is it bright where you are?

April 2021 - Gamzee Makara

You don’t like the way your thoughts proceed on halo, helldog, or haloperidol, or whatever Karbro calls it. After you take it, the world feels blunt, impersonal, and grayscale, like you’re a motherfucking puppet with a head full of straw. Your brother used to love a poem about that, about some guys with straw heads, but mostly about the world ending.

Kurloz liked a lot of motherfucking things before he did nine months in Rikers for cocaine distribution. Originally it was only supposed to be six months, but he got into a fight and got three months added on. When he got out, he was thoughtful and quiet, even a word of acknowledgment seemingly beyond him. You’ll be damned if that ever happens to you, if you let the system hollow you out until you can’t express the simplest serendipity.

Right now you’re sketching your friends, quick sketches with the charcoal set Dr. Levin brought you. One of Karkat having a rare smile for June, one of Sollux and Roxy talking about programming, one of Dr. V addressing the group about healthy coping mechanisms, and one of Porrim braiding Calliope’s hair. You always feel more like yourself when you’re sketching or painting. Fewer thoughts in your head to get jangle-tangled together and create nonsense. You can keep your miracles straight this way.

You’re cool. You’re easy. You’re loose. No snapped strings, heads full of straw, or blasphemies here, no motherfucking way. The ativan caravan marches through your head, sings your sharp edges to sleep. Nurse Dolores knows what’s up, she only makes you take the medications you want to take. Your cognition flies free, like birds in a breeze, a calm going on between your ears.

Roxy turns and grins at you, her face pale as the moon against her dark hoodie and darker lipstick. She has a smile all her own, a knowing smile like the two of you are in on the greatest secret in the world. You wish you knew precisely what that was about, but everyone has their own internal workings. You can’t know and fix everything about everyone all the time. That’s what you were trying to explain to Sollux last night.

He’s a good guy, but he takes too much on. Same for Karkat. They take on everyone’s issues and make them their own. Only the mirthful messiahs should be able to do so much; humans like trying that hard is a minor sacrilege. If the pair of them would just stick to themselves, maybe they wouldn’t be so sick. You’ll fold more flowers for them - paper flowers that banish repetitive, ruminating thoughts.

You like Roxy a lot, though. She dances through each emotion in its totality, riding the waves of her feelings without fear. Okay, maybe not fearlessly, but with more abandon than you would expect. When she looks at you, you feel warmth all the way to your core, the way you are when you’re about to fall asleep all curled up in your sheets.

Speaking of sleep, Dr. V says that if you keep sleeping through the night, and keep what he calls “disruptive outbursts” about the Dark Carnival to a minimum, maybe you’ll get discharged in a couple of weeks. You’re not exactly in any rush to go home. Home means having to fend for yourself, and fewer friends to keep you in good spirits. Besides, Kurloz is home, and for all that he may be your brother, he gives off bad motherfucking vibes. You wish he’d be easy, like old times, but those days are a long way off.

You remember when you used to be able to relax at home. Relax, smoke a joint, sell an eighth or two, and have dinner without having to fend off your brother’s brooding.

Karkat takes the seat next to you, and you clap him on the back. Physical contact may be discouraged here, but there’re no narcs around to encourage law and order at the moment. You think a support team got dispatched to address Feferi wandering around with no clothes on again.

“What’s up?” Karkat asks.

He nevertheless looks preoccupied and far away. That’s unfortunate.

You take another folded flower out of your pocket and hand it to him.

“There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember; and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts,” you recall from a play you had to read in AP English a couple years ago. You can’t exactly remember what the play’s about, but stray lines here and there stick out to you like a sore thumb. Except neither of your actual thumbs are sore.

“That’s from Hamlet, isn’t it?” Karkat asks, shaking his head at you. “What’re you, the bard of 3 East?”

Now you’re not certain about that, but you’ll take it.

“Someone’s gotta be, ain’t they? I got more poetry if you want it.”

Karkat sighs. “Yeah, lay it on me, Makara. Dr. Vandayar told me I’m not getting discharged next week so I’m not feeling great at the moment.”

Poor Karbro looks like he’s full of thunderstorms. Maybe a calm vista will quiet him down. You pull a few lines of poetry free from your memory.

“I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach... I have heard the mermaids singing each to each... I do not think that they will sing to me.”

“Go on,” Karkat says, looking all at once pensive and a little sad.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves... Combing the white hair of the waves blown back... When the wind blows the water white and black,” you recite. Now, Roxy, Calliope, and Porrim have stopped to listen to you. You go on, establishing a proper rhythm.

“We have lingered in the chambers of the sea... by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown... ‘till human voices wake us, and we drown.” When no one says anything, you interject, “That’s the end of the fuckin’ poem, y’all.”

“It’s beautiful,” Porrim whispers. “Did you write that?”

You shake your head in the negative. “Naw, that’s some other motherfucker’s ideas outta my mouth. I wrote a couple of my own lines last night if you wanna hear ‘em, though.”

“Sure,” Calliope says, smiling and clapping her hands once.

“My muse distills my melancholy, pins it to the corkboard with a tack. She presses down upon the pigments, bleeds my blues into the boldest black.”

Even Karkat looks surprised. He narrows his eyes at you.

“If you don’t go study art or literature, or something along that line, I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Ain’t no need to resort to murder, brother,” you reply. “And while I’d like to go sit in a motherfucking college somewhere, I ain’t got shit for tuition.”

“If I have to take up a goddamn collection, I am sending your ass to college. Tout-suite.”

You guess now is not the time to inform him that you straight up flunked outta college after you kept forgetting to go to class. You sat in the grass memorizing poetry and sketching the first dandelions of March, which got in the way of your learning anything or taking your exams, or any of the shit college students are supposed to do. You didn’t mean to forget, but you’ve never been great at any routine shit.

And you’ve always had a knack for going where your thoughts take you. When you were a kid, you would leave the house and walk up and down the streets of Harlem unattended. Your grandmother used to read you the riot act for doing something so reckless and nonsensical. Later, during your hospitalizations, you learned that the way your thoughts stuttered and tangled was called schizophrenia, and doctors medicated you accordingly. They called your prophecies delusion, and you beg(ged) to differ.

The medications ground your thought process to a stuttering halt. You hated it. You hated being cut off from yourself. So you stopped taking your meds. And here you are again, with your strange thoughts and remembrances.

“Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio,” Karkat murmurs.

You grin at him. He understands more than he lets on.

June winks at you, and then walks away to the women’s side of the unit, presumably to call her father. She calls him every day at 8 am and 3 pm, like clockwork. Karkat gazes at her as she walks away, the back of her short dress fluttering behind her.

“June looks nice today,” you say to him.

 He stops staring and glances at you for a moment.

“Yeah, um, she looks nice every day,” he replies. “Not that I make it my business to notice.”

You point to the delicate paper flower he has in his hand. “Sometimes the most miraculous thing you can fuckin’ do is give another person a taste of serendipity.”

Roxy smiles her cheshire cat smile from her seat by the television.

“That’s right, Crabby. Dontcha think June deserves her very own miracle?”

Karkat reddens, looks at the flower in his hand, and takes off for the women’s side.

“Hey, Egbert!” he shouts. “I have something for you.”

By the time you see June again, she’s wearing the small red flower in her hair. Roxy gives you a satisfied little nod, then asks you if you’d like her to put your hair in braids.

“I’m not as good as Pomary with hair, but I’m alright, I guess. Your hair looks like some birds took up residence in it, dude.”

“Why, thank you,” you reply. You take a seat at her feet, after she grabs her comb, brush, hair grease, and spray bottle out of sharps.

She’s right. She’s not a thing like Pomary when it comes to braiding. You’re used to the gentle motions of Porrim’s hands as she manipulates flowers into your hair, but Roxy tugs great fistfuls of your hair into twists. It feels nice, like she’s tethering you to the present, to the here and now.

You tell her that, thank her for bringing you back, and she blushes crimson.

“Aw, I’m not tryna do all of that,” she responds. “Just tryna work through my anxiety. Dolores gave me an ativan an hour ago, and I don’t feel it yet.”

Roxy bends low, and plants a kiss on your forehead, right where your skin meets your greasepaint. Her lips are the softest thing you’ve ever felt.

March 2021

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you probably should have thought this through better.

Picture a thin blonde girl sitting by a phone, being watched by a woman in navy blue scrubs. The girl wears light blue hospital issue pants, and a white T-shirt with a pink cat on it. Her frustration shows clear as day, from her posture to her facial expressions. She yanks the phone off the hook and punches in a number with such speed that the gesture must be semi-unconscious. She puts the phone to her ear, waits a few moments, then swears loudly. Then, in a tense voice, she begins to speak.

“Mommy, this is the fourth time I’ve called you today… Please call me back when you can.”

Her bobbed hair bounces as she turns to face you.

“Oh!” she exclaims. “Did you want to use the phone?”

Yeah, yeah you did, to call your unceasing nag of a brother. He’s the reason you’re here in the first place, since he’s the fucker who called 911 on you. Therefore, he should have to bring you clothes. You grab the phone and dial Kankri’s number. He does not answer. You listen to his voicemail and grow progressively angrier. You mentally curse him and his next seven generations.

The weird blonde girl watches your frustration with a hint of amusement. This will not do.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” you ask her. She blinks, shrugs, and walks away.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, you’ve been in the loony bin for ten minutes, and you’re already pissed off. Score one, you.

Apparently you arrived just in time for morning meds, so all the fucking loonies are out on parade, including the blonde girl, who gives you a friendly wave. You scowl. Nobody has told you where to put your shit yet, or deigned to assign you a room. Not that you have much shit to put anywhere. Just the clothes you arrived in the psych ER with - a black turtleneck, and black sweatpants. They took away your shoes and gave you a pair of hospital socks.

Allegedly this is one of the nicest hospitals in the area. Go fucking figure.

Finally, after what feels like six hundred years, an orderly tells you that you’re in room 1224, on the men’s side.

Wait, there are sides? The psych ER wasn’t organized according to gender; you were stuck there with two homeless people (one man and one woman), an alcoholic, and some guy who had overdosed on alprazolam. Whatever, though. You shuffle your ass over to room 1224, which is about thirty feet away. You drop your stuff in the closet, take one look at your snoring roommate, and go back outside.

The blonde girl - having taken her medication - dashes back to the phone, dials a number, waits a moment, and then bursts into tears.

Great. You should have never written that note. Now you’re stuck in here with this chick. You contemplate trying to comfort her, and decide that you’d probably suck at it.

Another person saunters past her and stops. She’s a few shades lighter than you, and has these long Poetic Justice type box braids. Her green dress looks like it’s been immaculately pressed. She tugs the hem down to fully cover her thighs. She also has three eyebrow rings, a lip ring, and a full face of makeup. You didn’t know staff could have piercings. She offers the blonde girl a hug. You really didn’t know staff could do that.

This is not what you were expecting from the psychiatric ward.

“Roxy, why are you crying again?” the woman asks. Roxy sniffles and swipes at her eyes with the back of her arm.

“I had a nightmare and my mom won’t answer the phone,” she responds. “Where is she?”

“Asleep, most likely. It’s awfully early, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” Roxy admits. She gives the woman a weak smile. “Did you go for vitals yet?”

The woman sighs and nods. “Yeah. 92/53. They’re telling me to drink more water since my pressure’s so low and my heart rate’s so high.”

Wait. That woman must be a patient.

She doesn’t seem like the type. She’s too authoritative, too poised.

You take a look at her again, scanning her for some sign of insanity. Maybe a few marks on her brown arms where the razor slipped. You search her carefully, not trying to seem like you are.

She has one thin, deep, healing scar down each wrist. Well, then.

She manages to pick up on you, because at that moment she turns to face you. She smiles.

“You must be the new admission to the unit,” she begins in a cool, pleasant tone. You’re reminded of a receptionist.

“Uh, yeah.”

She offers you her hand to shake. “I’m Porrim. Porrim Maryam.”

“Karkat,” you reply.

--

Trying to sleep in your room is an absolute trip. It goes the way everything in your life has been going, absolutely fuckawful.

“I won’t take it!” a high-pitched voice exclaims, all of a sudden, jolting you out of your light sleep. “Water you even playing at?!”

Oh, how you can empathize with that sentiment, furious as you are with whomever voiced it. Fuck the psych ward. With distinction. You peer out of your room, and watch a black girl in a purple onesie sprint down the hallway, yelling all the while.

Your roommate, who had heretofore been snoring with his mouth open fish-wide, starts to mutter things at the ceiling.

“Nurse Esther musta tried to give Clozapine to Fef again,” he says. “What an idiot.”

He looks at you and blinks. Fully registers your presence. He props himself up on one hand and stares some more.

“You must be my new roommate,” he says. “I think. Are you?”

You roll your eyes. “No, I’m just here for shits and giggles.”

He snorts and turns on the light. Apparently he’s got the front part of his blond hair dyed purple. You’d never do anything like that personally, but it looks okay on him. He gropes for his glasses and crams them onto his face.

“Christ, you look awful,” he says.  

Where the fuck does he get off saying that?

“You don’t look so hot yourself.”

Your roommate curses and shakes his head.

“Nah, I didn’t mean it like that,” he goes on. “I mean, you look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“I haven’t,” you reply, thinking of the time leading up to your suicide attempt. Not even an attempt, really. More like… a contemplation. A contemplation that led you to telling Kankri you’d rather jump in front of the train than send one more month in your parents’ house,

“Well, you’ll get lots of sleep here. There’s not much else to do. The name’s Eridan, by the way. Welcome to 3 East.”

“Thanks,” you say. “I’m Karkat.”

“Nice to meet you.”

A few minutes later, someone starts knocking on your door. Eridan groans.

“If it’s Roxy, tell her to come back in half an hour. I got ECT today. I need my beauty sleep.”

“The crying girl?” you ask.

“Was she on the phone while she was crying?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s Rox, then. She calls her mom every four hours and then flips a shit if she doesn’t answer,” Eridan says. “Ever heard of Rose Lalonde?”

Before you started transitioning a couple years ago, they had you in the women’s unit for a week. Dr. Lalonde saw you twice over that seven day period and was probably the only clinician who reliably used your pronouns.

“The psychologist for the unit downstairs?” you ask.

“Exactly,” Eridan says. “That’s Roxy’s mom.”

Well, fuck.

---

A couple of days later, there’s a new admission. Kid looks comprised of a bunch of coat-hangers and duct tape, all angles and gangle. He walks up to use the phone, without realizing there’s a line for the phone already behind him. Gamzee just rolls with it, even though he was next in line. This dude is clearly a massive douche. He’s only on for a couple of seconds though - you assume whomever he was calling didn’t pick up.

When the good ugly fairy was handing out ugly, she must have dumped in almost as much for him as she did for you. He is by far the skinniest dude you have ever seen. And being that everyone in your major in college was hopped up on amphetamines, you have seen some truly thin people. If a strong breeze hit him, he’d fly clear to Canada.

Roxy asks him for his name, and when he replies, “Thollukth Captor”, with the universe’s thickest lisp, you can’t help yourself. A snort escapes your mouth before you can take it back. The dude looks at you with a narrow-eyed suspicion, and you raise your eyebrows at him in response. How does he talk like that and not expect mockery?

“And uh...” Roxy trails off helplessly. “How do you spell that, exactly?”

“What’re you, with regithtration, or thomething?”

“I was just curious.”

You won’t laugh, Karkat. You swear it. You thwear it, to use this man’s parlance. Unfortunately, though, you’re grinning. His eyes alight on you, and he gives you a quick, “the fuck are you looking at, aththhole?”

March 2021 - Sollux Captor

“Vitals!” Dirk announces, rapping on your door with his knuckles. “C’mon, let’s get this over with so I can serve breakfast!”

When you walk out of your room, there’s already a line leading out of the treatment room. The person in front of you, a dark-skinned kid with an Angela Davis-style afro - Karkat, you think his name is - curses up a blue streak while he waits in line.

“I don’t see why I had to get a prissy fucking bastard with insomnia as my goddamn roommate. I didn’t ask for any of this fucking shit. Fucking involuntary status, fucking dumbshit Eridan, I hope this fucking hospital burns down.”

It’s too early to put up with this guy, especially with the migraine you woke up with.

“Not tryna piss you off or anything but do you think you could keep it down with your tirade?”

If looks could kill, the glare Karkat shoots you would have rendered you to a pile of smoldering ash.

“I haven’t had a cigarette in six days, it’s seven oh fuck in the morning, my roommate wakes up seventeen times a night, and I might be losing my job because my shithead brother signed me into this fucking place, so you can go straight the fuck to hell,” Karkat replies.

“Are you this obnoxious later in the day, or did they just forget to give you your ativan last night?”

“I don’t even take ativan, dumbfuck.” He squares up. Maybe if he weren’t five foot one, you’d actually be afraid. “I’ll knock you out if you keep talking, though.”

Behind you, a guy with eyes so dark that they might be violet moves to plant a hand on Karkat’s shoulder. It’s your roommate, Gamzee Makara, who appears to sleep for fifteen hours a day. Karkat surprisingly refrains from flinching or scowling. You probably wouldn’t scowl at this guy if you had the opportunity either; he’s easily six foot four, his hair curling around his ears and sticking out worse than Karkat’s.

“Now there’s no reason to get up an’ motherfucking truculent with the new guy so early in the morning.”

Karkat rolls his eyes. “Makara, if you tell me to calm down and wait for the morning miracles, I’ll kill you too.”

“There’s no need to wait, Karbro. The sunrise is a miracle in and of itself. When I looked at the ceiling in my room, I saw miracles. Everywhere.”

“They need to put you on haldol, man.”

“I don’t need no helldogs telling me what to do. I just go with the flow.”

“Of course,” Karkat says, almost fondly. “You and your motherfucking miracles.”

When it’s nearly Karkat’s turn for vitals, Dirk escorts Roxy over to the nurses’ station. She blows a kiss at Karkat, who raises his hand in half-salute. Ignacio walks out of the charting room and takes a look at her.

“Miss Lalonde, I have medication for you. This’ll help with the shakes, hypertension, and sweating.”

Roxy puts her hands on her hips and winks at him. “Again, cutiepie?”

Ignacio rolls his eyes at her and shakes his head, his mohawk moving slightly with the motion. He hands her a medication cup and a paper cup of water. She swallows her medication down fluidly, without drinking any of the water. That has to be an xbox achievement.

During breakfast, as Eridan continues to scowl and bitch about his lack of breakfast (he has ECT today), and Karkat tells him to stop being an overdramatic fuckass before he stabs him with a fork, Dr. Vandayar pulls you aside for one of his “no big deal” discussions.

Otherwise known as morning check-in.

Truth be told, you rather like Dr. V, or Krishna, which is what he told you that you could call him, even though he has a doctorate.

He got you access to sharps, your body wash, and your clothes. He means well, and aside from when he checks in every morning, he doesn’t force you to talk if you don’t want to.

“How are you doing today, Mr. Captor?” he asks.

You shrug. “I’m okay, I guess. Pretty much the same as yesterday.”

Then come the “one to tens”, as you’ve come to think of them. Krishna has his little clipboard balanced on his thigh.

“Urges to hurt other people, one to ten?”

You think of Karkat Vantas and that smug fucking look on his face.

“Two.” It’s always less than three. Maybe that’s why he starts with it.

“Urges to hurt yourself, one to ten?”

You contemplate yesterday’s DBT handout, Roxy’s outburst about self-destruction, and its many varying connotations.

“Eight,” you reply.

“Suicidal thoughts, one to ten?”

“Nine.”

“Active or passive?”

“Passive, mostly. Fleetingly active. I don’t want to live if I’m going to burden people, the usual.”

“Do you have any plans to seriously harm yourself on the unit?”

“No. Not here,” you say. “Everything I’d want to do would require me to be outside.”

“I see,” Krishna says. “Have you been seeing or hearing things that aren’t really there?”

“No.”

“What about feeling like people are out to get you, or sending you special messages?”

“No. Nothing like that. I get enough of that shit at home.”

Dr. V does not laugh at your attempt to joke about your chaotic home life.

If you were to be completely honest, you’re wondering when your medications are going to start working, or if they’re going to start working. Talking to the other patients has been a double-edged sword. So many of them have been on a million different drugs without relief.

Logically, you know that it’ll probably take whatever you’re on more than a week to cure you, but… You’re scared. You’re not in full control and it scares you. There’s a reason you slit your throat. There’s a reason you’re here.

You’re scared the melancholy will wrap itself around you like a shroud, and never relinquish its hold. You’re scared you’ll hate yourself and this life forever.

“I thank you for your honesty, Sollux,” Dr. V says, once he makes his notes. “Any uses of target behaviors that I should be aware of?”

“I cut myself with a plastic knife on Friday evening. Not deep enough to need medical attention, though.”

You scan his expression for evidence of emotion, but he has the mother of all poker faces. All he does is write your answers down in his incomprehensible shorthand,

“How did that make you feel?” he asks. “Remember, it didn’t necessarily have to make you feel anything.”

You shrug. “It helped relieve the tension in the moment, I guess.”

“But it also made me feel disappointed later on,” you go on. “Disappointed at myself. I’m such a fucking idiot for relapsing.”

Dr. V jots this down as well, and shuffles through his papers.

“I wouldn’t use that language to describe yourself. Ridding yourself of maladaptive coping mechanisms can be quite difficult, especially if they have worked for you in the past,” he says. “Nevertheless, do you think you need to be on one-to-one for a few days? So that you stop hurting yourself while you’re here?"

You shake your head vehemently. “Absolutely not. I won’t do what I did again.”

“That is reassuring to hear. I’ll refrain from filling out the paperwork that would put you on constant observation for self-injury. That said, though, there is something you also need to do to prevent that.”

You roll your eyes a little. “You want me to contract for safety, don’t you? Like, filling out one of those sheets that says I’ll grab someone else before I decide to hurt myself. Otherwise I end up on one-to-one, right?”

Dr. V nods at you, before going on. “Yes, that is the general idea. You may either fill it out with me later on in the afternoon, or with a member of the staff with whom you are more comfortable.”

“I’d rather fill it out with you, to be perfectly honest. I trust you.”

He smiles. “I am very glad to hear that, Sollux. I don’t have any further questions for the moment.”’

You get out of your conference with Krishna, and walk into the dayroom.  

Gamzee sits there, watching Good Morning America. He’s got a small smile on his face, and a faraway look in his eye, like he’s both here and not. You call his name to get his attention. It works, his dark eyes trained on you.

“You mind if I sit down?” you ask.

He shakes his head. “Naw, it’s cool. You can even change the channel if that’s somethin’ you wanna do.”

He’s built like a linebacker, all broad shoulders and muscles. He could probably snap you in half if he wanted to. You take the seat next to him and he smiles serenely at you.

“So what’s up?” he asks.

“Nothing, man. Just got outta session with Dr. V. He wanted to make sure I didn’t want to hurt myself.”

Gamzee looks thoughtful. He pulls a red paper flower out of his shorts and hands it to you.

“I folded that a couple days ago. You can have it, if you want.”

“For what?”

“For when you need to up an fuckin’ remember the miracles. Like we talked about last night.”

Last night, Gamzee harangued you at length about the Mirthful Messiahs, and the Dark Carnival, and with a practiced skill you have learned from your sibling’s rants about the NYPD following them, you tuned him out utterly. You really hope he doesn’t count you as a believer in his weird ass faith, which seems like some kind of psychotic juggalo cult.

He’s a nice guy, though. You know he’s not utterly harmless, but he seems easygoing enough. You fiddle around with and tear at a piece of paper until you have a square, which you then use to make a paper crane.

“Hey, Gamzee,” you say. He glances up at you.

“Yeah?”

You hand him the paper crane. “You know, the Japanese believe if you fold a thousand of these, you get a wish. I’m not folding a thousand cranes, but this is for you.”

“I will cherish it every day of my motherfucking life.”

You think he means it, too.

Art group is at 11. Katya herds everyone who wants to show up into the art room. So far, that’s you, Roxy, Karkat, June, Gamzee, Calliope, and Porrim. Karkat nods his head at you, and then inclines it toward the door. He wants to talk to you one-on-one. Whatever the fuck about?

He looks like he’s swallowed a lemon before he deigns to speak to you, all pursed lips and narrowed eyes. You’re tempted to ask him what the fuck’s eating him, and then he speaks.

“Listen. I want to apologize about earlier this morning,” he says. “I was in a foul fucking mood, and I need to work on not taking that shit out on other people.”

Wait, seriously? He can’t actually think you’re still upset about that; you get cursed out worse by your sibling on a daily basis, and that’s when they’re in a good mood.

“Accepted,” you reply. “Don’t worry about it, man.”

Faint relief breaks out on Karkat’s features.

Katya has all of you gather around before she constructs a box out of a weirdly shaped piece of cardboard that looks as if it’s been cut so that a small briefcase sized box could be constructed.

“These are what I like to call coping boxes. You make the box, and then you decorate it. You can put anything in here. Things that make you feel good, or that make you think, or handouts you get during other groups. Whatefur you want!”

She hands a box to each of you, after she puts out tempera and acrylic paint, colored markers, gel pens, and colored pencils.

You weren’t planning to keep any of your distress tolerance handouts in the box, but maybe you should. Gamzee’s staring at you while he paints, and that’s kind of weird, at least until you get a good look at how he’s decorating his coping box.

He’s painting halfway decent pictures of you, Roxy, Karkat, Calliope and Eridan on the front part of the box, with the word “friends”, in purple cursive.

He counts you as a friend even though the only thing you’ve really had to do with him was vaguely listen while he spouted his weird theories about the mirthful messiahs?

You have to hand it to him, though. Kid’s a real artist, probably - no, definitely - good enough to paint portraits for money over in Washington Square Park or something. Karkat gets a decent look at what Gamzee’s painting and blushes.

“Oh, come on, you didn’t have to put me on the damn box,” he says.

“But you are my best friend in the whole wide motherfucking universe,” Gamzee replies.

Karkat splutters something and looks like he’d like to object, then just sighs, and tells him to make sure he gets Karkat’s good side. 

“Hey, Gamzee!” Roxy calls.

“Yes, Roxybro?”

“Does painting that mean you’re gonna paint me like one ‘a’ your French girls one of these days?”

Gamzee gives this a good half-minute of thought.

“I ain’t up an’ got any motherfuckin’ French girls.”

Meanwhile, you focus on your tree. It looks like a lollipop with antennae, but whatever, that’s going to be as good as it gets. You ask Katya if you can get a piece of paper to paint on, she “of course”s you and hands you a piece of printer paper.

What will you paint today, Sollux Captor? More trees?

Tears spring to your eyes, and just when you think the worst is over, they start trailing down your face. Roxy recoils and apologizes to you, thinking she’s done something, and all you do is cry harder, you fuckup. You can’t do a goddamn thing right. Only things you’re good for are fixing computers and having nervous breakdowns.

Katya looks up from praising Calliope and Gamzee’s collaboration, and walks up to you.

“Hey - no, it’s okay, mew don’t have to cover your face - what’s wrong?”

She crouches so that she’s eye level with you as you sit in your chair. It somehow makes you feel even worse, like you’re some small child that can’t control their emotional outbursts. Come to think of it, you were like this as a kid, too. Tuna was the outgoing twin who made all the friends, and you were the twin who would start crying if you accidentally colored outside the lines.

“It’s alright. If you don’t want to paint, maybe you’d like to go for a walk?” she asks. You shake your head emphatically.

“I’m sorry,” you say. “It’s just that I’ve never really been good at artistic stuff. Sorry I suck so bad.”

“Art group is not about being good or bad stylistically,” Katya says. “It’s about expressing yourself. As long as you’re doing that, you’re fine. I like your tree. You and Roxy are both excellent at trees.”

Roxy, who has been sitting next to you, using highlighters to draw what looks either like a really bad tree or a neon colored mushroom cloud, gives you a small little smile.

“Wanna draw with me?” she asks.

At first, you assume she’s found some oblique way to hit on you the way she does everyone else, but then she hands you the bottle of black tempera paint and a couple of colored markers. You don’t know what she expects you to do with them. Your tree sucks way more than hers.

“If you can’t think of anything to draw, why not try making patterns?” Katya asks.

You guess you can do that. You start drawing red and blue circles on your piece of paper, clustering them closer and closer together. 

Apropos of nothing, you remember the time in undergrad where you and Ray couldn’t get back to campus in time to beat the blizzard. You and she slept overnight in your car, parked in a gas station. Outside, nothing but a vast, enveloping white, what you imagine death or infinity must look like. The whole world rendered down to the slope and curve of dunes and valleys.

If you think hard enough, you can feel the wind rocking the car, can imagine the sound of Ray’s teeth chattering, or the occasional slip of her hands as she does a tarot reading. Another one. Another one down, another one down, another one bites the dust, Queen playing through your radio speakers. She sits in the front passenger seat, one leg bent beneath her.

“You think we’re ever gonna get out of here?” she asks.

At this moment, you ask yourself that same question. It’s a little different, now.

You’ve never met anyone on earth who takes such earnest joy in living as Ray, smiling beatifically as she drinks her tea, eats her snack of a toasted tennis roll, and sways along to the music coming from her headphones. She puts on another pot of tea, then stretches her arms toward the ceiling. 

You wish you looked forward to life as much as she does, but you don’t. Life is kind of like laundry, a minor inconvenience you have to engage in because the alternative is worse. Thanks to both Aradia and the ECT, you’ve reached a point where you no longer want to die, but you’re not the most keen on living.

You drink your morning tea and take your medication. She washes out her coffee cup in the sink, still singing, and dries it out. You go into the fridge and take inventory, intent on making some kind of edible breakfast food. On the lowest shelf, there’s a chicken you started marinating yesterday, but that’s definitely too much work for you to cook right now.

“Ray, what do you wanna eat?” you ask. She keeps jamming.

 You pull one of the earbuds out of her ear. She turns to face you.

“Yeah?”

“What do you want for breakfast? Besides that roll?”

“I don’t know. What’s around?”

You shrug. “I’m indecisive. Pick something.”

“Spinach and cheese omelette?” she asks. 

Yeah, you’re not super awake, but you can do that much.

Alone, you can’t be bothered to fix something more complicated for each meal than a cup of Cafe Bustelo and a bowl of Doritos. But since Aradia still eats your cooking like the novelty of someone preparing her meals for her daily - other than her mom, at least - hasn’t worn off yet, you kind of make it a point to cook when she’s around.

She told you that she used to invite herself over to your dorm room so often back in college because getting you to make food ffor her was a surefire way to make sure you ate something nutritious. At first, you were slightly affronted. Were you really so subpar at caring for yourself that she had to resort to that? Then you realized that the answer was “Yes” and got over it.

“Okay,” you say. “Sounds good.”

You pull the gruyere, the baby spinach, and the eggs out of the fridge. Aradia jumps off the counter with a little shimmy that makes her nightgown ride up, and you nod appreciatively, earning a smirk from her. She takes the cutting board off the rack, and the ingredients from you, cutting them up without a word. You turn the stove on.

“How fine do you want the cheese and spinach?”

“They’re eggs. Who cares?”

This is how meals go in the Megido apartment. Whoever doesn’t cook does meal prep, another tradition dating back to your college days, where Aradia would opine that she felt awkward doing nothing in your kitchen. You’d point out that she reminded you to take your meds and make your appointments, along with occasionally acting as your therapist when you couldn’t afford one. Therefore, you two were even. 

Then she’d roll her eyes at you and insist on being handed something to work on.

Once she’s done, you melt butter in the frying pan and then put in the eggs. While you keep an eye on the pan, she starts to tell you about something one of her students did.

“He asked me if we could watch this meme video in class? And I was like… I have a lecture schedule to keep to, but maybe? I don’t know?”

“Which video?”

“The entire history of the world. It’s by Bill Wurtz. It made me laugh.”

You snort. You’re familiar with the video. She comes up and hugs you from behind while you  shake your head, and flip the eggs over, happy when they don’t stick to the pan. She puts her headphones back in and starts jamming out once more.

You, you, you’re thinking of the code you have to review and probably rewrite for this job. It’s pretty basic shit, below your pay-grade, but the pay is decent, so here you are. 

She told you yesterday that Geek Squad for the Best Buy in Astoria is hiring. May you’ll go apply there, see if you can land another regular nine to five like the one you had right after you left undergrad. You don’t know if it’ll work, but there aren’t many desirable positions for a guy like you. Most of the good shit relies on you actually having completed bachelor’s degree in computer engineering.

Ray actually offered to pay your tuition for your final semester at CCNY with some of the money her father left her in his will, but something stops you. Other than the fact that you don’t want to get stuck paying her back. She probably wouldn’t even mind if you didn’t, and that, in and of itself, rankles you. 

Besides. You won’t admit that to anyone, even her, but what if you’re not as smart as you used to be? When you were an undergraduate, you took a full scholarship and made your classes your bitch. You had a 3.83 GPA. It’s been a couple years since 2017, though. What if you’ve forgotten all you’ve learned? What if - even with her footing the bill - you can’t finish? You’d probably jump off her roof or something.

You think she may have caught onto the reason you won’t take her up on her offer, but she refrains from giving you any shit about it.

You flip the eggs again, pile them onto a plate and put out two forks.

While she eats, you dig your laptop out of its little alcove and start it up. You open your text editor software, and take a fresh look at this hell of repetitive code. Whoever wrote this needs to be shot, resurrected, and shot again.

She deposits the plate in front of you, after she’s finished eating her half of the omelet. “Food first, then work.”

Yes, okay, fine. You eat your food - the gruyere’s fucking delicious with the spinach. You stretch, then decide to go for a walk around the block, and have a cigarette while you’re at it. You’re outta smokes, so you go digging through Ray’s pack, pulling a Newport 100 out of it and putting it into your mouth.

She waves at you as you slip out the front door.

Her apartment building is nice enough that she has a doorman, a balding Trinidadian dude who nods at you when you pass his desk. He asks you how your girlfriend’s doing. Ray’s not your girlfriend, not even close, and you think he knows her mostly because she brings him guava candy and tennis rolls every so often. A taste of home.

You jog around the block, lit cigarette burning between your fingertips, mentally rewriting that fuckawful code as you go. You hand a five dollar bill to the tamale lady at the end of the block with her little pushcart, coming away with three tamales that you’ll eat over the next few hours, as you redo things. You bite into one; it tastes heavenly. 

Since Ray has to teach today, you’ll work either in her bedroom or in the Starbucks a couple avenues away. She’ll need to use the living room slash office to teach her three classes.

You should probably go home today, take the 7 train to Main Street and see how your dad’s doing. You spoke to him last night, and he seemed alright, if a little tired. He always seems alright, if a little tired. You wonder if his new prescription for Metformin is in yet, if he’ll want you to pick it up from Duane Reade on your way over. 

When you get back, Ray looks a little out of sorts, her dark, curly hair framing her face like a great load of cotton candy. 

“What happened?” you ask.

“Your mom called. She left a callback number. She says she’s in the hospital.”

Something sinks to the pit of your stomach, something akin to lead.

“Shit,” you reply. “Shit, shit, shit.”

You call the number, ask for Jun Captor, and someone on the other side of the line goes to get her. 

A minute passes.

“Sollux,” she finally says, matter of factly.

You feel as if you’ve travelled in a complete circle sometimes. Your earliest memory is of talking to your mother on the phone, while your dad cooks breakfast, during one of her twenty-one hospitalizations over the course of your lifetime. 

Is this so different?

“Mom?” you ask.

“You have to help sign me out of here. They picked me up last night.”

“Why? What happened?” you want to know. 

Ray takes your hand, squeezes it, and lets it drop, her chin on your shoulder as you sit in her kitchen, anxious and relieved both.

“The CIA is following me around,” she says. “Their agents were in the grocery store again. I tried to fight one of them, they called 911 on me, and now I’m here. Your dad knows, but he won’t sign me out.”

You sigh. Your mom’s damn lucky that whatever innocent and random person she decided to fight got her hospitalized instead of dragged to the 109th precinct on assault charges. 

“I’ll do what I can do, and bring you a couple changes of clothes, but - no offense, mom - I think you’re where you need to be for the moment,” you reply. 

She starts crying, curses you out, and hangs up on you. You can feel the concern emanating off Ray in waves as she gazes at you.

“Something on my face?” you half snap. She envelops you in one of her tight hugs, her hair tickling the area between your neck and clavicle.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. You sigh.

“I gotta go home and get some of my mom’s clothes together. She’s in trouble.” You can hear your heart hammering in your ears. “The timing on this is fucking annoying. I have shitty code to fix, and she’s in the fucking hospital. Again.”

“Do whatever you have to,” she replies. She glances at the bag in your arms. “Are those tamales?”

“Yep. Knock yourself out.” You toss the bag to her.

2021, 6/24 - Aradia Megido

You rise with the coming of the dawn, without need for your phone alarm or your partner’s to rouse you from slumber. You ease Sollux’s hand off your waist and tiptoe out of bed, wincing when your joints decide to crack. Pain lances through your knees, and you nearly fall flat on your ass from the white-hot immediacy of the sensation. 

You swear, but not loudly enough to rouse him.

It’s a blip in time, a moment of discomfort, and you stretch to ease yourself out of it. You focus on the light breeze of the window fan on your body, on the animal skulls on your bookshelf, on the sound of Sollux’s nasal snore. 

You hold your breath. Let it out.

You are Aradia Megido, and you will not let your aching joints ruin your day so easily. You inhale and exhale until the sensation dulls down to a somewhat obnoxious twinge. You lean into the stretch you give your left leg, try to duplicate it with your right, and again, the pain takes another stab at you.

You inhale again. Count to five. Exhale. Count to seven. Gently, you lower yourself into a squat. No spiking discomfort in your joints in response - at least this much is possible at the moment. 

You do have gabapentin if you still feel this way by the time you have to teach, as Sollux would remind you, but you’d rather not let it come to that. Your medication does a decent job of settling your pain, but also has a knack for rendering you brain-foggy and dubiously coherent. You’re still only an adjunct, and while you don’t think you could be fired for having a disability, you could end up on thin ice if you ran out of ability to lecture properly.

You glance at him, and find yourself overcome with tenderness. He’s got his arm thrown around your stuffed sheep, with an unbroken line of drool trailing from his mouth to his pillow. You’d take a picture to show him later, but he’d probably sulk. You hold in the giggle that threatens to escape from your mouth, walking out of your bedroom and into your kitchen.

It is 5:47 in the morning, which means it is almost time for your morning cup of tea. Twelve. minutes until you turn on the electric teapot, and then thirteen till it goes off. You take hold of the kitchen counter and try to ease back into your stretches.

----

2021, 6/24 - Sollux Captor

When you wake, it takes you a couple of moments to adjust to the fact that the bed is empty. Aradia left Lamb Chop - what a weird name for a stuffed sheep - in your arms, and although you’ve no particular love for it, you leave it right on top of her dresser, so she can see where it is when she returns.

Aradia’s in the kitchen, one room over, singing along to music on her phone when you walk in, her husky voice barely audible above the volume of the song.

“My church offers no absolution, she tells me ‘worship in the bedroom.’ The only heaven I’ll be sent to is when I’m alone with you.”

You like Hozier better than Harry Styles, you’ll give her that.

She’s sitting on the counter, a foot away from the still cooling teapot, her sock-clad feet swinging, unable to touch the floor. She smiles up at you - or maybe over at you - since she’s nearly your height from her spot. You lean so that your face sits mere inches from hers, and kiss her nose. She takes your hand and holds it to her cheek.

“Good morning, Sollux,” she says. She plays with your splayed fingers, the tips of hers warm from the hot cup of tea she had previously been holding. One of the thin shoulder straps of her nightgown has begun to wind its way down her bicep. You straighten it with your free hand. She plants tiny kisses against your palm.

“Want some tea?” she asks. She hops off the counter and pulls your yellow, bee-patterned mug out of the cabinet.

“I’m not ready to be conscious yet,” you reply. You want to kiss her again, but you hesitate.

Sollux Captor, you look like a dysthymic hedgehog with your hair sticking out the way it does, and you definitely have morning breath. In fact, there might be drool on your face.

A lot of times, you imagine being smooth as fuck around Aradia, so smooth that you are practically frictionless, at which point you sweep her off her feet. Then in reality, you fall flat on your face and end up being corny as all hell.

Somehow she likes you anyway, this woman with her crooked little smile and curly black hair that ties do little to constrain. She likes you more than the mounted raccoon she made during her last attempt at taxidermy. She likes you more than her tarot deck and doing creepily prescient readings. She likes you in spite of all your failures, attributes she doesn’t even see as failures - such as your insane brain, your jagged dalliances with ecstatic melancholy.

She likes you enough to let you into her apartment, into the inner workings of her life without having to think about the decision all that much. Everything she gives you feels almost automatic, like she couldn’t not want you around if she tried. She doesn’t even expect you to talk if you don’t want to. She fills up uncomfortable silences by singing a couple of lines from whatever song she’s got stuck in her head this time around.

She cuts open a pomegranate, several of the seeds of which she eats by driving a spoon into its flesh and then devouring the result. You gaze at her, this dark-eyed girl with red juice running down her chin, and smile more easily than you ever have. She adds a few pomegranate seeds to her tea, and they float like little red apostrophes in the murky liquid.

“I have a coding gig today,” you inform her. She wipes her mouth and bestows a congratulatory kiss to your forehead.

“Okay,” she replies. She holds your bee cup out to you, serene. “Does that mean you want tea now? I have this ginseng green tea that’ll wake you right up.”

You guess you’ve staved off caffeination for long enough.

2021, 04/17 - Sollux Captor

You envy the patients on the unit who have a “normal” to return to. You never have, and never will. You’ve had periods of more gentle oscillation, like high school as opposed to the jagged highs and equally disruptive lows of your undergraduate years. However, you haven’t been “normal” in terms of psychopathology since you were a kid.

Dr. Vandayar suggests that perhaps your childhood years did a number on your sanity, though not word for word. He’s way more polite about it. You kind of want to hit him for it.

Your dad did his absolute best to raise you, all seventy hour weeks to afford summer camp for gifted kids and SHSAT prep classes. So did your mother, teaching you math and history, even if she was psychotic, even when her mental landscape frequently shifted like sand on the beach. 

Once, when you were maybe ten, she came home an hour late from a quick run to the grocery store five blocks away. She explained, gentle yet adamant, that people had decided to follow her home, and she did not want them to know where she was going. What if they’d decided to rob her? Your dad sighed. He pressed a kiss to her forehead.

She sat at the dining room table later, repeatedly drawing pictures of seashells. When you sat down next to her, and pulled your chair close so that you could see her work, she started to explain the Fibonacci sequence to you. It wasn’t hard to understand adding the sums of the two previous numbers together. She launched into another explanation of the not unrelated golden ratio, and you just sat there and let her go on for a while, even when you didn’t quite understand. 

She took out a nautilus shell that she had fashioned into a necklace, showed it to you, and wound up giving it to you. When you asked her why, she smiled and shrugged. You continue to wear it underneath your clothing. 

Perhaps you’ll give it to Feferi when she gets discharged, given her love of all things aquatic. At this rate, she’ll probably get out before you do, what with the nine ECT treatments you still have to complete.

Out of nowhere, Roxy walks over to you, and you glance up at her. You know by now that whatever comes out of her mouth will be either offensive, amusing, or both.

“Aradia’s on the phone for you, Lispy! Hey, could you tell her something for me?”

You stand up and stretch, fingertips toward the ceiling. “What is it?”

“Tell her that her voice is really cute, but that she’s way cuter in person,” she replies. “Wait, hold up. Tell me she’s not straight. Is she straight? I don’t want to make her uncomfortable.”

You don’t know whether or not to answer truthfully. You should probably ask Aradia about that beforehand. You walk over to the pay phone, and put the receiver to your mouth.

“Ray? Is that you?”

“Hey, Sollux,” she says. Then, a pause that stretches into infinity, or ten whole seconds at the very least. “Is it okay if I visit tonight instead of tomorrow? One of my students is actually attending my office hours, which--”

“--overlap with my visiting hours,” you finish. Maybe you should have let her complete her sentence. 

You’re tetchy and impatient, the first thing having been induced by your session with Dr. Vandayar, and the second by the fact that next week will mark one whole month since you arrived at this hospital, and what precisely do you have to show for it? 

Roxy’s almost completely weaned off methadone and will probably leave next week, to go to inpatient rehab. June is going home the Monday after next. Feferi got here the same day as you and will most certainly be gone the same week as June. Eridan will be gone before you finish out your ECT treatments, since his conclude next week, as will Karkat, Porrim, and probably even Calliope. The only person who may not leave before you is Latula, and although she’s perfectly kind, you don’t know her very well. 

You didn’t realize how long you’ve stewed in your thoughts until you hear Aradia ask, “Are you still there?”

“Yeah. You said you wanted to come tonight as opposed to tomorrow. That’s fine.”

“And what about you?” she asks.

You shrug.

“What about me?”

“Are you fine?”

The only person you suck at lying to more than Aradia is your father, and your dad is only leading by a narrow margin. That may be why you signed a HIPPA release so that your treatment team could talk to both of them.

“I had a weird therapy session today. Normally I get along with my therapist, but today I almost wanted to punch him in the face.”

Aradia asks if you’d like to talk about it, and your kneejerk is to say, “hell no”, but during another therapy session a couple of days ago, Dr. Vandayar stressed the importance of not being unwilling to depend on one’s support team. As vaguely annoyed as you still are at him, you did concede the point on Monday afternoon.

“I guess it was because… well… fuck, I don’t know how to explain this without sounding like an asshole. He didn’t actually say anything that wasn’t true, but maybe it was the way he said it? I don’t know. I’m sorry, Ray, I’m rambling all over the fucking place.”

“Don’t worry about it. Go on.”

“He pretty much said that my situation with my parents could have contributed a lot to why I’m all fucked up in the head. Not currently, but like, before, when I was a kid. I was like, where exactly does this guy get off making that kind of judgment? And then I was like, dude, you weren’t there, you didn’t see it, so how do you know? ‘Cause my parents, they did the absolute best they could with what they had. I mean, I didn’t say that to him, but I felt it. And I felt angry at him about it.”

A long silence, one that you feel sink down to the pit of your stomach.

“Well.”

“Well, what?”

“I get that you’re upset, but Sollux, it’s not like this is something you’ve never said to me.”

“But Aradia, that’s different. I was there. So were you, for parts of it. You’ve met my parents a billion times. But aside from a few conversations with you and Baba, Dr. V barely knows anything about my life. For him to say it like that… I don’t like it. I don’t know why, but I don’t.”

“Because it seems like he’s judging people and events he hasn’t had the opportunity to witness first-hand.”

“Yes! Exactly! That’s it!”

It feels like an indictment against your family, and if you are anything to a fault, you are loyal to Mituna and your parents. All of them came together for you, the youngest, the most successful. Even being here, unable to provide for them both emotionally and financially, feels like the worst blow in the world. 

You shouldn’t be here getting the memory zapped out of you in some last-ditch effort to quell your mania and depression. You should be outside working, seeing to the needs of someone besides yourself. You should be meeting Aradia at her apartment every other night, helping her clean out her apartment, which quickly devolves into chaos, ashtrays full of spent cigarette butts, and dishes piling up in the sink, as she scrambles to finish up her master’s thesis.

Because if there’s one thing you’ve learned from your father, it is that you are what you contribute, and being here, seemingly unable to contribute anything, might just be the worst sensation in the world.

You’re alone with yourself here, face to face with everything you hate about yourself, with all your aspirations and all your neuroses, and you hate it, you hate it, you hate it, you want out so badly. But what if they don’t let you leave and you end up at your mother’s worst fear - involuntary status? If four weeks of hospitalization seem like hell, what about sixty days, your fate handed down via court order?

What if that knee-jerk desire to 72 hour letter yourself away from thrice weekly therapy sessions is just another trap? What if you leave and try to slit your throat again? What if you actually succeed this time around? Who the fuck is going to take care of your family?

It all comes down to that.

You’d rather like to bang your head against the wall until you either make things clearer or knock yourself out. 

“I’ll be there tonight, Sollux,” Aradia says, suddenly. Not for the first time, you wonder if she can read your mind and tell when you’re starting to decompensate more than usual.

Aradia gets there long before six o’ clock. In fact, you notice her tell-tale garnet-colored blazer, as you look through the small rectangular window in the door of the main unit, sometime around 5:20. A woman in a small black dress stands not far away from her, and once you notice her carefully coiffed blonde hair, you walk over to the women’s side of the unit and loudly knock on Roxy’s door.

“And what can I do for you?” she asks, removing the headphone radio that has all but been surgically attached to her head. “Do you have news about Aradia’s sexual orientation?”

You roll your eyes at her, more to keep up appearances than an actual rebuke.

“Your mom’s here,” you reply.

Roxy seems to consider this, then picks up her stuffed cat from her bed and pads into the hallway. Calliope waves at you, the light on their side of the room switched on so they can write. You wave back, then follow Roxy back to the main door of the unit, to resume your little vigil.

You stand without word or gesture, a good six feet away from the door so the night staff doesn’t bitch. They seem to have given up on Roxy, who stands only two feet away from the door and jumps up and down as she waves to her mom. Her mom waves back, though in a more sedate fashion than her child. 

You rather like Ms. Lalonde, honestly. It’s hard to dislike a family member who comes so often. According to Roxy, she only misses Mondays for work related reasons. You think the only person who has her beat in terms of visiting is June’s dad, who has yet to miss a day of seeing his daughter, at least during your stay here.

After about ten minutes of furious waving, Roxy starts doing the YMCA with her arms. Her mother actually returns the motions. 

Aradia glances at her, cracks up, and giggles helplessly, which makes you smile.

When they finally start letting visitors in, Aradia steps behind Ms. Lalonde without a word. Aradia signs the book after her, and then Mr. Egbert signs after that.

Maybe he smuggled a whole ass lemon meringue pie onto the unit. You’d probably kiss him if he did that, and you’re pretty sure macking on your friend’s hot dad is frowned upon in most situations.

Aradia walks into the unit, and it’s only a moment before you’ve scooped her up into your arms. You’re so skinny that Karkat calls you a walking skeleton comprised of caffeine and spite, and Aradia has more curves than a parametric equation. You still manage to pick her up so her toes momentarily leave the ground, pull her close, and kiss her forehead before you let her go. 

She interlaces your fingers with hers.

“What table are we sitting at tonight?” she wants to know, gazing at the sea of round wooden tables in the dining room.

“The one by the window, in the corner,” you decide, after a moment’s thought. The chairs are heavy, so they can’t be thrown across the unit by angry patients you suppose, but you pull out your chair and sit down easily enough. It occurs to you that maybe you should have pulled hers out, but she gets the job done. 

You sit right beside her, and before you can think on it, you let her pull you close. Your head on her shoulder, and your arm thrown around her back. It’s not the most comfortable position, but she smells like lilies, cocoa butter, cigarettes, and home. 

You bring to mind all the animal skulls on her shelves, all the volumes of dead poets stacked haphazardly around them. Everything has been arranged to display her fixation on things that have shuffled off this mortal coil, for the exception of the flourishing plants on her terrace. 

Her arms come up around your shoulders, and she scoots over so the position is more comfortable for your lanky ass. She presses a kiss to your temple, and then to the shell of your ear. You smile in spite of yourself.

 It occurs to you that you have not had a self-loathing thought since she arrived.

It’s easier to not hate yourself when someone who would either try to refute or talk you through your issues sits beside you, singing softly.

“Tastes like strawberries on a summer evening. And it sounds just like a song...”

You snort. “I had no idea you were so fond of Harry Styles.”

She stops singing for the moment, but you’ve already started to hum the next part of the song, while she explains where she first heard it.

“My neighbor used to like to sit on her balcony and listen to the radio while I talked to my fig tree. It was on constant replay on Z100. And it’s catchy. So I sang it. A lot.”

You imagine Aradia as she sings, the long dark curls of her hair unpinned the way they usually are when she’s at home, moving along to the music as she waters her plants. It’s a nice mental image, the kind you wouldn’t mind getting lost in.

Here is one way you might safeguard yourself from the impulses and the dorco razor-blades. 

You can’t watch Aradia bustle around her apartment if you’re not alive. You can’t help her, or your dad in their gardens - why do so many of your loved ones have an affinity for plants when you can barely keep a cactus alive - if you’re six feet under.

You also cannot remind her of her own neglected tasks - “Aradia, c’mon, you have to wash these dishes, there’s fuckin’ fruit flies here, I hate fruit flies.” - and then watch as she makes a meal with the newly washed dishes just so that she knows you’ve eaten that day. 

You think she’d give an approving nod to your thoughts.

“Hey, Sollux,” she says. You glance at her face, the anxiety written across it.

That won’t do. You never liked seeing her worried about anything.

“Yeah, Ray? What’s going on?”

“When you get out of here, after all your treatments are finished, I was wondering…”

“Wondering what?”

She exhales slowly. She takes your hand in hers. You let the warmth suffuse through you. 

“Would you like to move in with me? I know you need to be close to your family, but it’s just the F to the 7 train to get to Flushing.”

You consider this. You’ve known Aradia since the sixth grade, and you are now twenty-seven, which adds up to something like sixteen years of friendship. Aradia knows you like nobody else. Not even your father.

She’s handled your weird mood shit and chronic suicidality with more skill than some clinicians you’ve had. In return, you’ve kept her alive - her parents coddled her to a fault, and she had next to no idea how the world outside academia functioned - and helped her through her occasional bouts of clinical depression.

“You’ll take me to Essex Market and get me that bougie vegan cheese?” you ask. 

There are more questions, several in fact, that you need answered before you give her a decision, but you’ll start with the inanities and work your way up to the logistics.

“When have I not?” she replies. 

You snort.

“How much am I going to pay in rent, for one?”

Aradia seems to consider this for a moment.

“For now, nothing, since you’re not working, and I’m already covering my rent with my job,” she says. “But once you get a job, I’d like you to kick something in. Not too much.”

“Where would I even sleep?”

“The couch in the main room is a pullout. And even If you wanted to sleep in my room, I think I have enough space for another bed.”

You think it over, and some traitorous part of your brain bristles at what is essentially charity from her. Her family - comfortably upper middle class - must be helping her with rent. There is no way in hell that she scored a one bedroom near Bowery on her salary as an adjunct professor. You don’t know what they’d think of letting you live there, or maybe you do, and that’s why you’re hesitant to accept this. They’ve come to actually like you, but you’re not eager to test out how far that goes.

She must sense your hesitation. She once more interlaces her fingers with yours, and lets out a small sigh.

“At least think it over, Sollux.”

“You know I will.”

“I think we function better when we’re in the same place than when we’re not.”

You grin. “You know it.”

The other thing that gives you pause consists of your own confusing feelings about her. 

Some days you want to kiss her senseless, peel her out of that red jacket, the black tank top, the long gray skirt. You want to see her, and only her. You want to shed your t-shirt and skinny jeans and have her see you. You want to hold her, press against her, and have her return the gesture. Your longing to be as close to her as humanly possible sweeps over you like a wave, and you have never been known for any particular skill at swimming.

Other days, you just want to sit next to her and make fun of her when she sings Watermelon Sugar. Or like the time she forgot her umbrella at home, a torrential downpour decided to strike and you had to run to the Second Avenue F train station and hope you got there in time to catch her. Still, more recently, the pair of you playing video games and swearing at each other with a giant container of mapo tofu between you. You want the easy rhythm of your close friendship, something familiar, and easy to navigate.

2021, 04/08 - Sollux Captor

Dr. Vandayar is not the clinician who sees you today. Instead, it’s Dr. Cao, who keeps squinting at the light as if he’s got either a hangover or a migraine.

“So, Krishna tells me that you’ve made up your mind about ECT,” he says.

“I have.”

“And?”

“I want to do it,” you say. “On one condition.”

“And that is?” Dr. Cao asks smoothly, as if he’s accustomed to bartering with patients over undesirable treatments.

“If there isn’t any improvement by the seventh treatment, you let me go home. I’d be giving up almost three weeks of my life for this, but I have a lot to do. No doubt that Dr. V has told you about my living situation and responsibilities to my family.”

“As a matter of fact, he has.” Dr. Cao pours himself another coffee, from the pot on his desk. “But I have conditions for you as well, Mr. Captor.”

“Yeah? What are they?”

“If you do improve within seven treatments, I’d like you to stay for at least twelve, so we can get the most out of this modality. I’d also prefer if you went for maintenance ECT twice a week, once you can be managed in an outpatient setting.”

“Fine,” you reply.

“Alright, then.” Dr. Cao flips through your chart for a moment until he finds what he’s looking for. “Dolores said you wrote a 72 hour letter earlier this morning? Are you retracting it, or…?”

“Yes, I am. I actually retracted it about an hour after I wrote it. I worry about my family a lot. And my mother had gone missing again. My dad found her a couple blocks away, but she had no clue why she’d walked out, or what she had gone out to get. She’s got really bad schizophrenia, and her meds barely work. My sibling, they keep an eye on her, but they’re also mentally ill and not always there either.”

“Who takes care of them when you aren’t in the picture?”

“My dad, sir. But he works a lot, and he can’t always be around when some shit goes down.”

“Have you considered getting a home health aide for your mother in order to ease the burden of caring for her?”

“I mean, yeah, but it’s already hard for her to trust anyone in the family,” you explain. “I don’t know how she’d react to a stranger.”

“If that’s an issue, perhaps one of your extended family members could step in? There are programs where they can collect an income to care for her. I’ll be honest with you, Sollux. I feel like a decent amount of your depression stems from having so many responsibilities.”

“You can say that again.”

“I’m serious, Sollux. The ECT will help you to establish a baseline that isn’t crushing depression, but only you can make modifications to your life situation that will ease the burden of responsibility.”

Is he really suggesting that you let some rando or some dipshit cousin who’ll only be there for the paycheck watch your mother? Does he really think that’ll stress you out less?

“I can see the skepticism in your eyes,” he adds. “Go to your 10 AM group and I’ll be around to get things settled so you can start ECT by either Friday or next Monday.”

Instead of going straight to group, you take about fifteen minutes to shower the grime and dirt off your body. This is only the fourth shower you’ve taken in thirteen days. You hate looking at all the self-injury scars, so you lather up and wash as carefully as you can in ten of those minutes.

Your 10 AM group is DBT with Marisol Perez, the extern. She’s got a vision impairment but that doesn’t stop her from leading the group, or doing her job in general. And she doesn’t miss a beat despite your being twenty minutes late. She nods at you and hands you a worksheet. 

“Today, we’re discussing interpersonal effectiveness, through the application of the ‘DEAR MAN’ skill, Sollux.”

Yeah, you remember that skill. You take a seat with June, Porrim, Eridan and Latula. June looks uncharacteristically solemn today. 

You want to wish her a happy birthday, but you don’t want to upset her further. 

Latula waves at you, Porrim smiles, and Eridan gives you a jaunty little half-salute. You try to take notes on the last few minutes of group, but your discussion with Dr. Cao has left you nervous and jittery. What if your mother runs away from home and doesn’t come back while you’re here doing ECT? Are you really willing to take that chance?

You get up from your spot in the group and jog over to the nurses’ station. Dolores sits inside the charting room typing something up. You wave her over.

“Yes, Sollux?” she asks. “What can I do for you?”

“Can I get something for anxiety?”

“Of course you can,” she says. She checks the nearby computer. “Okay, let’s see what you can have.” A pause. “Do you want the lorazepam or the hydroxyzine?”

“Both.”

“You sure that you want both? Both will probably make you sleepy.”

“I know.”

By the time she gets both out of the machine, June has taken the spot immediately behind you, and Roxy behind her. You suppose you’re not the only one who is anxious today. However, behind you, June insists on switching places with Roxy. Sweat gleams off Roxy’s forehead as she shifts her weight from one foot to the other.

Once Dolores gives you your meds, she walks out of the nurses’ station and gives Roxy a once-over.

“Here, let me get a set of vitals on you,” she says, while the blonde girl shivers. You know you’re not supposed to stick around, that Roxy’s medical data is between her and Dolores, but Roxy looks genuinely sick. You’re not close to her like Porrim, June, and Eridan are, but you’re still worried, and you are her friend.

So is Dolores, once she gets a look at Roxy’s blood pressure.

“181/97,” Dolores murmurs. “That’s way too high. You’re in withdrawal.”

“No shit,” Roxy mutters through gritted teeth, and then apologizes for cursing at Dolores, who quickly checks the computer. 

“Okay, you’re due for Ativan in an hour and a half, but right this second, you’re due for clonidine and your methadone. Do you want those, and then I can call Dr. Cao and see about giving you the Ativan a little early?”

Roxy nods hastily and takes a seat on a chair not far from the nurse’s station.

As Dolores goes into the medication room, she calls for June. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, I just have to deal with this situation first.”

Dolores brings the medication to where Roxy sits. Roxy uses the liquid methadone in a styrofoam cup to swallow her clonidine. When she’s done, she gives both the medication cup and the larger cup back to Dolores.

“Okay, my dear. Sit tight and we’ll see about the Ativan when Dr. Cao calls back,” she says. She turns to June. “What was it that you wanted?”

“Anxiety meds.”

Dolores gives a little snort. “Is everyone coming to me because of anxiety? Are all of you okay? Bad group or something?”

“No, not at all. Marisol’s group was nice, but Roxy’s been anxious since before group started, Sollux was in a meeting with Dr. Cao, and I’ve been trying to manage my anxiety since right after breakfast.”

“You’re doing well, then, my dear,” Dolores replies. “And that was a kind thing you did, letting Roxy go before you.”

“It’s no problem. I’ve been waiting for something since before nine in the morning. Another couple minutes won’t hurt me.”

Dolores goes into the nurses’ station a final time and gets June’s medication together. A phone call from who only knows stalls her for a couple of minutes, and then she goes back into the med room. By the time she emerges, she has two medication cups.

“Okay, Roxy? I have your meds and June’s meds,” she calls. 

Roxy has been curled up into a ball on the bench for the last five minutes. You had given her a couple of napkins to wipe her face off, but she still looks sweaty.

“Right, June, you get two milligrams of lorazepam, and Roxy, you get… two miligrams of lorazepam,” she says. The pause makes Roxy giggle. She and June take their meds. Roxy asks Dolores if she can shower, and the latter goes into sharps to hand her her body wash, and her shampoo. 

“Make sure to give it back to me when you’re done, my dear” 

That’s when Dirk decides to walk by, and unlock the door to the outside enclosure.

“Fresh air break, everyone!” he calls. “C’mon y’all, come out and get that Vitamin D.”

“Hey Dirk!” Roxy calls, seeming slightly better. “Can you give me some of that that Vitamin D? Like, one on one?”

Dirk rolls his eyes and says something like, “They really need to up your mood stabilizers.”

You and June go outside to take in the cool air. It’s maybe sixty seven degrees outside, which isn’t bad at all. 

June takes off her hair tie and unbraids her hair. You watch several inches of almost ruler straight hair cascade down her back. Your mouth goes dry for a moment. You always had a knack for crushing on girls with long hair. June notices you looking at her and cocks her head to one side.

“Is there something on my face?”

“No, no, not at all,” you reply. “Your hair looks cute like that, though.”

Much to your surprise, June blushes. You had expected some joking nonchalance, but not that. You decide to change the subject.

“Thank you for talking to me late last night,” you tell her. “It helped more than you understand.”

You hadn’t meant to have June watch you cry at two in the morning, but she and Roxy were up in the dayroom, conducting a quiet conversation. Apparently, Roxy woke up with a bad stomach ache and muscle cramps, and that June woke up to keep her company until Ignacio could get in touch with a doctor and get Roxy a one-time late-night dose of something for pain and agitation.

While Roxy was at the nurses’ station waiting for Ignacio to finish paging the on-call doctor, you and June started shooting the shit. You told her about your father’s insistence on seeing you every single day during visiting hours, unless Aradia was visiting, since you could only have one visitor at a time. 

“I don’t understand it, June,” you told her, stray tears running down your face. “He’s sixty-three and he has diabetes and hypertension. He needs to take it easy, but he still shows up every day, after work. I wish he wouldn’t.”

“Your father loves you,” June said. “That much should be obvious.”

“Yeah, but why? I’m a waste of space. I dropped out of my master’s degree program, I barely help around the house, and I spent a week in bed, not moving. Just lazing around and hating myself. Then, I tried to cut my throat in our upstairs bathroom.”

June shook her head. 

“Unconditional love doesn’t only exist when you’re doing well. People who really love you will love you even when you’re not feeling up to do anything, even when you’re stuck in a vortex of depression. I barely left my room for a few months. And forget about going outside. I was so agoraphobic and depressed that even when my friends called me to hang out, I stayed in my room and didn’t leave.”

June rolled up her sleeves and showed you several straight-line scars covering her wrists and arms.

“My dad was shocked when he saw these. He couldn’t understand why anyone would do that. I guess that he and I both thought that once I started transitioning a couple years ago, I would never be depressed again. I told him I was suicidal, that my antidepressants had stopped working, and he brought me here. He’s not young either. He’ll be fifty-eight in a week. He has congestive heart failure. I’ve given up on telling him not to come see me every day. It’s a choice that he makes, because he loves me, and he worries about me.”

“What about your mom, though? You said a couple days ago that she was younger than your dad,” Sollux asked. “Why doesn’t she come to see you? My mom won’t come because she’s scared of psych wards.”

“My mother left when I was two. As it turns out, she wasn’t ready for the responsibility of parenting.”

Nervous, you scratched the back of your head. “Oh, wow. That’s awful. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

“No worries. You didn’t know.”

You awkwardly ambled back to your room, where Gamzee lay in a sound sleep on the opposite bed. For some reason, sleep came easily back to you, and you awoke again at 6:40, feeling more rested than you had for a while.

Here and now, you peer into June’s bright blue eyes. She’s got a deck of cards in her hand that she arranges according to suit, to make sure none are missing. After she’s done, she sighs, annoyed.

“Someone took the three and the nine of spades, and never put them back.” She groans. “You can’t have a decent game of anything without these cards.”

“Maybe blackjack,” you suggest. “Or crazy eights.”

2021, 03/27 - Sollux Captor

Your name is Sollux Captor and you feel exhausted when you awaken. Your roommate continues to snore. After all, it is only 6:41 in the morning.

They won’t turn on the phones until 8:10, meaning that you’ll have ten minutes to get a hold of your father before he leaves for work. He’s a CNA at Kings County Hospital, a job he’s held for twenty-three years. You keep telling him to retire, but he won’t hear of it. Stubborn man. 

One of your recurrent nightmares involves him having a massive, lethal stroke while tending to another patient’s needs. He is going to be sixty-three in July. 

In fact, that may be the sort of dream you had last night. That is part of the reason you need to speak with him.

The only person walking the hallways of 3 East this early is Roxy Lalonde, clad in a thin fuchsia nightdress that billows around her knees. She’s wearing a set of those wireless headphones that play FM radio stations, and she must have it turned up to the maximum volume. You can hear the bridge of a My Chemical Romance song all the way from your side of the hallway.

She doesn’t notice you until the song ends, at which point she walks up to you, a smile on her face. 

You have no idea what the hell is going on, and then she plops a fat orange into your hand shortly before walking back to the women’s side. At this point, you have even less of an idea what’s going on. One of the mental health workers makes a comment to the effect that they have no idea how Roxy managed to steal an orange from a locked refrigerator.

With another hour until you can call anyone, you contemplate taking a shower in order to make the time pass faster. Only problem is that you hate your body so much that you can only stand looking at it for ten or so minutes at a time. That’s a decent amount of time for a shower, except that it’s hard to shower with the lights off unless it’s late enough for some sunlight to stream through the bathroom window. 

A mental health worker - tall, blonde, and wearing pointy sunglasses - asks you to take a seat in the chair a few feet away. His name tag reads “Dirk”, and if you had slightly better vision, you’d probably be able to read his last name in smaller print beneath his first.

“Morning, Sollux,” he says. “You look unusually happy this morning, what with that scowl and everything.”

“Oh, blow it out your ass, Dirk,” you reply.

“That is not in my job description, surprisingly enough.” He turns on the blood pressure machine. “But I do need to get your vitals and your temp.”

You frown. “Since when do they have me down for morning vitals?”

“Since you got dizzy and almost busted your ass on the floor last night, courtesy of your meds,” he replies. “Last name Captor, right?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, they have you down for morning, afternoon, and evening vitals, sitting and standing. Don’t ask me why, ‘cause I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.”

He takes your blood pressure while you sit down and ask him what Texas is like, without moving overmuch. He describes it as a cesspool of MAGA country with nevertheless excellent barbecue. 

112/65 is your blood pressure.

Then, when you stand up, an undeniable vertigo overtakes you. You hear static buzzing in your ears. You’d reach out to the wall to steady yourself, but it’s too fucking far. Before you can injure yourself by hitting the floor too hard, Dirk grabs you and puts you back on the chair.

“Right, so, lemme get you some juice before we try that again,” he says. “Is AJ alright?”

“Yeah, s’fine with me.”

After you chug two of those Suncup plastic containers of apple juice, you stand up to get your vitals taken yet again.

99/54. Kind of low, but you’re not dizzy anymore, thank God. Dirk pulls the cuff off your upper arm, and knocks on the door of the nearest patient’s room.

“June Egbert?” he calls. “It’s time for vitals.”

June emerges with a yawn, her square-frame glasses lopsided on her face. She shoots Dirk a mildly derisive look.

“You realize that nobody wants to wake up at this time for jack, right?”

“Yes, I do.” Dirk replies. “The same way I realize that if I don’t get vitals done before rounds at 9, Dr. Cao and Dr. Sakamoto are gonna be pissed at me.”

June notices the orange in your hand, and asks if you plan to eat it. Dirk fixes her in his gaze, light from the fluorescents glinting off his stupid looking shades.

“I’ve been told that if you eat breakfast on your ECT days, not only can’t you go down for ECT, but Dr. Cao’s gonna keep you for an extra week out of spite.”

“That’ll give me more time to devise practical jokes that not even Dr. Cao would see coming,” replies June.

Dirk shakes his head at her. “So long as I’m not implicated in any of these so-called jokes, and so long as they don’t happen on my shift, I don’t care what you come up with. Knock yourself out. On second thought, don’t do that. If you concuss yourself, aside from the paperwork, watch me get reprimanded for not being clairvoyant enough to stop you.”