduling of their group counseling sessions had felt particularly targeted to him the next day— as they had arrived at the hospital on a Wednesday and this Wednesday was their second Wednesday that they were spending as such, marking their week stay. Last time— last Wednesday— their group counseling had been in the afternoon, but today’s was scheduled for the morning, and he found it odd. It felt too odd, especially with the nurse who had witnessed him in his odd state to be the one greeting him at the door.
Had she wanted to make sure he received this as soon as possible? He wanted to gag. He wanted to vomit. Her smile was overwhelming as she greeted him and as she held the door open for him. Her smile felt sweeter for him than it did the other boys. It was filled with pity and remorse and disgust.
The urge to vomit became all the more real when they had been getting ready to begin and she pulled him to the side. Jack had no idea, not one clue what it could have been about, other than the fact that he knew how he presented himself to the adult yesterday. What he wasn’t expecting, however, was for her to place her hands on his shoulders gently and speak to him about Simon Cambourne.
“I know you miss your friend,” she spoke. The words were blurred together and Jack could not remember what she looked like saying them.
“The lesson today will help you.”
No, no, he wanted to say, you do not know anything.
Fuck the lesson. He wanted to tell her to let go of his shoulders. Nothing came out. He wanted to ask her how she knew of a friend of his. Nothing came out. Was she talking about Simon? He wanted to know. No, he changed his mind, he shook his head in fear. He didn’t want to know. He did not want to think about him. But what if it was true?
Let go of my shoulders. Why wouldn’t the words come out? Why could he not be strong?
“S–S—Simon,” He choked out, tiny, in pieces, instead. He hated himself as the words came out, because they sounded tiny, because they sounded to be in pieces, because they sounded weak.
The nurse nodded and led him back into the room. He felt disgusting for the rest of the session, and had a sour taste in his mouth as he sat back into his seat. A boy from the choir, in which he could not remember who it was, sitting next to him, gave him a look of pity as he sat. Oh, God, he felt sick. Did everyone know? For why was everyone looking at him with pity? Just who else knew about Simon Cambourne and Jack Merridew? Oh, God, he wanted to be home.
Wednesday Morning Lesson
Dealing with Grief
The big, bold letters on the whiteboard caught his attention.
Later that day, he had come to the unfortunate learning that all of the hospital staff had been informed of him and Simon’s past relationship. By how, he did not know— after almost crying, again, Jack pulled all of his thoughts together and made the big, bold assumption they must have been informed by someone at Picton. Oh, why? Oh, why did they have to do that?
Jack made sure to not seem bothered. He pulled it off quite well, if he did say so himself. He put on a big and brave smile, shaking his head when there was a head giving him a pitiful face. It seemed to work, as the nurses seemed to calm down around him once they’d seen his composure and the subtle (to him, not subtle at all) comforting thankfully gradually died down, but they knew. They knew, and he hated it. He was a fragile, complex piece of glass that would shatter with the slightest shake to anyone else’s eyes. He hated pity more than anything else in the world. He did not appreciate it, nor did he exactly enjoy the smiles nor the greetings from people he barely met.
To them, he was an already-cracked vase that was teetering on the edge of a table, ready to break again with the push of a finger. He was the final petal standing on a rotting rose that had its needs not met and was dying.
He could do this all day.
It was not him who needed the pity, the fools, they could not see. Comfort Simon’s mother, for God’s sake, she probably needs it more. Simon’s father was another story.
God, every other word was Simon, Simon, Simon. Simon was a dead man. A dead boy. What was it— that one saying— beating the dead horse? Did it even make sense in this context? Oh, he didn’t know.
Jack did not want anything. It made him feel terrible. All of the pity should not be going to him, the boy who did the deed. They knew that Jack, no, they knew that everyone had put in their fair share of doing away with Simon Cambourne. So why is it him that is rewarded with remorse? He wanted to scream, yell at anyone looking at him strangely, I do not want it. I do not want your pity. Save it, I do not want it. Save it. Keep it. Save it. Save it.
He did not want anything.
Mostly, it was the difference in their behavior between him and the other boys that was the most infuriating. Jack was absolutely sure that Simon had made more friends during his time at Picton, so why him?
Why was it him that had to be treated differently? Why is it him who everyone looked at desperately, sadly, like they owed him something?
The sour taste never left his mouth, and the actual words that were held during the group counseling session that morning had wiped themselves from his memory. It was quite funny, that everything that was said went one ear and out of the other, when they’d seemed to put together this morning’s topic specifically for him, anyways. So much for that. Sorry, Miss Nurse Victoria. When it came down to it, he could not recall anything about the ‘lesson of grief’ other than the fact that the atmosphere inside the room was sad, quiet, and the fact that Ralph Allebach was crying.
January 2nd
I do pretend to not notice, truly, I do.
But I’m not stupid. I know Jack is embarrassed of me. Of the fact we are friends. Otherwise, why else would he have up and forgotten the Tree of Destiny?
He’d named it. He remembers.
He is like a different person around his lot. It’s so weird being the only one that knows. Seeing him act so differently, when he’d been another entire person when we’re alone.
I know it is terrible, but I cannot help it.
I cannot help it when I see him laughing with the others, and not be able to think of anything but the times when I’ve made him laugh harder than that. It is selfish, isn’t it?
We’ve just recently made calls to our parents. Mother did not pick up. I wasn’t expecting anything from Father, so it did not disappoint me to learn of the lack of a message.
I have heard a lot of the events of the other boy’s Christmases. It all sounds like good fun. Today I went out to the swings and played alone, thinking of gifts and family.
It is difficult getting used to loneliness again. Until summer, I suppose.