Pain - A TommyInnit Angst

Chapter 36

The days went past in a blur for Tommy. Every day was the same: filled with flashbacks, inescapable fear, unsympathetic nurses and therapy sessions. His therapist's name was Monica and he hated her with a passion. He had still never spoken during a session, and planned on keeping it that way. The sessions just consisted of her talking at him, trying to get him to 'open up to her' about his parents, and about Derick. Tommy didn't want to talk to anyone about those things, especially not some nosy woman who was being paid to talk to him. He always felt worse after coming out of his sessions, and normally only remembered small sections of them, because of his conscious efforts to zone out whenever that foul woman spoke.

But more than anything, hanging over everything was still fear. Predominantly fear of the past, but also a strange fear of the future. Tommy knew that it didn't make sense, but a large part of him was terrified of recovering, of returning home with Wilbur and living a normal life. His entire life and being had been constructed from his abusive and abnormal childhood, and Tommy was terrified that, if he was stripped of this abnormality, he would be left with nothing. Although he hated it, it was all he had; he didn't know who he would be if none of this had happened to him, and he was now too fucked up to find out.

• • •

Wilbur felt as if he were constantly on edge; he had been advised not to visit Tommy at all while he was in psychiatric care to try and reduce Tommy's dependency on him. Although he knew that this was probably best, it still killed Wilbur not really knowing how Tommy was doing; his only updates on his recovery were daily short phone calls from John.

Wilbur would be lying if he said that this wasn't taking a toll on his own mental health. He had grown distant from all his other friends and had begun ignoring their messages asking him if he was okay, simply because he didn't want to admit to himself that he wasn't. Surely if he ignored it, it would all go away eventually? He had to be strong for Tommy and, to be honest, as long as Tommy recovered he didn't care if it destroyed him.

So Wilbur spent his days sitting alone in his bedroom. He had begun to pass the time by sleeping, only waking up for intermittent meals, although he was rarely hungry.

Above everything else, the guilt he felt was overwhelming; why had he let Tommy go out alone? Why had he let him walk home in the dark? None of this would have happened if it weren't for his naivety. He had replayed the night that Tommy got taken thousands of times in his mind. If only he had gone to pick Tommy up. If only he had insisted that he didn't walk home alone.

If only...

But he had let him walk home by himself. And there was no way to take it back, and now Tommy was paying for Wilbur's mistake tenfold. And Tommy didn't seem to be getting any better; in fact, he seemed to be progressively getting worse. John had even confided in him that he had never seen a case of DTD like Tommy's; normally patients showed at least small signs of improvement after a few hours of therapy and Tommy was now having two hours of therapy a day, and yet his state was still declining.

Wilbur heard his phone ringing and looked over to see that it was John calling. He sighed, knowing that it was most likely another negative update about Tommy.

'John?'

'Wilbur, we've had an incident regarding Tommy's therapist, I'd really appreciate it if you could come over to the hospital so we could discuss it in person.'

Wilbur's heart began to pound.

'John, please, what's happened? Is Tommy okay?'

All that came from the other end of the phone was silence.

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