louis likes a certain garden and a certain boy with green eyes.
(or the one where louis was in a car accident and he finds more than one thing at his recovery center.)
loosely based off "featherstone" by the paper kites
louis isn't normal.
he never has been, and the doctors tell him he never will be. the area of his brain damaged in the drunk driving accident when he was sixteen ruined him mentally. no cure. no fix. no miracle recovery.
louis lost everything.
there are a lot of silly little things he can't do anymore, like write legibly or feed himself. they say his fine motor skills will return in time, but for now louis is reliant on everyone to do basic tasks, and he absolutely hates it. when pretty nurses with the smiling faces come in to help him dress, louis avoids their eyes and all the while thinks how much better it would've been if his brain would've quit the fight before he did.
and then there are the bigger things louis can't do, like find his way around places or recognize the faces of his family. he's forgotten his mum seven times this week alone. the doctors assure him he's getting better. louis isn't sure.
it's a lonely world when everyone in it is unrecognizable to louis.
the nurses give him all kinds to tips to remember his family, like identifying them by height and hair style. they each wear a different color pin which corresponds to the name table by louis' bed. they try to help him, they really do. but it's not the same.
life never will be, really. louis isn't louis anymore, so how could it ever feel normal? he used to wake up in his flat with his best mate liam. he used to go out and party and drink and shag random guys and sleep with no regrets on his mind. now louis wakes up among sterile white sheets with a mind so fucked up he doesn't even know who his own mum is.
six months is a long time to wait for a recovery. it's pretty evident by this point that louis will never be well again, despite the vigorous therapy and the medication. he's young enough to regain some mobility because of brain plasticity but old enough to lose enough of himself.
as much as louis doesn't admit it, this whole thing hurts him. depressing. he wants to run away. he wants to escape. he wants to be healthy again.
so louis hides.
he finds himself in closets frequently cocooned in silk wrappings like a caterpillar ready to bloom. he'll sit there for hours and stare at his body--his arms, his legs, his fingers and toes--and wonder how did they stop working? he begs them to move again, to make it all right, but he isn't okay, he never will be. louis' injuries go deeper than skin level.
sometimes he sees the accident.
he'll be sleeping and his dreams will erupt in a burst of metal and screeching and broken limbs. he hears the screams of the people in the car, he feels the white-hot pain streaking through his ribs, his head, his left leg. he tastes the metallic blood, sharp and distinct in his mouth.
he wakes up screaming and sweating with tears tracking down his cheeks and anxiety rippling through his mind. nurses rush in and put him under and everything is blissfully black again.
people say louis is lucky to be alive. he isn't so sure.
-
there's only one place on this whole campus that louis actually likes.
it's a little fenced-off area outside the rehabilitation wing that once used to be a patio. since it hasn't been occupied in nearly three years, it's overgrown with weeds and broken gnomes scatter the waist-high grass. it's small and enclosed and rather shady but there isn't a nurse to be found there and louis decides it's his place.
