7

                                    

                                          
When Josh woke up in the hospital for what felt like his millionth time, he decided he was done. He decided that waking up and being alive after being so close to death was not his thing, and that it'd happened too many times. Despite the nurse sitting in his doorway and watching him with narrowed, sharp eyes, he'd managed to rip his I.V out of his veins, not minding the blood staining both his gown and the sheets. The nurse didn't notice, somehow, and once she quickly turned away to answer a question, Josh jumped to his feet, a monitor crashing to the ground behind him. The nurse and whomever she was answered to looked at him in shock as he picked up the nearest object and hurled it at the window.
                          
Yet the hospital wasn't as dumb as he'd wished, and the window did not break. Josh felt tears prick his eyes as he picked it back up, going to throw it again when hands wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him back. "No!" He cried, trying to push away the nurses. They didn't reply nor did they comply as they held him down. Josh eventually stopped resisting, understanding there was no possibility in fighting back, in opposing them and succeeding in his (literal) suicide mission.
                          
"No," he croaked, sinking into the hands and the ground as they stuck pills into his mouth followed by water. He tried to spit out the water yet they covered his mouth, and Josh understood there was no way he could end his life. There was no possibility in dying, and surviving sounded so hard, sounded so difficult.
                          
So Josh swallowed his pills, and, bleeding, he fell asleep.
                          
Tyler didn't like being alone, not after Blurryface had begun to sing and scream all day until his head creaked and moaned as though he were a tree. But at the same time, he didn't like to be around all the corpses who were still talking and breathing even though they weren't living. He didn't like the voices in his head, yet he didn't like the voices telling him who he was when he was just a lonely, sad little boy.
                          
Once Josh had tried to drown himself in the shower's ankle water with a blade to his hand and mouth shut in a silent prayer of death, Tyler hadn't been completely left alone. They expected Blurryface to become the war front in his mind and to rip the wallpaper off with broken and stubby fingernails busy picking apart his sanity, or what remained of it. His door had to be held open a few inches, with staff sitting outside watching him every moment. Even when he had to take a leak, his care provider would stand in the room. Whatever purpose that served Tyler didn't know.
                          
His doctors and nurses and care providers were all expecting him to snap, to destroy the world and every aspect of himself in it. They even increased his anxiety medication after the incident, which Blurryface insisted didn't help at all, and that Tyler should just spit it in the faucet like every other pill. Yet after taking a few, the hot ball of coiled worry and excitement unwound in his chest, and it felt as though he could somewhat breathe again.
                          
His care provider, Joe, would arrive at 3:30 every day when whoever else was his care provider switched out. Whenever Joe arrived, he would nod towards the doors, and they would go into what they now called the "music room". Tyler wanted to rename it since the name wasn't too original, yet he and Blurryface both hadn't settled for a new name yet. Whenever they got into the room, Joe would ask him about any new songs and then sit down and simply listen.
                          
Tyler had quickly tuned the old guitar Tree Pine had, and gotten used to their piano. It hadn't taken long for him to start writing songs, especially after Josh's suicide attempt. Instead of hurting himself and giving into Blurryface's bad temptations and shrill screams, Tyler had instead focused on music and his writing, like Joe suggested. And when they were in the music room is when Tyler felt Blurryface disappear into the keys and notes he was playing, into the words he was singing. And in those moments, it felt almost as though he had jumped into a lake with the sun beating on his back and roasting his skin. It was cold, crisp and familiar yet forgotten.