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Yellow walls. That’s the first thing she notices. Gaudy, putrid yellow walls.
Late October. The only clothes she has are the ones she’s wearing. Her room is next to the visitor’s room. She doesn’t have a roommate yet.
She doesn’t cry. She reads the handouts she was given and she doesn’t make eye contact with anyone. There are fucking ants everywhere, crawling all over the tiny dresser beside her bed. One is crawling on her sheets. She flicks the damn thing off her bed and leaves her room.
She knows she’ll have to call Alya. She knows she’ll need clothes to change into. Why is she even here? She shouldn’t be here.
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“...Hello?”
“Hey, Alya. It’s Marinette. I’m so sorry to bother you. Um. I was wondering if you could do me a huge favor?”
“Marinette? Wait, whose phone are you calling me from? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah! Yeah, I’m totally fine. Kind of.” Marinette laughs nervously. “So um, I’m at the Saint-Maurice hospital and I think I’m going to be here for a few days and I don’t have any clothes, can you do me a HUGE favor and bring me some sweaters and leggings and underwear from my room at the apartment? I’m sorry to bother you with this. I just don’t have anything here. If you can’t that’s okay! I’m sorr—”
“You said sweaters and leggings and underwear?” Marinette swallowed, her face becoming warm at the realization that she was rambling like an idiot.
“Uh, yes please, if that’s okay, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, girl. No worries. I’m at the apartment right now. I’ll be there in 20 minutes, okay?” Alya’s voice sounds weak and Marinette wants to die.
“Thank you so much. I’m so sorry. Thank you.”
“I’ll see you soon, okay? I love you.”
“I love you too, Alya. Thank you so much. I guess I’ll see you soon?”
“Yeah! Talk you later.”
After Alya hung up, Marinette realizes how fast her heart was beating.
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Her fucking sink doesn’t have knobs. Hell, it doesn’t even have a damn faucet. She presses a button and water is propelled out of a tiny hole on the bathroom counter. This was ridiculous. She shouldn’t be here. Why was she wasting time and money in a place like thi—
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Group is really, really fucking dumb.
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People kept asking her why she was there.
“I would prefer not to talk about it,” Marinette would almost always respond.
“Fair enough,” they would almost always say back. But then they would start talking about why they were there, and that’s when Marinette’s eyes would light up. She sat quietly and listened, creating a mental inventory of her fellow patients. She learned a lot.
Marinette found that most patients fell into one of two categories: either suicidal or fucking crazy. Now, in the past Marinette would have probably argued that being suicidal is essentially the same thing as being fucking crazy, but this place certainly clarified the distinction between the two.
There was Greg, who threatened to kill himself after his girlfriend broke up with him. Suicidal. There was Luis, who had a long familial history of depression and was prone to bouts of violence. Suicidal. Ann? Marinette didn’t know much about her, but she kept repeating the same few sentences to herself. Looked Marinette dead in the eye and told her, “I hope you fucking die.” Fucking crazy. Dennis: quite young, Aspergers, tried to stab his grandfather in his sleep. Fucking crazy.
When Marinette tried to classify herself into one of her own invented categories, she found she really couldn’t decide between the two.
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Alya is late. Marinette is back in her room watching the ants crawl across the tiny dresser beside her bed. She tries to sleep. She can’t. She keeps staring at the ants.
Eventually, a nurse quietly knocks on her open door.
“Marinette? There is an Alya here to see you?”
Marinette is not able to find words when she sees Alya. Alya is speaking quietly with a nurse. She turns and sees Marinette and her face crumples into a watery smile.
“Hey, Mari,” she says. Marinette cannot bring herself to look at her friend’s face.
“Hi,” she says weakly. A brief silence hangs between the two girls. Alya breaks it first.
“So! Um, I brought you a few pairs of leggings and fuzzy socks and comfy sweaters! I didn’t really know if I could actually reach you at the number you called me from, so I just kind of grabbed whatever I could find.”
“Yeah. Uh, if you try calling me, that phone over there rings. Basically, any one of us patients can pick it up and usually everyone just yells to get the attention of whoever the phone call is for. Thank you so much for bringing everything to me. Thank you for being here.” Alya wrapped Marinette into a gentle hug.
“Wait, stop, you’re going to make me cry. Of course I’m here for you.” Alya took a deep breath. “Mari, what happened ?”
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“Excuse me?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like to add someone to the list of people who are allowed to visit me, please.”
“Sure. Give me a moment, let me get the log.” Marinette steadied her breathing. No backing out now.
“Okay, what’s the name of the person you’d like to add to your visitor list?”
“Adrien Agreste.”
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Marinette thinks about Tikki when she’s staring at the ants.
She thinks about the wave of exquisite clarity that washed over her before the patrol car drove her to the hospital. She remembers her explicit instructions for Tikki to protect her Miraculous while she was away, to find Chat Noir’s kwami, to stay hidden and to stay safe. Tikki must have explained to Chat that Ladybug would be...unavailable for the next indeterminate amount of time. Marinette idly wonders what Chat Noir thinks of her kwami. She hopes Tikki is being fed well.
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7:00 AM is vitals. 7:00 AM is vitals, but Marinette is almost always awake before then. Marinette lays in bed staring at the hideous yellow walls until she hears the 7:00 Vitals Nurse begin to make her rounds, knocking on each door shouting, “7:00! Vitals!” Marinette dusts off an ant that was crawling on her leg and quickly gets out of bed. She brushes her teeth in her stupid bathroom with the stupid sink with no knobs or faucet and heads out into the hallway towards the main room.
She steps on the scale. Damn it. She’s lost weight since she’s been here. Marinette isn’t an idiot, she knows that not eating will earn her a longer stay here in paradise. Shit.
She sits down for her blood pressure reading. “Damn! I wish my blood pressure looked like yours,” the nurse jokes. Marinette smiles in response.
Deciding she had some time to kill before breakfast arrived, Marinette heads back to her room and climbs into bed. She stares at the yellow walls. She imagines fragments of her skull and brain tissue and blood splattered across the walls. She longs for a gun. Her heart is beating fast but her breathing is steady. She’s still smiling.
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Visiting hours during the first few days are difficult for Marinette. After Alya’s arrival on her first day, she is alone. Her parents, bless them, are currently travelling Europe on an anniversary vacation of sorts, and they absolutely do not need to know of Marinette’s current whereabouts. It’s not like any of her childhood friends from lycée would bother visiting her.
And so what? Why would she want her old friends knowing she’s here? Marinette idly itches her wrist. Why would she want people to know the full extent of how truly pathetic she is? God, why did she add Adrien’s name to her visitor list?! What is wrong with her? Marinette tries to focus. It’s not like Adrien would visit her in a place like this anyway. It’s not like Alya (probably the only person who knew where Marinette is) would tell Adrien, of all people, to go visit her. Marinette feels herself calming down. She glances at her wrist. Her skin is bright red and raw. She finds a new place on her arm and begins scratching away at her skin again, absently thanking Alya for bringing her long sleeved sweaters.
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Marinette wonders how Chat is handling akumas by himself.
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The nurse practitioner starts Marinette on an antipsychotic in conjunction with her normal medication. “To help with your sleep,” he had said.
Marinette pictures her imagined category shifting from a tentative suicidal to a fucking crazy and she’s not sure how she feels about that. Antipsychotics. Wow.
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Marinette sighs. She is hanging out with the suicidals playing Monopoly. She hadn’t realized that she could have a monopoly on three sides of the board, but somehow, she had managed. She is almost relieved when a nurse came in and called for group.
Group is being held outside today. Marinette hadn’t been outside in nearly five days. She tunes the nurse out as she prattles on about whatever the group topic is today and revels in the sunshine. The late October (wait, is it November?) air is brisk, but Marinette finds she doesn’t care. She closes her eyes.
Group ends.
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Luis will not stop ripping ass. He thinks it’s the funniest damn thing in the world. He’ll walk into a room, release an earth-shattering fart—a fart so vast, so incomprehensibly and indescribably explosive, the kind of fart with the power to annihilate civilizations—start giggling hysterically, and leave the room.
Luis is a 38 year old business owner.
Marinette stares after him. Girl, did you just fart because you blew me away, Marinette thinks to herself a little hysterically. She briefly wonders if that line would make Chat Noir smile. Shit. Wow. The offensive odor hits her like a sucker punch to the stomach. Marinette grimaces and stands up to leave. She heads to her bedroom, to her tiny dresser covered in ants, and rereads her admission handouts for probably the 9th time.
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Marinette isn’t stupid. She knows that in order to get out of here, she needs to behave a certain way. She knows she needs to eat, socialize, attend group, shower, and take her medication. So she does. She tells her nurse practitioner she’s feeling a lot better, that she’s sleeping well and she has more energy during the day, and she really thinks that the new medication is making a difference. Her nurse practitioner tells her she’ll be out in another day or two.
Marinette is shocked when Alya came back to visit her.
“Alya! Wow, um, I really wasn’t expecting you to visit again. You didn’t have to come all this way! I’m going to be out in a few days anyway,” Marinette scratches the back of her neck nervously.
Alya rolls her eyes in response. “Of course I had to come visit you again, Mari. I wasn’t about to abandon you here. You’re my best friend.”
Marinette’s throat tightens. “Thank you,” she responds quietly. “So, uh, what’s new in the outside world? How are you? How’s the ol’ Ladyblog?”
Alya let out a breath. “I’m okay! Honestly, you haven’t really missed much. Wait. No. Actually, the only thing that you missed was Chat Noir giving a press conference. It was so bizarre, man.”
Marinette feels the room grow colder. “What? What happened?”
“Well, it started a few days ago when there was an akuma attack and I was following Chat Noir, who was pole-vaulting around Paris with an oversized mason jar.” Alya misses how white Marinette’s face had become. “Ladybug just like...didn’t show up. At all. Chat had to take on the akuma by himself. I don’t think he’s ever done that before.”
“Wait, so what happened with the akuma?”
“That’s the thing—I have no idea. He managed to take down the akuma and isolate the butterfly in that ridiculous mason jar he had with him, but I have no idea what happened to it after that. But anyway, he came up to me afterwards while I was filming and was like, “Alya Césaire? You’re the one in charge of the Ladyblog, right? I’ve already contacted Mayor Bourgeois. There will be a press conference at 7:00 in front of the Eiffel Tower. I think you should be there.” So of course I had to be there! I filmed the whole thing, and—ugh, wait, it’s probably better if you just watch it yourself. Listen, when I get you out of here, we can watch the whole thing on the way home, okay?”
Marinette just nods shakily.
“Basically, Ladybug is taking a leave of absence and Chat Noir was being weirdly serious and professional. But that’s enough about superheroes! You’re going to hear about it soon enough anyway. Tell me about YOU. What do you guys do for fun around here?”
Alya and Marinette lapse into meaningless conversations about everything and nothing. Marinette talks about the ants and how she got to see the sunshine. Alya laughs as she describes an embarrassing incident involving Nino, a cucumber, and a pair of rollerskates. Marinette feels lighter.
Seeing Alya is bittersweet. It sure as hell beats staring at her walls all day.
Visiting hours are almost over. Hazel eyes meet blue. Alya offers a soft smile and says, “You seem like you’re doing better, Marinette.”
Depression hits her like a fucking wall. Her throat closes and her heart is beating out of her chest and she can’t breathe. A few moments pass before Marinette is able to choke out, “Thanks. See you in a few days.”
Shit , Marinette thinks to herself. Shit. I have a long way to go.
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When Marinette meets with some lady about insurance, she knows she’s getting released. The day is a blur. She calls Alya at some point to ask her to pick her up. She signs release forms. She gloats to her fellow inmates that she’s breaking free. One patient glares at her and tells her to go fucking kill herself, but Marinette scoffs and grins at her in response. It’s really just a waiting game at this point , Marinette reminds herself. What’s a few more hours?
She works on a puzzle. She fiddles with her hospital wristband. She paces up and down the hallways.
Alya is here.
The ride back to their apartment is comfortably quiet. Marinette decides not to watch the latest Ladyblog updates, instead choosing to stare at the nature though the passenger window of Alya’s shitty car. She idly wonders about how much schoolwork she’s missed and what her hospital bill is going to be and how in the world she’s going to get her Miraculous back from Chat Noir.
She shoves those thoughts to the back of her mind. Marinette closes her eyes and smiles to herself. I am still alive. Those are problems for another day.