#forced sedation

Now listen.

Sedation that doesn't knock you out completely, but just makes you very confused and tired instead, unable to form a clear though, yet still somewhat aware of what's happening around you. Drugging basically...

Augh

I especially adore that when combined with an otherwise very defiant whumpee who refuses medical treatment, and a kind, gentle caretaker? One who holds their hand, strokes their hair and reassures them that everything is going to be okay? Even better when it's a hero/villain dynamic???

To survive, Seo Dong Ju (Park Hyung Sik) a chairman's secretary at Daesan Group hacked into a political slush fund worth 2 trillion won. Heo Il Do (Lee Hae Young) is a powerful shadowy figure, who loses 2 trillion won by killing a man without knowing that he was hacked.

*I waited for so long for Park Hyung Shik whump!*

How long can Whumpee really keep a hunger strike up? 3 days? A week? Two weeks? Eventually hunger is gonna win out. Especially when the food is always right there, staring them in the face.

Whumpee might even start trying to make escuses to themselves. Maybe the drugs won't kick in if they just have a little bit. Maybe if they eat it and throw it up, they'll sate their hunger without the drugs taking effect. Maybe if they eat it really fast...

And then they start thinking... is being drugged really all that bad? Is their current reality really something they want to be sober for?

MASTERLIST - PART 1 - PART 2 - PART 3 - PART 4 - PART 5 - PART 6 - PART 7 - PART 8 - PART 9 - PART 10

Author's note: Hello lovelies! It's been a while. At the moment I'm experiencing something pretty traumatic but having this space to be safe has been really nice. I finally wrote this all in one go and I do think it helped me process. Thank you all for reading and your continued support. CWs: general mental illness content, psychiatric care whump, medical gaslighting, forced psychiatric care, medical malpractice, being forcefully restrained, use of force on patient, forced sedation/drugging using needles

James paced around the room frantically. It was 11:30pm, according to the small analogue clock on the wall in his room at Redwood Psychiatric Hospital. The air was chilly, and he rubbed his goosebump-riddled arms. The thin white scrubs of the Redwood patient uniform were paper-thin. His hands shook as he picked up the note again and unfolded it to read it for the hundredth time. He knew every word on the now sweat-stained piece of paper by memory. He checked the time once again, to make sure he wasn’t going to be late. The clock read 11.31pm. James took a deep breath, attempting to slow his heart rate.

The hospital was silent at this hour, the nurses having finished their night rounds. The security guards were just about to leave the floor to continue their nightly patrol around the grounds. They’d be back in about an hour and a half as they would loop back around. That left James plenty of time to sneak out the doors.

The next twenty-five minutes passed all too slowly. James snuck out of his room, the door making a soft click as he pulled it closed. He tiptoed out into the dark hallway, checking left and right to make sure no one was there. The silence hung thick in the air. He crept down the hallway towards the end of the East Wing ward. The doors to the wing could only be opened by a keycard, yet they hung open, allowing access to the stairwell which led down to the first floor. James stopped on the threshold, uncertain whether he should proceed. Then, a whisper came from the hall beyond the doors.

“Are you coming?”

(TW): Human experimentation, child imprisonment, institutional abuse and neglect, severe trauma/PTSD, self-harm, disordered eating/food refusal, violence, death, isolation, dehumanization, and references to suicidal behavior.

That alone felt like a skill no one had thought to teach.

She timed her goodbyes carefully now, never springing them on Ellie all at once. She’d start by closing the book or lowering the music and let a few quiet minutes pass before she stood. Sometimes Ellie still went still in that watchful way near the end, shoulders tightening under the blanket, but she no longer looked stunned by Anne’s leaving. She looked as though she was measuring it. Bracing for it. Which, Anne supposed, was different.

Mara had asked her to stop by her office for a check-in before the afternoon session.

The office was warm to the point of stuffiness, full of filing cabinets and binders and a potted plant drooping in the corner as if it had given up on the place months ago. Anne sat across from Mara with a paper cup of coffee she had not wanted but accepted anyway.

Mara glanced down at the notes on her tablet. “So. How are things going?”

Anne tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “I haven’t had any problems.”

“That’s good.”

“She’s been more engaged recently, I feel.”

Mara looked up. “Engaged how?”

Anne considered. “Closer. More alert when I arrive. She’ll sit up earlier now. Sometimes she comes to the glass before I’ve even gotten settled.”

Mara gave a small nod like she was logging a useful metric.

“But,” Anne added, “we’ve still not talked.”

That made Mara smile in a way Anne couldn’t quite read. “That’s funny.”

Anne looked up. “Why?”

“Because she’s asked about you.”

Anne blinked. “She has?”

“Yes.” Mara leaned back in her chair. “She can talk. She’ll tell you exactly what she thinks of you when she’s having a moment, believe me. But yes. In fact, she seems quite fond of you.”

The word landed oddly in Anne’s chest. Fond.

It felt too easy, too neat for something as thin and careful as what existed between her and the girl in that room. Still, she found herself smiling before she meant to.

“Oh,” she said. “Well. That’s good.”

Mara watched her over the rim of her cup.

“I was worried I upset her the other day,” Anne admitted. “I brought a different book than usual and she barely looked at me for half the visit.”

Mara gave a short laugh. “Oh, you’ll know when she’s upset.”

Anne thought of Ellie’s still face, the way she sometimes went so blank it seemed to erase her entirely. She wasn’t sure anyone here knew as much about her being upset as they thought they did.

“Well,” she said after a moment, setting down the untouched coffee, “I’d like perhaps to be more engaged with her.”

Mara raised a brow. “Meaning?”

Anne hesitated, already knowing she wouldn’t like the answer. “Even just something simple. Crayons, maybe. Colored pencils. Paper. A puzzle. I know she’s high-risk, but she is also sixteen, and I’m worried the only stimulation she’s getting is with me. I’m not sure that’s healthy for a young girl.”

Mara’s expression flattened at once, not unkind exactly, but firm in a way that suggested they had stepped from conversation back into policy.

“That’s not an option right now.”

Anne folded her hands in her lap. “Not even supervised?”

“Listen.” Mara set her cup down with a quiet click. “We have protocols for a reason. She cannot be trusted with certain things for safety.”

Anne held her gaze. “Has she had any recent violent incidents?”

Mara’s mouth tightened slightly. “That’s not the point.”

It was, Anne thought, exactly the point.

But Mara continued before she could say so.

“If, in the future, she can prove she can be trusted with those kinds of materials, we’ll see about introducing them. Until then, safety comes first.”

There it was again.

Always first. Always before everything else. Before comfort, before dignity, before boredom, before whatever slow, gnawing damage came from leaving a child in a room so empty she had begun to treat the arrival of a paperback novel like weather changing.

Anne looked down at her hands. Her knuckles had gone pale where they pressed together.

“I understand,” she said, because there was nothing else to say that would actually change anything in this office.

Mara relaxed back into something warmer at once, as though the unpleasant bit had passed. “Of course if there’s anything else, please let me know.”

Anne rose, smoothing a hand over the front of her skirt. “Thank you for your time.”

She was nearly at the door when she stopped.

“Well,” she said, turning back, “actually. There is one thing.”

Mara looked up.

“It’s very, very cold in that room.”

Mara blinked. “Cold?”

“Yes.” Anne gave a small, helpless laugh, though there was no humor in it. “I’m there for not that long and my hands are freezing by the time I leave. I can’t imagine being in there more than a few minutes, let alone all day.”

For the first time in the conversation, Mara looked slightly uncomfortable.

Anne pressed on. “She’s always wrapped in that blanket. Always. And if she’s in bed half the day, I don’t think it’s only exhaustion.”

Mara tapped one finger once against the desk. “The rooms are climate controlled.”

Anne said nothing.

Mara exhaled. “I’ll see what I can do.”

It was not a promise. Anne knew that.

Still, she nodded. “Thank you.”

She left the office with that sentence lingering behind her, thin and uncertain.

By the time she made it back down through the secured doors and checkpoints, she had mostly resigned herself to the likelihood that nothing would change. A note might be made. A maintenance request logged. A complaint filed under nonurgent environmental concerns and quietly forgotten beneath more pressing matters.

The final door buzzed open.

Anne stepped into the observation room and stopped.

Ellie was already there.

Not on the cot this time, not half-asleep, not tucked away in the far corner under the blanket. She was sitting on the floor by the glass, knees drawn up, chin resting lightly on them, her blanket around her shoulders like always. She must have heard the outer locks cycling because her head lifted the second Anne came in.

There was no smile, of course.

Just that steady, unreadable gaze.

But she had been waiting.

Anne’s whole face softened before she could help it. “Hello, darling.”

Ellie’s eyes flicked briefly to the bag in Anne’s hand, then back to her face.

Anne crossed to her chair and sat. “I’m sorry I’m a little late. I got ambushed by paperwork.”

Ellie watched her as if this might mean something.

Anne set the bag down and rubbed her hands together before unbuttoning her coat. The room was cold enough that the chill struck her immediately through the fabric at her elbows and knees. Worse today, maybe. Or perhaps she had just stopped trying to dismiss it.

She glanced up toward the vent.

Ellie followed her gaze.

“It’s freezing in here,” Anne muttered.

Something shifted in Ellie’s expression. Not surprise exactly. Recognition.

Anne looked back at her and saw, all at once, how tightly the blanket had been pulled around her. How red her knuckles were where they peeked from the fold. How the tip of her nose had gone faintly pink in the cold.

A small line formed between Anne’s brows. “Have you been cold all this time?”

Ellie did not answer.

But after a second, she gave the smallest shrug.

Anne let out a slow breath through her nose and opened her bag. “Well,” she said, gentler now, “I brought the next book.”

Ellie shifted a little closer to the glass.

Anne noticed. Of course she did.

She took out the paperback, but before opening it she looked through the barrier at the girl huddled on the floor, all long limbs and caution and blanket, and the unfairness of it hit her fresh all over again. Sixteen years old and waiting in an empty room for one person to come read aloud because there was nothing else to mark the day by.

She opened the book.

And while she read, Anne found herself already thinking ahead, not to chapter breaks or approved playlists or the careful routines she’d built over the past week, but to thermostats, maintenance requests, spare blankets, who signed off on what, and how far exactly she could push before someone decided she was becoming inconvenient.

On the other side of the glass, Ellie listened with her eyes half-lidded, one hand hidden beneath the fold of the blanket, the other resting near the barrier.

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