I was sitting at a table, scribbling words down on the piece of paper I had set out in front of me. The words weren't very legible, though, since most of them were violently scratched out, the paper underneath them wearing thin and on the verge of ripping. The table - along with several others - was in an enclosed porch, beautiful greenery surrounding the fairly large room and the glass ceiling allowing the moon that hung high in the dark blue sky to shine through and serve as a natural light to accompany the artificial ones scattered about.
I ran my free hand through my hair - a white band secured around my wrist with a couple of marker slashes streaked across it to indicate which kind of medication I was to receive - and heaved a sigh. I dropped my hand back down to the table and glanced over my shoulder, looking at the person sitting at the other end of the room. They were there to act as the surveillance camera, making sure I didn't act out, but they were a pretty shitty surveillance camera seeing as they barely paid any attention to me.
"Hey, excuse me?" I called out to them.
They looked up from the paper they were reading and met my gaze with a glare. "What do you want, Stump?"
I pivoted my body in the chair and rested my arm on the back. "Can I make a call?" The corner of my lips curled up into a smile, or the closest thing to one. "I've been really good this week, ask anyone."
They scoffed and returned their attention to the periodical. "Yeah, and I won the lottery."
The grin on my face disappeared and my eyes narrowed before I muttered under my breath, "You wouldn't win the lottery even if you bought every ticket."
"Keep talking to me like that and I'll make it so you never can make a call," They threatened. I rolled my eyes and turned back in my chair, looking down at the paper I had out in front of me. Anger boiled up inside of me and I picked the sheet up in my hand, crumpling it up into a ball and chucking it across the room.
I hated being here, this undeniable mental institution. The place wasn't an actual mental institution, technically was a "rehab center", but I swore it had the same amount of insane people as a nuthouse. I had Pete and Win to thank for this, and I wasn't saying that in a grateful way.
At first, I didn't even know what was happening.
Win had come in a little while later after running out, tears streaking her cheeks and her breathing broken and uneven. I asked her what was wrong and she couldn't muster up the courage to tell me. She just shook her head and brushed past me, bumping into my shoulder along the way as she retreated into the kitchen, where she picked up where I left off with the dishes, distracting herself from whatever was on her mind.
We kept our distance that night, a heavy silence hanging in the air. It wasn't until we were both in bed around midnight that she asked me to just listen to her, to hear her out and to not get upset when she told me she what she had to tell me.
"What do you have to tell me?" I inquired, my eyebrows knitting together in suspicion. She was sitting up, her back hunched over ever so slightly, and I was lying down on my side so I was facing her, my head in my hand, my arm acting as a support.
"You need help, Patrick," She murmured, making an obvious effort to avoid my gaze as she picked at a snag in the bed sheets, "Help that Pete and I can't give you."
"What are you talking about?" I snapped, bringing my legs in so that I mirrored her appearance. "I'm fine, Win."
"No you're not!" She screamed, meeting my gaze with glistening eyes. Her bottom lip began to tremble, tears threatening to stream down her cheek, "Goddammit, Patrick, you're not fine. You're...You're...I don't even know what you are and that's why you need help. I don't want you hurting yourself, or anyone for that matter. You're delusional, crazy even, and I don't think you realize how scared you make me and Pete. Every day I wake up, the first thing I do is make sure that you're still breathing; that you haven't done anything to yourself while I was sleeping. I'm constantly worried about you and when you tell me you're fine...it breaks my heart because you're so in denial that you don't even realize that something's wrong. I just want you back, Patrick. I want the guy who walked into therapy one day and sat down next to me even though I'm the most unapproachable person around. I want the guy who was stubborn about joining a band because he didn't like singing when his voice was like a fucking angel's. I want the guy who didn't depend on drugs every single second of every single day and who could tell the difference between reality and not. I want the old you back, that's all." By the end of her rant, she was an absolute mess. Her eyes were red and puffy, her cheeks were wet, and her nose was running off her face.
I stared blankly at Win, trying to process everything she'd just said. Her sentences didn't make sense.
She looked back down at her lap and finished, her voice nearly inaudible at just above a whisper, "And...And if you don't get help, I don't think I can stick around any longer."
I tilted my head down, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to make of it all.
That's when she jumped at me and held onto me like I held onto earlier that day, except our roles switched. "Please, Patrick, you need to get help," She begged, crying into my neck, "I don't want to lose you."
I couldn't say no. I had to agree, tell her I would get help, and all because I didn't want to lose her either. She and Pete were the only people I truly had in my life. If she left me, Pete would've probably left too, and then I would've had no one to rely on.
Needless to say, I'd somehow successfully pushed everyone else in my life away without even knowing it. My mother gave up on me when she found out I was smoking, actually going to extent of kicking me out of the house and telling me not to come back unless I was clean (that was when Win and I moved in together). As for Joe, well, Joe's and my friendship kind of just disappeared, vanished into thin air. I was sure there was a reason and a whole situation around it, but I couldn't remember what happened for the life of me.
So with no one to go to, and no means of living on my own, I admitted myself to the rehab center. I had to, I didn't have another choice.
If I've been keeping count correctly, I've been here sixty-three days. The first few weeks were hard, the withdrawal kicking the shit out of me. I stayed up all day and all night, more than I did at home with Win. I would just sit on the uncomfortable piece of wood this facility called a bed, my legs pulled into my chest, my arms wrapped around them, and my chin resting on my kneecaps, my gaze locked outside of the window and waiting for the moon to disappear and the sun to come up. It became so bad one day that I couldn't even get out of bed.
However, once the withdrawal symptoms subsided and once I got over the fact that Win's episode was nothing but an act (Pete having told her that that was their best shot at getting me to go), things weren't so bad. Sure, I still felt trapped in this place and there wasn't a single person I liked here, but that didn't mean that things were necessarily bad. I had three meals a day, a warm shower every night, and I had ample time to work on my music, though I would admit it was difficult when I didn't have any instruments and it was a struggle just to obtain a pen and a piece of paper.
"Can I please make a call?" I asked again, looking back at the person again.
"I already told you-"
"I know what you told me, but I'm asking you again. Can I please make a call? I think I deserve one call. Just one."
They groaned and slammed the paper down on their lap, shifting their eyes up and over to mine. "Patrick, we've already talked about this, Pete's fine."
"That's not why I want to call him."
"I don't care. You're not calling him." They picked up the folded up newspaper and set it to the side, standing up and walking over to me. "You know, I think you've had enough free time, Patrick. It's time to go back."
"But I didn't even get to finish my song..." I replied dismally, a slight whine to my voice as I was pulled up to my feet, my body like a rag doll in their arms.
"You can finish it another day," They assured me, leading me back into the building.
I was ushered back into my room and that door was locked behind me, the guard leaving without bidding me a goodnight. I walked up to the door and looked out, watching the guard disappear around the corner. I spun back around and lifted the stiff mattress up from the bed frame, revealing a knife I'd secretively acquired from the kitchen.
I picked the knife up from its hiding place and smirked at the glint it had in the moonlight that shone through the thin window the prison-like room provided me.
I used to be all talk about things like this, never having the guts to actually do something like this to myself.
But tonight was different.
I wasn't high.
I was thinking straight.
And I was really going to kill myself.
