Chapter Text
Dear Troy,
I don't have access to a computer here, so Annie promised she would scan my letters to you and print your emails and bring them to me. It's an imperfect system and requires a remarkable level of trust in Annie, but I'm willing to give it a try. I asked Annie to give you the phone number here, too, but there are specific hours when I can make and receive calls, and I don't know how feasible that is with the time difference.
This place isn’t terrible so far, I guess. Everyone is nice. I tried to sleep through breakfast and they wouldn’t let me, but no one got mad or anything, they just guided me to my waffles and then watched while I ate them, and they didn’t even give me a hard time when it took forever and I was still there an hour after everyone else had cleared out. I guess that's a benefit to being in a mental hospital: no one gives you a hard time for acting crazy.
They don’t have Special Drink or Diet Squirt, which is not great and also not surprising, so I’m trying to learn to like decaffeinated coffee and cranberry juice, which are always available. So far success is limited, but I’ve got plenty of time to work on it.
I met with a psychiatrist and a therapist today. I have a roommate named Sam. All of them seem nice, but to be honest I haven’t said much to any of them yet. I don’t like talking about my problems and while Sam is very willing to talk TV and movies with me, the others, unsurprisingly, are not. I’m going to try to write some things down for tomorrow, to help when I can’t talk, but also I’m exhausted and maybe I won’t do that at all.
My only real frame of reference for this experience is Girl, Interrupted. This place is nothing like that, thankfully, although there are a few other patients here who I could see standing in for Angelina Jolie’s character, and maybe I feel a little like Winona Ryder’s at times.
It’s time for group therapy, so I’ll end this. I’m sorry if it’s hard to read. My choices were marker or crayon, because pens and pencils aren’t allowed here. I chose the skinniest marker I could find. I look forward to your reply.
I love you and I miss you. Tell me some nice things, please.
Annie, I know you’re looking at this paragraph because you caught sight of your name. Thank you for passing along my correspondence. You’re a good friend.
Love,
Abed
When Annie comes to see Abed that evening, the first thing he does is hand her a letter to send to Troy.
“I didn’t fold it,” he says, “because I didn’t want there to be creases that would make it harder to scan.”
Annie tries not to read it but she catches a glimpse of her name at the bottom, and smiles when she sees what it says.
“Aw, how sweet! You’re welcome, Abed!”
“That didn’t take long,” he muses. “Come sit down.” He leads her to a table in the activity room and she sits across from him.
“How are you?” she asks.
“I’m okay, I guess,” Abed replies. His face betrays no emotion.
“I noticed you’re still wearing hospital clothes.” Annie is concerned, because she brought a bag with Abed’s clothes over to the hospital this morning.
“They have to inventory everything,” Abed explains. “I don’t know why that takes all day, but…” He shrugs and gestures to the hospital gown and scrub pants he’s wearing.
“I hope you get them back soon,” Annie says. “What else? How is it? Tell me everything.”
“A good portion of ‘everything’ is confidential. I think you probably know that.”
“Okay, not everything, but...tell me about things. How’s your roommate? What’s his name? How’s the food? Did you meet with a doctor? Have you had group therapy?”
“Good. Sam. Fine, probably, but I can’t tell since I’m bad at eating right now. Yes. And yes.”
It takes Annie a second to realize he’s answered her questions in order, and she tries to remember what they were.
“Roommate: good, name: Sam, food: complicated, doctor: yes, group therapy: yes,” Abed says helpfully, and Annie smiles.
“Good. I’m sure things will get better as you get used to being here, too,” she says.
“Maybe,” Abed replies.
“I miss you at home,” Annie says. “It’s weird and quiet. I’ve started turning movies on in the living room while I do other stuff, to make it feel like you’re there.”
Abed smiles. “Which movies?”
“Whatever I can find.”
“Okay, but which ones?”
“I don’t remember.”
“How can you not remember?”
“I wasn’t paying attention.”
“How can you not pay attention to a movie?”
“Abed!” Annie is trying to contain her laughter, since they’re in a public space and all, but she hasn’t had a conversation like this with Abed since...probably since before Troy left, she realizes. It feels good. No, it feels wonderful.
Abed is smiling a little, too.
“I love you,” Annie says, as Princess Leia.
“I know,” Abed replies, as Han Solo.
Abed thinks that in the grand scheme of all of the days, today was pretty terrible, but just within the realm of days spent in the hospital, it wasn’t so bad. The good thing is he’s no longer confined to a bed. The bad thing is he only gets to see his friends for an hour and a half in the evening.
Today Abed spent most of his free time watching whatever everyone else was watching on Netflix in the activity room, which turned out to be the first five minutes of a hundred different reality TV shows. Not ideal, but it kept him from having to speak to anyone, for the most part.
The thing that’s really bothering him, that’s keeping him awake in his bed at night even though they’re still giving him sleeping medication, is the thought of therapy. His session with the therapist today started out okay, because she asked him questions about his life and he answered as much as he could. But as she continued her questions got more personal and Abed had a harder time answering until it felt like his throat was closing up and he couldn’t speak or breathe or anything, and Jeff wasn’t there to talk to him or squeeze him and snap him out of it, and he figured hurting himself in a therapist’s office would be frowned upon, and the whole thing ended with him somehow curled up in a ball on the floor, and he doesn’t even remember how that happened.
And then next thing he remembers he was in the psychiatrist’s office discussing anxiety medication, and he still doesn’t know how he feels about that, even though he’s pretty sure he agreed to it at some point. He’s pretty sure there was a time, not that long ago, when his memories weren’t all fragmented and cloudy. And not even just his memories; sometimes he feels like he’s trying to live his life but he’s not quite all there, like he’s watching everything happen but isn’t in control of any of it. It’s a terrifying feeling, and one he’s never been able to explain, and usually when it happens he just hides from the world until it goes away, only lately it doesn’t go away so easily, and also it’s impossible to be alone here.
Abed thinks that “overwhelmed” is now his default state, ever since the day Jeff brought him to the hospital, and he doesn’t understand how anyone here is going to be able to fix that. He doesn’t know how he’s ever going to get better if he can’t even talk about the things that are destroying him. He wonders how long it’s going to take for someone here to realize that there’s nothing anyone can do, because all of this is Abed’s fault.
Sam stirs in the bed next to him and Abed remembers group therapy, and how he sat folded up in the corner and zoned out while everyone else participated, and he’s relieved and ashamed and frustrated, and it’s too many feelings, too late at night.
He gets out of bed and wanders into the hallway, in search of a cup of water. A patient tech asks him if he would like a cup of tea, and Abed shrugs, because Annie taught him to like tea when she moved in with him and Troy, and then he nods and the tech brings him a cup of chamomile. Abed sits in a chair and drinks it while the tech talks about TV shows, and by the time Abed finishes his tea he’s joined in, turned it into a conversation, and when he gets back to his bed a few minutes later he falls asleep right away.