Chapter Text
Time and again
I thought that the end
Was just around the bend
But you showed me there's more
I got more in store
And you’ve got me
~Ingrid Michaelson
Charlie Spring woke up in a hospital bed.
At least, that’s where he thought he was. He felt his body reclined at a precarious angle as he groggily cracked open his eyes. His vision was greeted with the dull white walls in front of him, and a pale pink blanket over his body. As he took in his surroundings, he noticed the gentle pressure of another hand on top of his.
“Olly, go and get the doctor,” he heard his sister’s panicked voice say. “He’s waking up.”
Charlie heard the sound of his brother’s shoes shuffling out of the room as he turned his head toward the direction of his sister’s voice. With great effort, he opened his eyes fully as he took in the alarming sight of Tori’s worried face. She had prominent bags under her eyes, and her short, dark hair was much frizzier than usual.
“Charlie,” she said quietly from her seat next to him. “Can you hear me?”
Charlie opened his lips to speak, but no sound came. Instead, he nodded his head once in affirmation. He felt Tori’s hand squeeze tighter around his.
“Do you know where you are?” she asked calmly. He let his eyes dart around the room, taking in the various machines and devices only found in hospitals. He nodded again.
Tori lifted Charlie’s left hand and brought it to her cheek, leaning into it. “We thought we lost you, Charlie,” she choked. “We thought we lost you this time.” Charlie felt a tear reach his hand as it fell from Tori’s eye.
It was only a matter of seconds before Olly was back in the room, a small redheaded woman in a white coat walking alongside him.
“Charlie,” the woman said with subdued cheer as she walked to the side of the bed opposite Tori. “It’s wonderful to see you awake. I’m Doctor Edwards. Do you know why you’re here?”
It was then that Charlie realised he didn’t. He had no recollection of entering the hospital, nor had he any clue how long he had been there. His mind felt foggy, like all of his memories were locked away somewhere and he didn’t have access to them. He glanced back at Tori for answers, but only found tears streaming down her cheeks as Olly stood next to her with his hand on her shoulder. He looked to Doctor Edwards and shook his head no.
Doctor Edwards sighed, a sympathetic expression overtook her face. “You’re here because your sister tells us you attempted suicide. You’ve got quite the wound on your arm. Your sister says she found you, and it’s lucky she did. She saved your life.”
Charlie slowly turned his head towards Tori again. She was still clutching his left hand as he watched her eyes drift towards his right arm. He turned his head to follow the path of Tori’s gaze, and saw a large bandage covering his entire forearm and wrist.
It was slowly coming back to him now. The bathroom. The blood. Tori screaming.
Dr. Edwards sat on the edge of Charlie’s bed and gently patted his thigh, drawing his attention away from the bandage. “We’ve got you all stitched up,” she said brightly, “and you’ll be good to go in no time. We’ll let you rest for a bit longer soon, but first I need to check your vitals and make sure you’re in good medical condition. Then, we’re going to bring our mental health liaison team in to chat with you. They’ll help you sort out the right course of action for making sure you’re safe and can get you the help you need.”
Charlie watched as Dr. Edwards checked his blood pressure and looked over his wound. She asked him a few more questions that seemed to be geared towards making sure he understood who he was and how he ended up here. Charlie felt himself nodding in response, or whispering answers to questions that couldn’t be settled with a yes or no. He felt himself fading again as Dr. Edwards left, Tori’s muffled sobs falling into an almost imperceptible ostinato as he drifted back to sleep.
The next thing Charlie remembered was two more official-looking people coming into his room, saying they had some questions to ask him. They introduced themselves as Dr. Patterson, a psychiatrist, and Jenna, a psychiatric nurse.
Olly was gone, but Tori was still there holding Charlie’s hand. Dr. Patterson had asked Charlie if it was okay if Tori stayed, and he nodded his head. There was nothing she didn’t already know, and he thought it would be easier to have her there to explain the things he may have trouble voicing.
“Charlie’s had a relapse in both his eating disorder and his self-harming,” he heard Tori calmly disclose when he failed to answer one of Dr. Patterson’s questions yet again. “He was treated for anorexia and OCD when he was fifteen, and had been doing well with managing both for a long time. He’s been fine for years, actually, but the last year or so has been really hard on him. He fell back into his old coping mechanisms, though I’m not quite sure when. He recently split up with his ex-boyfriend, whom he lived with, and so he moved in with me. He’s been with me for about two months, and had been starting to do a bit better, but then yesterday he got some bad news and… well, you know what happened next.”
“Does all of that sound about right, Charlie?” Dr. Patterson asked him. Charlie nodded in agreement as the doctor scribbled vigorously on her notepad.
“I’ll need you to answer these next questions on your own,” she continued. “They’re all yes or no questions to start with, so you can nod your head if you don’t feel you can speak. Give me a nod for yes if that sounds okay with you.” Charlie nodded.
“Are you still having thoughts about wanting to kill yourself?” she asked. Her voice was light and casual, as though she was asking what Charlie’s favourite colour was. Charlie nodded yes, and immediately felt Tori’s hand spasm in his own.
“Do you have any plans for how you might kill yourself?” Dr. Patterson proceeded, maintaining her conversational inflection.
Charlie shook his head no. Since he had survived this attempt to slit his wrist, he knew that particular option was off the table. He wouldn’t soon forget the pain of that experience. Taking his preferred self-harm technique several steps further was the only way he’d ever thought to end his life, and now that that was out of the question, he didn’t have another plan.
“Can you think of anything that would stop you from killing yourself?” Dr. Patterson continued.
“Please, Charlie,” Tori whispered as she squeezed his hand. Her voice was wobbling under the tremendous effort she was putting forth to control it. “Please don’t leave me.”
Charlie closed his eyes. He remembered the moment before the blade sliced into his skin; his last thought had been Tori. He had hesitated for a moment, thinking about what his actions would do to her. Ultimately, he convinced himself that any anguish she felt would be temporary, and that the relief of not having him as a burden any more would eventually outweigh the initial grief. Now that he was on the other side of it and had survived because of Tori’s unwillingness to let him go, he could see that he had been wrong.
He wished Tori didn’t love him so much. If she cared about him just a little bit less, he wouldn’t feel obligated to keep existing. But she loved him enough to save him, and he knew the only way he could ever make it up to her was to keep living for as long as he could.
Reluctantly, Charlie looked directly at the doctor and nodded his head yes.
This time, Jenna spoke. Charlie noticed how tall she was compared to Dr. Patterson, her tortoiseshell glasses sliding down the bridge of her nose as she talked. “Charlie,” the nurse began, “since you’ve made quite a significant suicide attempt, we feel you may benefit from an admission to the inpatient unit. That way, we can assess your situation more closely while making sure you’re safe and your risks are reduced.”
Charlie felt his heart sink. He had known this was coming since the moment Dr. Edwards had explained to him why he was in the A&E, but that didn’t make this moment any easier. He didn’t want to go back to the inpatient unit. He knew it had helped him when he was a teen, but he had heard there was a big difference between the under-18 wards and the adult wards, and there was no guarantee he would end up somewhere favourable. He also wasn’t interested in being helped any more. He didn’t want to kill himself , exactly; he just wanted to stop existing.
“If you agree to this,” Jenna continued, “we would admit you informally. This means that as soon as your care team is satisfied that you’re making good progress and have a safe treatment and discharge plan, you’ll be able to go home. We are still worried about your risk, which is why we think admission is the best option. If you decline admission, we might have to consider assessing you under the Mental Health Act.”
The nurse paused, presumably to give Charlie time to think about the information he had just received. Charlie was grateful he remembered most of this from his teenage years, as all the jargon still sounded a little confusing. He knew that an informal admission meant that once he was deemed safe, he could take his own discharge if he wanted. If he were sectioned under the Mental Health Act, however, he’d have a battle on his hands to get out of the place. Informal admission meant he could probably go home in a matter of weeks, while being sectioned would likely mean months in hospital.
Though neither option was what Charlie wanted, it was obvious there was a clear winner.
“So, Charlie,” Dr. Patterson spoke again, her high-pitched voice piercing through the quiet room. “Will you agree to go into inpatient admission informally?”
Charlie looked to Tori again, her face pleading. He turned back towards Dr. Patterson and unenthusiastically nodded his head once more.
❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹❤️🩹
Charlie never went home. He was transferred from A&E to a medical ward for ongoing observation and treatment of his wound. During the three days he spent on the ward, he ate what he could orally, but also received additional nutrition through an IV to supplement. He had several more sessions with members of the mental health team, during which Charlie was more able to find his voice since the first day’s silence.
Tori rarely left Charlie’s side while he was on the ward. Olly was in and out, at one point returning with a suitcase packed for Charlie’s inpatient stay. Their parents hadn’t come, but that was Charlie’s decision. They were in the middle of a two-week holiday in Mojacár with Julio’s parents the night Charlie tried to kill himself. Tori waited to call them until after Charlie had been awake for a day or so, telling Charlie that she wanted to be sure which news she was delivering when she spoke to them. They wanted to rush back, but Charlie told them not to; he didn’t want them to see him like this, and would rather they wait until he arrived at inpatient. The family had learned over the years that Charlie’s relationship with his parents was better when he was the one in control of how often they saw each other, so Jane and Julio honoured his wishes.
Charlie was discharged from the medical ward once a bed became available in the nearest inpatient unit. Tori and Olly drove him the 30 miles from Rochester to Canterbury, where he checked into St. Martin’s Hospital in the evening. His siblings said a tearful goodbye after helping him get settled into his room, promising to visit in a few days.
Not long after he arrived, Charlie saw a doctor for blood work and a physical. He was asked questions about his medical history, which he answered to the best of his ability. Afterwards, he had his first multi-disciplinary team meeting with a nurse, a psychiatrist, and a dietician. As Charlie understood it, this would become his main care team, and he would meet with them once a week to assess his progress towards discharge. His first meeting with them went by in a blur; aside from a basic plan to make sure he got enough nutrients and some talk about starting antidepressants, Charlie didn’t remember many details.
Feeling extremely overwhelmed and somehow numb at the same time, Charlie spent the rest of the night alone – as alone as he could be on a busy ward, anyway. Due to the reason for his admission, he’d been placed on ‘observations.’ A nurse or other hospital staff were required to check in on him every thirty minutes. He could hear them opening his door to poke their head in all through the night, making it very difficult for him to sleep.
As Charlie tossed and turned that first night, he pondered over how everything had gone so wrong, how he’d let himself backslide so far. He knew things were shit with Ben, and that they’d been that way for a long time. He also knew he hadn’t been taking care of himself, that he had to punch extra holes in all of his belts, that his mind was constantly focused on controlling his food. Somehow, none of that had registered as a problem until Tori pointed it out to him. How could he have allowed things to get so bad again and not even notice?
The next morning, Charlie walked down to the ward’s cafeteria, where he would be eating every meal for the duration of his stay. This was the aspect of inpatient he was dreading the most. Eating in front of other people was never comfortable for him, even when his eating disorder was under control. Having a room full of strangers witnessing him struggle to do one of the most basic human functions was going to be humiliating.
Charlie’s food intake was being monitored, and he had gone over his dietary restrictions with the dietitian the night before, so he prepared his breakfast accordingly. A nursing assistant sat with him while he ate to monitor his progress. They were starting off simple enough: just a bowl of oatmeal. Charlie stared at the oats for a while, stirring them methodically as he decided what size his first bite should be, and how many times he would need to chew before he swallowed. It took thirty minutes, and the oatmeal had long gone cold by the time he was finished, but he managed to get it all down. The nursing assistant recorded Charlie’s food intake in his chart before he left the table.
After breakfast, Charlie showered and got himself ready for his first individual counselling session. He was assigned to a psychologist named Kelsey, a petite woman with blonde hair that went halfway down her back.
“We’re going to spend our first session getting to know each other,” Kelsey said as they sat in opposing chairs, the blue cushions standing out against the off-white walls.
Charlie knew what that meant; he’d been in therapy before, after all. He was well aware that this ‘getting to know you’ session would be an excruciating hour of answering gruelling questions, rehashing every single thing that had ever gone wrong in his life from birth to the present. Fortunately, he was still in the numbness phase of his depression, so perhaps he could get through this relatively unscathed.
“I have some notes from when you were admitted to A&E,” Kelsey continued. “Sounds like you were very lucky to have your sister nearby. We’re so glad she found you, and we’re glad you’re here.”
“Yeah,” was all Charlie could mutter in response. He didn’t feel glad he was here. He didn’t feel anything.
“I know it can be difficult to talk about suicide,” Kelsey went on, “but this is a safe space, Charlie. I’m not here to judge you. I’m here to listen, and to help. What do you think triggered you to experience suicidal thoughts that day?”
Charlie stared vaguely ahead, somewhere to the left of Kelsey’s face. He wanted to answer her question by saying ‘everything in my whole stupid life,’ but he knew that wouldn’t be specific enough. Instead, he started with the most triggering detail.
“I found out my ex-boyfriend had been cheating on me,” he said, his voice completely devoid of emotion.
“I see,” Kelsey responded, nodding her head sympathetically. “Tell me more about that.”
Charlie sighed deeply. Might as well get this over with , he thought to himself.
“We were together for four years. We shared a tiny flat in Brixton. He had his own mental health issues, so I took care of him. At a certain point, he was the only thing tethering me to existence. Our relationship hadn’t been good for a while, but I thought if I kept trying, kept doing whatever I could to make him happy, then we would be okay.”
Charlie paused before letting out a pitiful little laugh. “I was obviously wrong,” he continued. “He dumped me two months ago and said I had to move out immediately. I didn’t know where else to go, so I moved back to Rochester and stayed with my sister. I felt completely empty, just kind of going through the motions of life. Then, on the day I tried to kill myself, a ‘friend’” – Charlie made air quotes around that word – “texted me loads of pictures of Ben kissing someone else. Several someone elses, actually.”
“That must have been very difficult to see,” Kelsey concurred. “You specifically said he cheated on you, though. Not that it would have been easy to learn either way, but how did you know the pictures were from the past, and not taken after you had broken up?”
“Some of the photos were taken outside, and it was snowing. Seeing as it’s September now, and it hasn’t snowed for months…” Charlie trailed off, still staring at nothing in particular.
“Seems like hard evidence,” Kelsey agreed.
Charlie hummed sardonically. “Once I saw the pictures, I started connecting other dots. In the last few years, he’d been out of the flat more and more frequently, always saying something vague about having to work late or needing to go away for a business trip, but never giving me any details or letting me know where he was. It seemed so obvious looking back on it, and I felt like such an idiot for not seeing it sooner. I had convinced myself that I needed to stay alive to take care of him, and it turns out he never needed me at all. He never actually cared about me.”
Kelsey nodded, taking notes on her tablet. “I can understand how that would have been very upsetting information for you to receive. It makes sense that would have been a triggering moment for you. I want to come back to something you said a moment ago, that Ben was the only thing tethering you to existence. Tell me more about what you mean by that.”
Charlie took a long, slow inhale before he responded. “I mean that everything else in my life is shit. I’m completely overworked in my job, and it’s making me miserable. I’ve spent so many years working so hard to get to this point in my career, only for it to feel like it’s crushing me. I have no time for my friends or my family. My life just feels meaningless. Until we broke up, it felt like Ben was the only one who would even notice if I was gone.”
“I see that your brother and sister accompanied you here,” Kelsey noted, still writing furiously on her tablet. “Do you have a close relationship with them?”
“We had drifted until Ben dumped me and I had nowhere else to go,” Charlie admitted. “I knew Tori would take me in. Once I moved in with her, she did everything she could to help me. She saw how much I had deteriorated physically, and encouraged me to get back on a meal plan.” He frowned, thinking back on his resistance to his sister’s effort. “It didn’t exactly work, but she tried. She helped me get set up to work from home, too, since I was so much further from the office than when I was at my old flat.”
“It sounds like Tori was happy to have you back,” Kelsey observed.
Charlie nodded with a heavy sigh, something resembling shame brewing in his gut. “She never wanted us to lose touch - that was all my fault. I was too obsessed with Ben and my job, and I didn’t make any time for her or Olly any more. Then the moment I was back in her life, she made so many sacrifices to make sure I was okay. I had all but ignored her for the last few years, and now I felt like I was being such a burden. It wasn’t fair to her.”
Charlie dissociated a bit after that, and the rest of the session went by in a numb haze. He vaguely remembered talking about a few other details, such as his relationship with his parents and the events that led to his hospitalisation when he was fifteen. Once Kelsey said they’d finished, Charlie went back to his room and attempted to take a nap, which was once again interrupted every 30 minutes by the support staff doing observations. Charlie was beginning to wonder if he would ever get any rest while he was stuck in here.
After a monitored lunch that was supplemented with a chalky nutritional shake, Charlie was escorted to his first group therapy session. Normally, he wouldn’t have individual and group therapy on the same day, but his care team felt it best for him to see Kelsey as soon as possible, and the only group therapy session with an opening was meeting that same afternoon. Charlie still felt completely wrung out from his individual therapy session; going over it all again in front of a room full of strangers was the last thing he wanted to do at that moment. He hoped the therapist would have mercy on him and not make him participate in any discussion on his first day.
As Charlie walked into the room, he saw eight people sitting in a circle waiting for the therapist to arrive. Charlie sat down in one of two empty chairs, looking shyly around the circle of patients. They all looked just as unhappy to be there as he felt, which wasn’t necessarily surprising. What was surprising, though, was his jaw slackening when his eyes focused on the startled face of the man seated directly across from him.
A man he recognised.
Nick Nelson.
At least, he was pretty sure that was Nick Nelson staring back at him. He looked a little worse for wear, but Charlie supposed he wouldn’t be here if that wasn’t the case.
Charlie had never actually met Nick Nelson, but he knew they grew up in the same town. He used to read newspaper articles calling Nick the ‘pride of Rochester,’ waxing on about how he was destined to become a rugby legend. After seeing his picture in the newspapers, Charlie recognised Nick frequently hanging around his neighbourhood during their teenage years. He figured they must have lived close enough to each other that they probably would have gone to the same grammar school if Nick hadn’t been the rugby king of Kent. Nick went to St. John’s Academy instead, where athletics was prioritised over academics. Out of curiosity, Charlie had even attended a rugby match where Truham was thoroughly demolished by St. John’s, witnessing with his own eyes that Nick was clearly the star player on a team full of stars.
Charlie remembered reading about Nick getting drafted into the academy program for the London Irish upon his graduation from secondary school, and knew that he had started playing on the main team within a few years. When Nick got engaged to some beautiful woman whose name Charlie couldn’t remember, all of Charlie’s straight girl-friends on twitter made cheeky posts about their hopes being dashed. More recently, he also remembered reading about an injury Nick had suffered, and that it ended his career a few years earlier than expected.
Was that why Nick was here? Because he was a washed-up rugby lad without a plan?
That’s not a very generous thought, Charlie. You never know what other people are dealing with.
Still, the thought that someone like Nick Nelson could end up here was startling. On the surface, it seemed like Nick had won the life lottery. Strikingly handsome, professional athlete, happy marriage. What could have gone so wrong that they found themselves in this dreadful place together?