Chapter Seven
The next few days were a blur. Paige came Thursday evening, sitting with him again while he ate. Friday evening Tommy dreaded, but Derek sat with him in the media room and they watched Disney movies. Tommy sang along as he colored and Derek mimicked voices from the movies, even standing up and doing the dances fromAladdinandMulan. Tommy couldn’t help but smile at the silliness.
Tommy slept okay both nights, minor fits of wake and sleep, and up at four in the morning with a panic attack. It was annoying to say the least, but since he knew what it was, he could breathe his way through it. He never did fall back to sleep in the mornings and often had to get moving or risk the anxiety turning to deep depression which would leave him sobbing and unable to function.
The weekends were meant to be subdued days. Less appointments, morefunactivities. Tommy ate breakfast and went to a long yoga class. The teacher instructed him to try humming to stimulate his vagus nerve while they did the stretches. It was work to focus on doing both at once, and actually shoved his anxiety back because it took a lot of concentration.
When class was over, he dreaded the rest of the day. Lunch and then mostly free time. He’d already colored through half the swear word book. Nothing nice enough to give to Paige yet as he found when his anxiety was high his pencil strokes became rough and chaotic, colors skewed.
“Are you ready to see your friends?” Shana asked. His midday nurse, Erika would be in soon, and it sounded like they switched off with others on Sunday and Monday. He had to admit that a change in the nurses worried him. A few days of a routine and small changes became stressors. They assured him that was normal, but would become routine as well.
“Friends?” He suddenly remembered that Bas and Dane were supposed to be visiting. The panic hit without warning. He cursed as it was suddenly hard to breathe, and he was staring down a tunnel as his vision collapsed inward.
Shana walked him through the breathing exercise, hand slowly rubbing his back. “Can you hum?”
He thought about it. How the breathing worked with humming. He tried. And it took three attempts to reach that familiar sensation at the back of his throat.
“There you go. You’re getting good at this.”
Tommy clung to the wheelchair, wishing he was strong enough to walk. He’d had only one occurrence of his legs giving out since Paige had helped him when he arrived. But this place was huge, and he didn’t have the strength yet to walk from his room to the dining hall. What would Bas and Dane think? He worked a few more rounds of breathing and humming before he could think straight again.
“You ready?” Shana asked.
“No. But okay.”
“I’m proud of you,” Shana said. “You could send them away. Hide in your room. A lot of other patients avoid doing more than they have to. They eat in their rooms, skip activities, and refuse visitors.”
“Is that why I never see anyone else?” Tommy wondered. He had thought it strange.
“Yes.”
“But to heal, I need to participate,” Tommy said. He remembered that from his visits to Dane. When Dane shut down, he got worse. Tommy didn’t want to get worse. He couldn’t imagine how much worse it could get? The dark blot in his brain taking over? Could he survive that? He didn’t think so.
“Not everyone wants to heal. Or has the strength to try.” She steered him into the dining hall. It was empty other than Dane and Bas sitting at a table. There was a pizza box in front of them. Tommy worried at his lip. “The pizza is approved by your nutritionist,” Shana told him as she slid his chair up to the table. “You’ll still have to have your protein shake, but eat with your friends.” She gave them a nod of her head before she headed toward the kitchen.
“Hey,” Tommy said with a slight up-nod like nothing had changed. Though he didn’t feel at all the same. Dane sat across from him, looking healthy, red hair neat, beard trimmed, a normal weight, though a bit on the low end. It was always a battle to keep him eating. Tommy hoped he hadn’t contributed to a relapse for Dane.
Bas looked good, dressed to the nines and wearing glitter shadow. He was pretty in a European glam way. Not ashamed to be male and in glitter, or nicer clothes. Bas should have been the rock star. He’d have fit better than Tommy ever did.
Bas blinked hard for a minute and looked away. “Fuck. I wasn’t going to cry.”
Tommy gulped. Dane rubbed Bas’s back. “He looks better than I thought he would,” Dane remarked. “You do,” Dane said directly to Tommy. “Last time we saw you was in the ER. It was bad. We thought you died.”
Bas leapt up from his seat and rounded the table to wrap his arms around Tommy. A crushing hug that had him half draped across Tommy’s lap. Tommy returned his hug even as Bas sobbed into his neck. “I thought you died.”
“I’m sorry,” Tommy whispered, at a loss for what to say. His heart ached. Tears stung his eyes too. How many days had he cursed them all for abandoning him? His own stupidity over not wanting anyone to see him in the middle of his fall. He had fucked up, in a dozen ways. How did he fix that? None of this had come up in therapy yet. Everything focused on healing himself first, though he vaguely knew from the booklets he had received on alcohol abuse, making amends would be part of his healing process. “I don’t know what to do to fix any of this or to say I’m sorry.”
Bas pulled away to stare Tommy in the eyes. “You fix you. That’s what you do to fix this.”
“I’m trying,” Tommy said. “Doing stuff. Going to classes, trying to learn. Putting in the work.” He rubbed his forehead where the dark spot lingered. It made him feel ugly and broken. Why were the negative emotions easy and the positive ones work?
Bas let out a long, practiced breath. “That’s good.” His smile was tight. Restrained. He leaned over and gave Tommy another firm hug before returning to his seat and dabbing at his eyes. “I probably look like a queen caught in the rain. A tragedy.”
Dane snorted a laugh. “You look like a drama queen.”
Tommy gaped at them. Surprised Dane could turn Bas’s teasing back on him.
“You got the queen part right. Best you get on your knees and worship me,” Bas commanded.
