Steady On Forward

Chapter 14

It didn't take long for a daily routine to develop over the next couple of weeks. He would get woken up at nine with a knock on his door and a nurse coming in to tell him in a disappointed voice that he'd missed breakfast again, and to go get his morning meds before the meds window closed. He'd get up, trying to choke back the panicked tears from the nightmare he'd inevitably just been woken up from enough to go get his stupid fucking meds. 

He'd pull on a sweatshirt and pull up the hood to hide his teary face, and then walk briskly down the hall, head down, to the window beside the nurse's station, let them scan his hospital bracelet, and take the meds they gave him with shaky hands in front of the nurse there, opening his mouth after to show that it was empty, before going back to his room and getting in the shower, letting himself finally cry it out.

Jason would usually show up right around when he finished showering, and he'd stay until around lunchtime, then after lunch usually someone or other would call Dick on one of the phones, then Dick would go to the afternoon group session. Talking to his doctor changed times every day, and could be any time from when he'd just been woken up through the end of afternoon group — a nurse just came and told him Dr. Reed was ready to talk to him, and he just had to leave whatever he was doing. 

After group, Bruce and sometimes one or two of the others would come see him and stay until dinner, then after dinner was wrap-up group, and then usually a couple more people would call him, and finally he would call Jason right before lights out.

Thankfully lights out only meant the dimming of the lights in the halls, and that the TVs — one in the day room and one at one end of the L-shaped hall — were turned off and the phones taken off the hooks. They were allowed to have their lights on in their rooms if they wished, so for the rest of the night, Dick would read and do whatever small workouts in his room he could get away with, and usually fall asleep for a few hours around dawn.

Dick was tired of this place in general, but he was finding his talks with his doctor particularly exhausting. Not because talking through his trauma and dark thoughts took a lot out of him — although it did — but because of Dr. Reed. 

He had hoped maybe it would get better with time, but it had been weeks and the doctor was still clinical and removed to the extreme. Dick knew of course mental health professionals couldn't become personally invested past a certain point, but he thought they were supposed to care at least a little bit. Dr. Reed didn't even pretend to care.

The doctor wasn't rude or anything, it was just that most of the things he said sounded like he was replying to just another faceless, indistinct patient, like they weren't direct replies to what Dick was saying, just stock responses in the general vicinity. It didn't help either that Dr. Reed repeatedly asked him the same questions — not ones he was supposed to repeat like checking in on Dick's symptoms for the day, but things Dick had already explained in exhaustive detail multiple times over.

Basically, what it came down to was that it just felt like the doctor wasn't actually listening to anything he said. 

He had tried to bring it up with Dr. Reed, to explain that it felt really frustrating and like he wasn't being listened to when he kept having to repeat the same things, but the doctor had merely said he was sorry to hear that, and then proceeded to change absolutely nothing.

After that, Dick had enquired with the nurses about possibly switching to one of the other doctors — of which there were two — but had been told that it was not allowed. And so he had resigned himself with having to deal.

He also was starting to really hate the group sessions, because most of them were complete repeats every few days and it was incredibly boring to hear the same lecture and fill out the same worksheet every time. But he had to keep showing up if he wanted to get out of the hospital anytime soon. He had to behave. It was really fucking boring most of the time though.