PECTUS PECTORIS. part one: before
Cesc was in the desert. It was hot, too hot to be wearing so many layers of scratchy, rough clothing, and his uniform was oppressive in the heat, his feet covered in thick, tough boots. He held a heavy, black metal gun, too heavy for him to lift. He felt like he was moving through dust instead of air. He couldn't breathe, couldn't see no matter how hard he squinted. It was too bright, too dry, too hot.
Now, suddenly, there was gunfire, there were grenades going off and people running everywhere when there had been nobody on the street before, speaking in a language Cesc didn't understand. The gun was going off in his hands, firing everywhere, but there was nothing he could do to make it stop. It was all cutting in and out, as though his eyes had poor reception, and then there was shrapnel lodging into his arm and chest. He couldn't breathe, couldn't move, could only feel a sudden darkness overtake him.
He woke up shaking, sweating, eyes wide and terrified, his heart thumping against his chest, in his neck, his arms. There was nothing about his surroundings that was anything like the desert; it was dry and cool and white, all white; there was no dirt anywhere. It was the middle of the night, and Cesc panted in the dark, feeling nervous, exhausted, feeling like he could cry (Cesc hadn't cried since before he'd been shipped out, not since he was a teenager. Cesc was barely twenty, but he felt so much older now, like he had lived a hundred years.)
Cesc went back to sleep, feeling restless, knowing it would be another sleepless night; that there was nothing he could do about the dreams until the morning.
Even when he could do something about them, he felt helpless. All that seemed to work was drugs, sleeping pills, anything to keep his mind off the desert and machine guns and men, women, children, lying in the streets covered in blood; and the doctors said even that would stop helping. This place, with its wards full of screaming schizophrenics and weeping balls of anxiety who may once have been people -- it wasn't much more restful than being at home with himself and his dreams and nobody else.
Cesc had been shaking, eyes closed, gun pointed directly at his head, the last night of his leave of absence -- the night he'd been committed. Every time he closed his eyes, the image was there -- a little boy, lying dead in the sun in the street, his mother weeping over him, her black veil stained with his blood, as she fought away the buzzards. She refused to move, no matter how much those around her urged her. She was weeping, screaming for her dead son. And every time it appeared behind his eyelids, the boy was Cesc, when he was three; the woman, his mother, screaming, crying.
Cesc couldn't take it anymore. He'd taken the pistol he'd been issued with his military uniform, and gone to his bedroom. The lights were out. Every light in the house was dark, but the news was still blaring on the television in the living room. He called his mother, and he told her goodbye, hurriedly, telling her not to worry; that this was best.
Cesc had sat there with the cold barrel pressed against his temple for nearly an hour, his heart beating hard and loud in his ears. He wanted to pull the trigger; he wanted the images to disappear, wanted the stink of death to leave his nose, the screams of the women he'd watched bury their husbands and children to stop ringing in his ears.
His commanding officer had eased the gun out of his hand two hours later before he had even known the man was there. After that, it had been a blur, going much too quickly for Cesc to follow; it was checking into the hospital that very night with his mother and his lieutenant colonel filling out the paperwork for him. He didn't want them there. He didn't want anybody there. Cesc just wanted to be alone, in the dark, in the quiet. That was all he wanted.
"Tell me again, Cesc... why did you try to kill yourself?"
It seemed like no time between when he had woken up and when he was facing his psychiatrist, a handsome frenchman with dark skin and dark eyes, and a very toothy smile, which he flashed at Cesc whenever he entered the office. But Cesc was too agitated, too overtired, to even consider liking his doctor; he had answered this question over and over. He was running on nearly no sleep, and now he had to answer this same question for what felt like the thousandth time.
"Because I wanted to die," he said, voice quiet, hollow, not looking at the doctor.
"But you have so much to live for -- a mother, who loves you, a whole family who loves you."
Cesc nodded, robotically. "I know."
"Then why? Why take away your mother's little boy from her?"
Cesc didn't looked up, just gazed absently down at his hands, picking at the skin around his fingernails.
"Is it because of the children where you were stationed?" Dr. Henry asked, his voice gentle, but firm. Cesc could feel Henry looking at him, watching him for any sign of reaction, but Cesc just felt empty; cold, a machine. The machine the army had tried to make him into.
"I know this is difficult," Henry said, some minutes later. "The things you witnessed would do this to anybody, Cesc... they would hurt anybody enough to need some time away from everything."
"Can I go now?" Cesc asked, nodding his head sideways at the clock when Henry looked up, his expression questioning. "It's been an hour."
Henry sighed, but Cesc knew that meant he was free to leave.
"Until tomorrow," he heard behind him, refusing to look back.
--
"I'll let you do anything you want to me," he whispered, softly, voice shaking like his hands, despite how much effort he put into staying steady. The bags under Sergio's eyes were growing, daily, his body starting to detox from the heroin and cocaine that had been in his system for months, years. He'd woken up late that morning after only two hours of sleep with his head on fire, his body aching and stiff, his eyes too bloody to see through.
Now, he was pleading across to the nurse from the next ward over, the pediatric ward, who was there for the day since they were short-staffed. He was half-curled in bed, half-leaned over the side, nearly clawing at the nurse's scrubs, fingers trembling. "Anything, I swear... Nobody would ever know, y-you can fuck me, I'll suck you off... p-please. I just want a little, j-just... some morphine, y-you can give me morphine, I know you've got it..."
The nurse was pale, with bright brown eyes, and he looked somewhat startled by the rasp in Sergio's voice, his desperate words barely whispered in the room. His keycard showed his name on it, but Sergio could hardly focus on it; the nurse had the keycard that could access the pharmacy. That was what mattered.
The nurse, in his pale grey-lavender scrubs that showed which ward he had come from, smiled a little sadly and placed a hand against Sergio's, tugging it from his clothes gently. "I can't give you anything, Sergio," he said softly, raising an eyebrow. "You're supposed to be detoxing. It won't get any better if you keep this up."
Sergio's eyes watered, and he tried to cling to the nurse's clothes again as he tucked the fitted linens tighter into the bedframe. The nurse pulled his fingers away gently, the way he had always done with his own patients, who were mostly children or teenagers, when they clung to his clothes --always gentle, always kind, even when patients got violent.
There was a small shelf where patients sometimes put books or pictures of the ones they loved, put their personal items that they had brought with them from home; the nurse, whose name was Iker, couldn't help but note that Sergio had put nothing there; that the only personal item in the room was a ragged, dog-eared postcard from Sevilla stuck haphazardly to the stark white wall at the head of the bed. He smiled a little and pointed at it.
"Are you from Sevilla? I have heard it is very beautiful there." He smiled again and uncurled Sergio's fingers from his clothes once more.
Sergio was not so calm. He still murmured pleading words under his breath, his voice beginning to sound more and more aggravated, more scared, more desperate, with every syllable.
"Please," he rasped out, eyes pained. "I swear, I'd never tell... j-just give me something, anything, it h-hurts, please, I'll -- I'll make you feel good," he said, fingers trailing down towards Iker's waistband quickly. He wasn't fast enough, though; the withdrawal had made him groggy, his movements jerky, and Iker caught his fingers quickly with his own, and placed them back on the bed next to Sergio's body, keeping them there gently while he stood there.
Sergio had only been in the hospital a few hours -- maybe three or four at most. He had been high as a kite when he'd been brought in, certainly on cocaine, and there may have been three or four other uppers in his system that they'd tested for. Iker had been the one to put in Sergio's IV, not that Sergio seemed to remember that. He looked so small there in the bed, barely eighteen, eyes rolling back into his head. The IV hadn't lasted long in his arm when Sergio had woken up, violent, in a manic state.
"That isn't want I want, Sergio... I just want you to get better, no? Just try to relax."
Sergio wasn't satisfied with that answer, and sat down on the floor and cried, trying to stop his head from spinning.
--
Cristiano wanted a mirror. There were no reflective surfaces in his ward; the closest he had come to a mirror in the last year was the window of his room, and it was no good -- the light that shone through it prevented him from seeing himself in it. There were no mirrors, no scales, and he had to have supervision when he wanted to wash his face or his hands. It said it on his chart; Cris had looked. Severe body dysmorphia; weight and appearance to be monitored for alteration - 20 lbs to be gained. Supervision required when using cleaning solutions and soaps.
Cris hated that; he didn't want some doctor, some nurse, monitoring his appearance, his weight. He couldn't bear to have the nurses looking at him, to not be able to pick his own clothes; he had to wear a hospital gown until he gained six pounds, until he'd stop refusing to eat what was put in front of him.
He sat now on the windowsill, knees drawn up tightly to his chest, looking out the window in his room. The nurses had been encouraging him to leave his room more, to interact with the other patients on his ward, but today, Cris couldn't. He could scarcely leave the room without feeling his anxiety mount; he knew he was ugly, knew everyone was staring at him every time he left the room, and would exchange comments on how ugly and overweight and disfigured he was.
"Room checks," he heard a deep voice at the door say softly. He turned slowly, looking away from the window to see which nurse was at the door. He smiled just a little when he saw that it was one of the ones he liked; Ruud, the nurse who did room checks and gave out medication, in his maroon scrubs. Cristiano liked Ruud's company more than he liked most of the other patients'; he didn't feel too anxious with Ruud, because Ruud never looked at him with the appraising glances that the other nurses -- or the other patients, for that matter -- always seemed to throw at him.
Ruud grinned from the door and stepped into Cris' room as Cris swung his thin legs off of the windowsill. "Hi, Cris," he said softly, leaving the door open behind him. "Feeling well today?" Cris grinned back at him, slipping down off the windowsill and shrugging a little, standing in front of Ruud and looking up at him. Ruud was much taller than Cristiano, but it didn't bother him; Cris knew he might look worse than he already did if he were any taller.
"Hi," he said softly, and sat down on the edge of the bed, leaving enough room for Ruud to sit down, too. "I don't have anything... Just new pictures." He nodded just a little at the side of the windowsill he had not been sitting on, which held a few pictures of Cris and his parents, and one that hadn't been there before -- one of Cris and a shorter, darker boy, both of them grinning madly. "Marcelo."
Ruud picked up the picture, smiling down at it. "Nice picture of the two of you," he said, voice gentle, and pulled a small plastic cup from his shirt pocket. It held a few pills -- a weight-gainer, two antacids, and a few others to keep Cris going. "You know the drill." He held out a bottle of water to Cris, unopened, and watched to make sure he took the pills.
Ruud worried about Cris; he had become less and less social over the past two months, since he'd committed himself, when he'd been one of the most social patients on the ward when he'd arrived. He'd told Ruud he was regretting it, that his friends had talked him into it, that he wanted to go home and wear his own clothes. Ruud was glad that until he gained a little weight, until he showed some improvement, they couldn't let him go. Cris opened his mouth, lifted his tongue -- showed Ruud that he wasn't keeping the pills in his mouth, and Ruud smiled at him, touching his hand gently.
"Good. And your room's clear."
--
Ryan had struggled with his anxiety all his life; he'd been medicated for it when he was a teenager, to keep him from panicking in any social situation. For the most part, it had worked. He had made it through school largely unscathed, occasional panic attack aside. He'd even gotten through University with only a few minor meltdowns to his name.
Once through nursing school, it had gotten harder. He started to feel his stomach drop in the face of rude or unruly patients, found himself awake half the night worrying about whether a little boy whose bloodwork he'd sent away would be alright, whether the grandmother with the nasty cough that he'd helped to treat would be able to have her grandchildren visit her.
At some point, Ryan had known he needed to get away from the hospital. It was stifling; it was causing him to have daily bouts of unignorable worry, to have to step aside and let other nurses do work he was perfectly capable of.
That was when he'd decided to do Doctors Without Borders. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, Ryan had thought. He would still get to help people, still get to make an impact, still retain his job at the hospital without having to be there, for a while. And traveling and working in a foreign country would make him so exhausted that his insomnia would have to go away.
The night before he was meant to leave for the Congo, Ryan had a nervous breakdown. He couldn't go to Africa, couldn't be a nurse anymore. He had sat in his apartment, unable to get the images of starving children out of his head, knowing he was letting them down -- knowing he was letting down Doctor Ferguson, his attending, who had written him countless letters of recommendation.
That evening he had contemplated killing himself. He knew he couldn't go to Africa, he was terrified, but he was too scared to stay in England. He stayed huddled on the couch in his apartment, teary and nervous and incredibly jumpy until the wee hours of the morning. The cab that had waited to take him to the airport was still there. Ryan had gotten up all his strength and asked the driver to take him to the hospital.
He'd managed to sign the consent form before collapsing in front of the nurse's station.
Once he'd been committed, Ryan was usually pretty good about interacting with other patients. He was never without a nervous half-smile at least, especially when there were nurses asking him questions. His eyes would go wide whenever a question was asked of him. On a bad day, he would hide away in his room as soon as he could, on the far side of the bed from the window. On a good day, he would answer questions of his doctors' and just sit by himself, in a chair that he could hide himself in easily.
(He had even made a friend at the hospital; his nurse, who wore yellow scrubs, was called Paul, but went by Scholesy, and his complexion was even lighter against the pale colour of the material. He was friendly, average -- and he never pushed Ryan when he was having a bad day. He would let him hide -- check on him, once in a while, but never push him to be social or leave his room when it was clear that Ryan couldn't. Ryan was glad that there was someone on the staff who seemed to understand how crippling Ryan's anxiety was.)
Ryan had made friends with a few of the patients, too; sometimes Yoann would be around, sometimes not, but Ryan was as friendly as he could be to the boy who never spoke. Even the boy in the room next to him, whose name was Javier (though all the nurses called him something else in Spanish) was friendly enough to Ryan despite how nervous and jumpy he always was.
Ryan was friendly to everyone he met in the hospital, as friendly as he could be. He avoided some other patients at all costs; there was a tall, broad man named Nemanja who Ryan had watched break through the plaster on a wall, all while swearing loudly in some language Ryan didn't understand. Ryan avoided him; all he could think of was if Nemanja ever got as angry as he was then, at Ryan. Just the thought, the first time he'd had it, had sent him into a panic attack.
Ryan sat by himself at dinner, though he struggled to remain at the table. There had been some ruckus earlier that day in the ward where he and Javier lived, lots of shouting from Jose, the schizophrenic who lived several rooms down from the two of them. Lots of shouting, too, from Nemanja. Ryan had hidden in his room for hours, shivering, terrified that something horrible was going to happen.
Scholesy had been the one to find him, had stroked his hair back, listening to him hyperventilate for the third time in as many hours. Ryan could vaguely hear Paul's voice, more gentle than he'd ever heard it, his fingers easy and tender on Ryan's forehead.
--
Everything was red -- every sound felt red and muffled and filtered through the anger ringing in his head. Nemanja knew there was blood on his knuckles, but he didn't know whose it was, could barely see. All he knew was that inside his head, there was nothing but red, nothing but blood pumping loud in his ears. No feeling. No compassion. Nothing.
There was someone screaming, he could recognize distantly, in some Latin language. His own voice was muttering in Serbian, the sound almost sinister, demonic. Nemanja was only able to tell what was going on by the sound of everything now, by the feel of things. Everything was still blood red and it made his eyes ache with fury, as though every inch of him was about to burst apart with rage. His mind was vacant except for the anger coursing through every synapse, every vein. He couldn't even remember why he was angry, but it was impossible for him to stop.
There was a blue halo forming in his eyes now, though -- everything always seemed blue in comparison, for a while, after Nemanja's red vision had subsided -- and he could hear the doctor counting to ten very slowly. Feeling returned to him, and he knew at least one finger had been shattered -- again -- and that his hands were covered in blood. He could feel the orderlies gripping his muscular arms tightly. Incidentally, Nemanja didn't blame them; he had nearly killed another patient once.
Nemanja had never been good at dealing with his rage, ever since he was a little boy. He felt things very strongly, but it had been instilled in him since he was three years old that he was not to show those feelings. It hadn't bode well for him; when he was six years old, he had gone to live with his grandmother, and as he had told his mother goodbye, he had pulled a chubby handful of hair from her head, screaming and crying hysterically.
As he'd gotten older, he had gotten into fights at school, been kicked out for fighting, and been cursed at and hit by his grandmother for it. "Worthless," she would say to him, "You can't even stay in school -- just like your no-good father." Nemanja hadn't known his father, but he could only focus on the blows to his growing body. The broken nose had kept him awake for days, and it was still very crooked.
After his grandmother had died, Nemanja had gone to work. It only lasted a short while before he was committed at twenty; his mother had long since disappeared from his life, and he could no longer keep ahold of his anger. He had nearly killed an employee at the factory he'd worked at in Serbia for several months, and went on the run from the law, ending up squatting in an apartment in London. He got another job, where he once again caused a great deal of chaos, and was committed by his employer.
He was brought to his room and locked in, breathing still heavy as one of the night nurses came on duty, and came to bandage up his hand. He was calm now, but his body wouldn't let him quit. He stayed very still when the nurse wrapped up his hand, seeing a goofy grin spread across his features when Nemanja looked at him.
"Gave everyone a right great scare, 'ey, cuz'? No more of that comin' my way, I hope. God knows I couldn't take you on."
Nemanja smiled a little, the expression sheepish and almost nervous. Rio, the night nurse, just laughed a little. Normally, people laughing at Nemanja made him see red, made his blood boil, but not Rio. Rio never seemed to be laughing at him, only with him.
"You gotta relax, yeah? I mean. You know that, yeah, bruv? But you know you can't go bashin' in faces every time some idiot says somethin' without thinkin'."
Nemanja nodded, watching Rio's large hands still bandaging his fingers, gentle, and spoke softly, his voice low and husky.
"It's just... He makes me feel stupid."
"Jose?" Rio grinned, laughter in his voice already. "There's nobody in this place crazier than that loon, Nema!" he threw his head back, unbridled laughter escaping him, eyes shut tight.
Nema (who smiled just a little at the nickname) liked Rio. They were even almost friends; he was easy -- he made Nemanja feel at ease, feel much less on edge, like he didn't need to be angry.
Nema grinned back at him a little, and shrugged.
--
"Yoann, can you say this word for me?"
The nurse's voice was gentle, soft, but Yoann's expression stayed blank. He watched her gesturing at the word on the card as though he were a child learning his first word. The word was 'wrong'. Yoann could read perfectly well, probably better than any patient in the place. He had learned to read when he was only three, and he had taught himself.
Yoann had always known that his brain wasn't really the problem. He was smart enough to teach himself to read, to write (though nobody had ever seen him do so), and as far as he knew, he was perfectly capable of physically speaking. He hadn't tried talking when he was alone, so he couldn't be sure. One thing was certain, though; he could barely bring himself to open his mouth at all in front of other people. He hadn't spoken to anybody since he was eight years old.
"Yoann?" the nurse asked again, her voice still gentle, a touch of condescension in it. Yoann gave her a look that read contempt on his face, leaning back in his seat. He folded his arms protectively over his chest, sighing exasperatedly.
It was the same every day; he went to speech therapy, where he said nothing. He went to what his doctors called 'social hour', where he wouldn't say a single word. Then he went to his room, where he would draw or sleep or watch the empty field for boys playing football. Sometimes, in the summer, they would be there, kicking the ball around and tackling each other into the dry grass. Yoann liked being able to watch them in the summer, liked pretending he was allowed to leave and play with them.
Yoann had been in hospital since he was twelve. He was a ward of the government until he was eighteen, after his parents had all but left him for dead. He was almost twenty now, and hadn't ever said a word to any of the doctors, not the least of whom had known him since he was still a child.
"Very well, Yoann, if you don't want to try to read this word, you can go back to your room until mealtime."
Without a sound, Yoann stood and smiled at the nurse somewhat wryly, unfolding his arms and leaving to go back to his room.
Yoann wasn't particularly spiteful towards any of the nurses, or the doctors, not really. He had tried to talk when he was young, tried so hard, but whenever he was with other people, even the doctors, who he had every reason to trust, he couldn't make a single sound come out of himself. He knew there was a voice in there somewhere; he'd just lost it somehow, didn't know where it had gone to. He wasn't even sure what his voice would sound like now, now that he was older, that it had changed.
He retreated to his room to look out the window at the empty, muddy field. It was winter now. He sighed, curling himself up in the blankets from his bed, glancing at the one now usually inhabited by a young soldier, a fairly new patient, though he was apparently somewhere else.
Yoann had been given a roommate more than a year ago, to 'try to socialize' him, or so the doctors had said. Though Yoann had never uttered so much as a syllable to him, he had liked Iniesta plenty; he didn't try to make Yoann talk. Yoann appreciated that. Now, though, with Iniesta having improved so greatly, he was only in outpatient -- no longer living in the hospital meant he couldn't be Yoann's roommate.
Yoann missed him. He had laughed at anecdotes of Iniesta's; Iniesta had been quiet, sweet, but talkative enough at least to fill the silence Yoann left in his wake. Now, he rarely saw him. It made a line of worry appear in Yoann's forehead thinking about it; if he could never speak, would he ever get to see Iniesta again? He had, after all, been the very closest thing to a friend that Yoann had ever had in the hospital.
--
He could hear whispers behind him, swirling around him. There was nothing he could do about it, and he didn't want it to change. Ricardo felt like he was protected when he could hear the voices creeping up around him, twisting into him like vines, becoming more and more a part of him every day.
Ricardo (Kaka, to his family, to most people) hadn't known God when he was younger. He had known, or thought he had known, what God was. He had gone to church every week, faithfully, had even been an altar boy. The first time God had spoken to him, though, he had been fifteen -- no longer a little boy, but a teenager; usually sweet to his family but with a bit of an attitude on occasion. But when God spoke to him, he knew who it was immediately; every sense was filled with God's voice, clean and effortless as sunlight. There could be nothing bad that would ever happen while God spoke to Kaka.
He had been institutionalized after insisting to his parents that God had been speaking to him for years. He was seventeen. He had told them calmly, he could remember, with God encouraging him gently, the sound warm, easy in his ears. It was only when his parents had suggested that he needed help that he had begun to cry, and then shout. He had knocked out one of his father's teeth, and given him a black eye when he had tried to restrain Kaka. He had shattered a window, little wedges of clear glass lodging themselves in his hand.
Kaka hadn't been able to hear god when that had happened. Nor the next time, when his younger brother had shoved him, called him a lunatic -- Kaka had hit him hard in the face, heard his mother's cries ringing in his ears as his father had carried his brother into the house. Kaka didn't remember God speaking to him until after that had happened. All he could see when he thought of that incident was the blood that had pooled just below his brother's nose, thick and red.
Kaka was walking to therapy. There was nothing he could do to leave the hospital, not as long as he was considered a danger to himself and others. They had tried outpatient treatments, but Kaka kept getting upset when he was visited by his parents or his brother, who insisted that if he took medication, the voices would stop. Kaka didn't want to stop God from talking to him; God had chosen him, had picked him out of everyone to hear his voice.
None of the drugs they had tried had worked, which Kaka was glad of; Thorazine had made him anxious, and hadn't made the voices stop (Kaka had tried to convince the doctor that they had, but Berbatov was rather brilliant and had noted within five minutes that Kaka's demeanor hadn't changed for the better.
The Haldol had been marginally more effective, making the times at which God spoke to him more infrequent, but hadn't stopped them altogether. This lessening had made Kaka panic, and Berbatov had taken him off of Haldol almost immediately.
Kaka was supposed to start a new regimen of drugs, now. He was anxious about it, but God told him that everything would be alright, that he would never leave Kaka alone. That was comforting, and Kaka made his way to therapy expecting nothing to change, sure that everything would be fine.
God had said it, so it must have been true.
--
Cesc sat curled in a chair, rubbing his eyes, feeling despondent, almost bored. The hospital didn't offer him much to do, the severity of his case being assessed as low grade. Cesc didn't feel that way, not when every few days he would see a flash of something that had happened in the desert. He couldn't convince himself that his case was low-grade when he hadn't felt like himself since before he had gone to war.
Yoann, Cesc's roommate, sat silently across from him, chin in his hand, watching a boy called Nando flip through the channels on the television. Cesc hadn't been watching, had instead been intently focused on the thread-count of his hospital clothes.
Yoann had perked up, though, was shaking his head at Nando, who paid him no attention. Sometimes, Cesc wondered why Yoann didn't talk. He wondered the things that Yoann had wanted to say for his whole life, the things Yoann would have thought and never been able to express.
This thought was interrupted, though, when he realized why Yoann was upset, why he was shaking his head, trying to get Nando's attention. Nando had paused on the news on television, and the story that had begun was about the war, the number of troops who had died in the desert the way Cesc sometimes wished he had.
Cesc was frozen, eyes fixed on the screen. The images of boys his age running through desert towns were moving across the screen, and he could scarcely look away. It was like a nightmare. He didn't move, didn't make for the television or the remote, to rip it from Nando's hands like he wanted to and change the channel, to turn the television off, to do anything to get away from the sound of army drills and gunfire.
Before anybody in the room could process what was happening, Yoann was on his feet, very nearly leaping across the room to turn the television off. He knocked it backwards slightly as he did so, and though it didn't tip over, Nando and several other patients who had been watching started to shout at Yoann, whose face was emotionless, stony, aside from his eyes. His eyes were nervous, scared, and they looked straight at Cesc, who found the strength to stand from his seat and get between the patients and Yoann, giving Nando his most deadly glare.
"Leave him alone," he said, voice becoming gruff the way it had been in the army, coarse and quick, the way he had responded to his commanding officers.
"Leave him alone!" he said again, more forcefully this time, and the other patients moved away, rolling their eyes or muttering under their breath about Yoann, "retard" and "idiot" leaving their mouths. Yoann stood from where he had been kneeling in front of the television. He gave Cesc a small smile and moved away from the television as well, leaving Cesc alone with the orderly in the room, fuming, blood coursing with anger and fear and adrenaline.
Later, when he laid in his bed, next to Yoann's, the lights turned off and the moon shining through the window, he couldn't help murmuring a soft "thank you" to the boy who had never spoken to him, not a single time, even though they had lived together for several weeks now.
Yoann smiled a little as he laid in his own bed, looking out the window at the moon, thoughts of longing, of feeling like he didn't belong interrupted by Cesc's words.
In the morning, Yoann had leaned across to the shelf next to his bed and looked at the only things he'd had left from his life before the state had taken him as a ward. There was a small bear, tattered and worn and dusty -- Yoann hadn't looked at it in months, maybe longer -- and a photo of Yoann and two people he could vaguely recognize as his parents.
His parents were smiling in the photograph, and even the young boy of six or seven was smiling. He remembered the occasion; the family had gone together to a park, where Yoann had spilled the bottle of water his mother had given him to carry. Yoann remembered the day being hot and the bottle being slippery, his fingers sweaty, the bottle covered in condensation. His mother had screamed at him, had wrenched the empty bottle from his fingers and thrown it at him before she went after him with her hands, bruising his little arms and legs.
Yoann tried to put the incident from his mind, but he couldn't look away from the photograph, even when Doctor Henry came through the room to visit both him and Cesc. Cesc talked briefly to him, eyes disinterested, voice quiet and lifeless. Yoann wondered in the back of his mind if Cesc still felt panic the way he did, even after the army -- like every moment of what had happened was crushing in around him, coiling around his chest like a snake, until he couldn't breathe.
"Yoann?" Henry said softly, voice easy and tinged with a French accent. Yoann hadn't heard anybody speak french in longer than he could remember, and the sound was familiar, but not necessarily welcome. His parents had spoken French to him whenever they had spoken to him at all. He tore his eyes from the picture and looked at Henry, something in his eyes reading pain, wrongness, he was sure. No matter how much he wished he could be left alone when he felt this way, his eyes always betrayed his heart to the doctors.
"Are you alright?" Henry asked, leaning forward. Yoann shook his head, and Henry nodded.
"Would you like to see someone?"
Yoann nodded now, biting his lip, wishing he could speak, could scream, could cry and tell Henry what the photograph meant.
"King Eric?"
Yoann nodded again.
--
Sergio hadn't improved over the few days he'd been in the hospital. His eyes were dull, weak, his insides feeling as though they were filled with sludge and ashes and sharp things. He had been visited by three nurses, only one of whom stayed consistent. Every time he was visited he would plead with the nurse to give him something, anything.
He had managed to curl his fingers around the regular nurse's cock, keep his fingers moving long enough to get him hard. A doctor called Berbatov had seen him through the crack between the door and the doorjamb, though, had pulled the nurse away, eyes fretful and angry when he looked at the nurse.
Sergio had been devastated by that, by the loss of his only chance to get his hands on morphine. It was his only chance to feel better, he knew, it was the only thing that would stop the withdrawal and equalize him -- or knock him out. (Or, Sergio thought, he could overdose and die, be lost in the oblivion he craved for all time.)
It was the fourth day he was in the hospital that Sergio felt fingers he recognized on his arm, gentle and warm. He didn't want to open his eyes, his limbs feeling leaden and filled with aches from the withdrawal of cocaine and heroin.
"No," he murmured softly, tears in his voice, hands shaking as he tried to push the hands away. They were persistent, though, and far too gentle for Sergio to say no to.
"I just need to clean your arms up, Sergio… don't worry. It won't hurt."
The voice was familiar, too, and he opened his eyes, though they were bleary and bloodshot. Iker's face swam into view above him, and the tears he had held in for days spilled down his cheeks, silently. Iker's smile faded and he reached up to run a hand back over Sergio's hair gently.
"Oh, no, don't cry, little one," he said softly in Spanish, fingers ghosting over Sergio's unwashed hair.
Sergio shook his head, tears still streaming down his face as he struggled to sit upright, pushing at Iker's hands. "No, no no no," he said, voice thick with anguish, eyes closing again. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids now, shaking. "G-go away, you can't give me anything so I d-don't want you here, I, I don't care if my arms get infected a-and fall off and I d-die…"
The words were hardly strung together, were nearly unintelligible. But Iker didn't relent in his gentle quest to clean the track marks on Sergio's arms -- there had to be hundreds, from such constant use.
"Shh," Iker said softly, using the damp cloth in his other hand to press at the marks gently. "It's alright, pequeño," he said softly, smiling sadly at Sergio's pained expression, at the way he cried so forcefully.
"I want to die, I want to die," Sergio said softly, shakily, his eyes still squeezed shut, voice raw and vulnerable from days of nearly nonstop crying and shouting.
"I promise it gets better, Sergio… you just have to get clean, no? And you will feel better." The lines of concern grew across Iker's face, and Sergio shook his head emphatically, whispering still about wanting to die, wanting to be dead, wishing he had never been born.
Iker could only say what comforting words he could offer to the small, frail boy withdrawing sharply in the bed, and clean his arms. He stayed there a long time, next to Sergio, wishing there was something he could do.
Iker had asked to be put on Sergio's case when he had heard what happened with his other nurse. He recognized his own strength to resist Sergio's desperate, pleading advances, no matter how beautiful his warm brown eyes were, no matter how needy his voice became.
"It will be better when you have everything out of your system… you won't feel so many bad things inside of you, si? I promise. And then we can try to help figure out what is wrong."
Sergio's eyes were absolutely hopeless, were scared and angry and sad deeper than Iker could have ever thought.
Iker left Sergio curled in bed, blankets tucked around his small, bony frame.
--
Ruud had knocked on Cris' door three times before he had to pull his keys from his pocket and open the door himself. He frowned a little as he did it; Cris was usually good about opening his door for the nurses. This morning, though, Cris was still curled in bed, breathing shallow, dark lashes on his tan cheeks.
"Cris," Ruud said softly, one hand on his slender shoulder. Cris had never been one to sleep late, and it worried Ruud.
Ruud had become a nurse at the hospital a few years before. He had spent years training to be a nurse in a mental hospital after his cousin had died. He had been schizophrenic, and had killed himself when Ruud was sixteen. Ruud had been heartbroken, had promised himself that he would work with the mentally ill as soon as he was qualified.
He had expected to work with schizophrenics when he'd accepted the position there after his internship… but he didn't expect to feel his heart ache so sharply, even more than when he saw schizophrenic patients, when he looked at the dysmorphia patients. The way they were killing themselves because their minds wouldn't allow them to see how beautiful they were… it enflamed Ruud's passion for his job more than anything he had yet seen, and he knew he couldn't work with anybody else.
"Cris," he said again softly, sitting on the edge of the bed, stroking one large hand over Cris' hair.
Cris stirred somewhat, breathing still shallow, but he was certainly awake now.
"Ruud?" Cris' voice was strained, quiet, small, and Ruud could feel the sound resonating in his heart, the ache it left in its wake remaining for longer than it ever had.
"Did you eat yesterday, kleintje?"
Cris shook his head a little, struggling to sit up, still not opening his eyes. Ruud could see in his face how tired he was, even before he opened his exhausted, sleep-stuck eyes. Ruud didn't need to tell Cris how worried he was, how the reason he was tired was because he hadn't eaten, how he needed to eat to live. Cris had heard it all before, and he had tried to listen -- Ruud had seen him eat more in one sitting than ever before after Ruud had spoken to him gently -- but it always went back to Cris not eating, trying to feel beautiful in spite of his almost skeletal appearance.
"Will you eat for me today?"
Cris nodded a little, leaning against Ruud's shoulder and curling himself there. He must have been tired, Ruud knew, to be leaning on him that way. Some days, Cris didn't want anybody to touch him at all. Today was different, obviously. Ruud slipped an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close.
Cris murmured something about a dream he had had, where he was flying. Ruud nodded a little, and Cris looked up at him, smiling a little.
"Sometimes, when you're here, I want to get better."
Ruud could feel tears stinging the backs of his eyes, and he nodded, pulling Cris into a hug, which Cris returned.
"I would love it if you got better, Cris."
--
Eric had been filling out an application for a grant for the hospital for more than an hour now. He could hardly focus on the form -- had filled out the same line more than once, though it was information he knew backwards. He was tired; the hospital was underfunded, understaffed -- Eric needed help, but there was none to be found. He looked up at a framed drawing on his wall. It was quite good, of Eric's desk, done completely from memory by a former patient.
Eric kept the drawing to remind him why he did the job. The patient had died shortly after Eric had taken his position as the head practitioner at the hospital, but not before giving him the drawing. He had given Eric the name 'King Eric', and it had stuck (Eric had never liked the sound of 'Doctor Cantona' anyway).
He looked back at the paperwork he should have been focusing on, but was thankfully interrupted by a knock at the door of his office.
"Come in."
The dark wood door swung in to reveal Thierry. Eric nearly groaned. Whenever Thierry came to his office it usually ended in an argument, and with Thierry stalking out in such a French way that even Eric wanted to hit him. Behind him, though, was a hunched, scared-looking Yoann.
"He wanted to see you," Thierry said, stepping across the room easily, though Yoann stayed in the doorframe, not looking at Thierry or Eric. "He'll barely look at me, and I can't see what's wrong."
Eric stood from his desk, and nodded, exchanging a few words with Thierry and walking him to the door. There was no way Yoann would show Eric what was wrong unless they were alone. Eric knew it from experience; he was the one who had known Yoann the longest, who had known him since he was just a little boy. Yoann would show him things that he couldn't show to anybody else. He knew he could trust King Eric.
"Come in, enfant, come in," he said gently, smiling a little and placing a hand on his shoulder gently, leading him inside. Thierry shot him a look over his shoulder, one of worry and anxiety -- one he only got over Yoann and the young soldier who had recently become a patient.
Yoann sat down in the chair behind Eric's desk -- Eric's chair, but it was where he always sat. His eyes were nervous, terrified even, still lowered away from Eric's face, and his knuckles were white with how tightly his hands were clenched in his lap. He looked very small.
Eric sat down on the edge of the desk, smiling gently down at Yoann.
"Quel est le problème, petit Yoann?" Eric's French was soft, gentle. Yoann finally looked at him, his shoulders relaxing just a little. His eyes still said fear, and Eric reached out to touch his hair gently.
"Qu'est ce-que c'est, dans les mains, ma biche?" He asked, looking down at Yoann's tightly clenched fingers, out of which peeked a crumpled picture that Eric couldn't see all of. Yoann let his fingers come unclenched, smoothing the picture out against his knee. He held it out to Eric without a sound, his eyes watering. Eric took the picture from his hands -- a photograph of a young boy, one who must have been Yoann, and his parents.
"Vos parents?"
Yoann nodded, biting his lip so hard the skin turned white and then red, the skin close to breaking.
Eric knelt in front of Yoann urgently, dark eyes fixing on Yoann's nervous green ones. Yoann swallowed, opened his mouth soundlessly, closed it. Eric could see tears in his eyes.
"Ils ne peuvent pas te faire de mal maintenant, chouchou," he said, his voice very firm, hands clasping both of Yoann's shoulders.
Yoann's tears fell silently down his cheeks, soundless sobs wracking his body sharply. King Eric pulled Yoann into his arms, lifting him from the chair so they were both standing.
--
Doctor Berbatov had been working with Kaka for more than a week now on a new track. God had told him that it would be alright, that everything would be fine as long as he followed instructions. Kaka had listened -- had told Berbatov about every time that God had spoken to him, everything that God had told him since he was fifteen.
Berbatov had listened intently, though his eyes had constantly been nervous, and he'd written down countless notes for Kaka's chart. He had smiled gently every time that Kaka had mentioned how much he loved God, and that had reassured Kaka -- let him know that Berbatov didn't want to take God away from him, not really.
Dimitar had been worried about what another antipsychotic could do to Kaka in the long term. He had brought his concerns to King Eric, who had asked if he'd had another option in mind, and of course, Berbatov had -- therapy, to figure out the reason for Kaka's hallucinations, and perhaps an antidepressant. It would correct the chemical imbalance in his brain and hopefully stop the auditory hallucinations. At least, that was what Dimitar was counting on. King Eric gave him free reign, and Berbatov took the opportunity.
Kaka had been given his pills just before he went to sleep by Berbatov himself. Dimitar had practically tucked him in, sitting at his bedside for a short while with a cup of pills in his hand, explaining to Kaka that the purpose was the same as the other medications they had tried, but hopefully, this would work better -- would keep him from becoming overly anxious. He had made sure Kaka took the pills, which he did so without protest, giving Berbatov a big smile once he'd shown the underside of his tongue.
Berbatov had patted his hand and stayed there until he fell asleep. He couldn't help but be concerned; this was the toughest case of schizophrenia he had ever had.
In the morning, Kaka opened his eyes, lying on his back, in his bed. The sun shone through the window -- it was bright, midmorning sun, and it was beautiful. But the tears formed in Kaka's eyes after a moment, more quickly than he could process them.
The world was quiet.
He leapt from his bed, running his fingers into his hair, clutching at it. He whimpered softly, shaking his head, tears rolling down his cheeks, terror and anguish wrinkling his forehead and drawing more soft cries from him.
"Oh, Deus," he said softly, his voice strained already from the effort not to sob. "Deus, por que me abanonaste?"
There was no answer.
Kaka sobbed, falling to his knees and surely bruising them, beating tight fists against the floor. "No, no, no," he cried, barely a whisper in the too-silent room.
He stood quickly, opening his door, looking down the hallway in both directions, frantically. There were no nurses, no orderlies, no doctors -- nobody. He could hear sounds of life from the other rooms, from the lounge down the hall, but none in the corridor. He was starting to panic -- there was nobody to tell that God had gone away, that God had let go of his hand and now he was alone, all alone.
Kaka put his fist through the window in the nurse's station, which had been empty at the time. The glass had shattered easily over his hand, had cut his hand innumerable times. He picked up one of the shards of glass and, with a soft cry, slashed his skin, and went back to his room.
It was only ten minutes before a nurse discovered him, laying in bed, starting to lose consciousness, tears still streaming down his face, murmuring softly.
"Jesus lhe disse: 'Eu sou a ressurreição ea vida.' Aqueles que crêem em mim, ainda que morra, como todos os demais, viverão de novo."