Beautiful Mess [UsUk / AmeDen]

Chapter XXV

June

They usually felt like time was running past them quicker than it should. Before Alfred's mental health quickly deteriorated to the point of having to admit him into a psychiatric unit of the hospital, before the end of this college pressured them with final projects and exams they needed to give in, they felt like they couldn't get a grasp of time because it flew by them too fast.

Now, it was so slow that it was agonizing.

Well, at least to some of them.

To Alfred, seconds seemed like minutes, minutes turned to months, months to years and he lost track of time, track of life, of reality as a whole, and a huge part of him started regretting willingly admitting himself into the ward. On the other hand, he didn't hallucinate as strongly, but the medication was what made him so out of it (even more than he already was). Along with the fact there was no cure that would make him fully recover. There were only stabilizers, a bunch of pills and shots and exercises to ground himself back to earth, but nothing really helped. And even if the voices weren't as loud as they were in the first two weeks or so, he felt so hopeless, sleepless, worthless, detached, isolated, everything came crashing down on him. It didn't help that he started having sudden flashbacks from the car accident that took place nearly thirteen years ago - reliving the traumatic experience through the hallucinations and voices that made it all even more dramatic than it was, telling him how his parents wanted to die and how it wasn't an actual accident. Which he knew it was. He was the one who pointed at the incoming vehicle from the other side, his mother just didn't have a quick enough reaction to it and they hit it straight on the front.
He didn't remember much of what happened after, he just knew that the next thing he felt was waking up in the hospital and having to face the awful truth - but his imagination always knew how to take it too far. For some reason, he now knew every unreal detail about how it felt crashing into that truck. His skin was burning at the imaginary sensations, and his breath would stop in his throat, he'd start choking and anyone who didn't know his diagnosis would think he was having regular respiratory problems or some kind of physical illness. Oh, but he was aware of it too well. They all knew and hated the truth.

Nonetheless, Alfred wasn't going to be in the hospital for much longer. In fact, he was getting discharged from it today, after a full month of therapy - he wasted the entirety of May sulking in the corner of the patient room, only saying a normal sentence when Emilia was around, or someone that was visiting him. At first, therapy helped him form coherent sentences, but later on, he started thinking in disorganized ways again, followed by a new round of different medication. He hated it.

Take pills with food, take shots every week, take pills in the morning, take shots in the evening, and so the cycle repeated.

He knew that it was the only way they knew to help him, including behavioural, group and individual therapy which was actually good, unless he was forced to go on days he could barely get out of bed.

Perhaps from Emilia's perspective, things were looking up for Alfred's mental health at least a little. He went through with making a list of reasons to live, he laughed more than he did the first week he was there, he only got into one more fight with Ivan that didn't disturb him as much as it did the first two times, but the number of panic attacks he had was still concerning.

She didn't want him out of the hospital yet - she was aware that he wouldn't be able to take care of himself, that he couldn't finish college one way or the other because he missed a month of work and exams anyway. Life at the dorm would be a pain for him. Arthur wouldn't know what to do. Matthew and Adrienne were soon leaving Yale.

But she hoped that things were looking up.

He hid so many things from her in therapy, stopped sharing the details with the hope that he'd get out of here earlier. In that aspect, he did have luck. Instead of getting out when the college year ended, he got out as it was planned at first, right at the end of may or the first week of June.