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“What the fuck are you doing?”
Robert wasn’t sure where everything had gone wrong. He knew when the pills shook inside of their bottle—pain relief, mood stabilizers, the cigarettes in their packs—but he wasn’t sure when he had finally snapped and taken them in just two swallows. He found it funny. A talent, though the pills were rather small. They tasted bitter and acidic. There was bile rising up his throat.
He hadn’t noticed the ones left on the ground until he looked up at them by his front door.
“What’re you doing here?” Robert asked him. There was a smile on his face, he was putting it there—it wasn’t formed fully or even halfway but it was there. He wanted it to be, so it was.
Flambae’s face seemed so red. Was he pained? There was a furrow to his brow and a shake to the fist his hand formed that made Robert’s bones shake inside his arms and his legs—maybe it was fear, but Robert’s body expected rage. Annoyance, maybe, at being inconvenienced so easily. Sonar was there first with his phone in hand and his fur shaking.
So much for taking his pills.
“Robert, what the fuck are you doing?” he asked again. Flambae, Robert could tell now that he was looking at them both in the face. It was Flambae’s lips moving and his voice shaking when the words formed out in Robert’s mind. “What did you do?”
Robert looked down at the bottle and laughed. Bitter, hollow. “What do you think?”
“Sonar told me. I want to hear it from you.”
He huffed and looked down at the bottle. “There were about forty here.”
“Oh my God.”
There was pacing and there were words Robert couldn’t hear. Phone calls. Paramedics maybe, maybe not yet. There was a knot of worry inside Robert’s gut that he couldn’t breathe through. He couldn’t find it in him yet to puke out the thank you he’d been saving for them, for the team, for Beef and Chase.
He would soon, he knew. Just one more minute.
Sonar stood beside him and grabbed his bottle from him. He felt his grip loosening and tightening by the minute too late. “He took Wellbutrin. Fuck, I don’t know how many was in here.” he said. Robert heard the bottle clank against the wall and loud squeaks from Sonar’s throat. They echoed in his mind like a loud drum or a gong. “I’ll call poison control.“
“Sonar, he needs to go to the hospital—“
“—We need to call Chase.”
Robert hummed quietly. There was comfort in the chaos that he didn’t find in his own silence. A confirmation, morbidly, that people cared. A moment that would be good enough to die too.
It hadn’t truly hit him until that moment that death was what would meet him at the end of this road. Kharon would be on the boat with skulls near the edge and a paddle in hand, Robert would climb on and find himself swimming in the waves that death brought. And there would be wind like the wind he could feel on his face. Maybe Robert already made it to the Underworld—he wasn’t sure whether he would fall to the Asphodel Meadows or the Fields of Mourning, though maybe Tartarus had deemed he hadn’t saved enough people.
“Robert, you can’t go to sleep.” Flambae said. He wasn’t sure when he’d gotten on the floor, he’d never heard Flambae’s voice be so gentle before. Nor had he noticed how smooth the man's hands were.
“Soft,” he whispered.
Flambae laughed. It was wet and quiet. “I use lotion.”
“Thank you.” Robert smiled.
“Thank me by promising not to die.” Flambae said. There were hands on his back and carrying him somewhere warm—he hadn’t noticed how everything seemed to move until he focused hard enough on the movements in the walls and the curtains. There weren’t meant to be curtains in his home, nor the bed he felt under his back if he focused hard enough—was he somewhere else, where did he go?
Robert snorted. “They’re moving.”
“The curtains?” Sonar asked.
“The lines are shifting down,” he whispered. Inch by inch, left to right. “And the swirls are spinning out.”
Flambae huffed. “Are they racing?”
“Not the lines. Though there’s centipedes in the lights.” Robert said. There was one above the sink that was shining and its legs wriggled up and down with a clicking sound to them. “I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t— don’t say sorry,” Flambae said to him. “Just try to focus on getting help right now, okay?”
Robert nodded. “Okay.”
Robert felt the heaving in his stomach before he registered the actual movement. There was a catheter inside of him that sat awkwardly whenever he shifted his legs, they shook yet sat still on a bed that felt like quicksand. His throat felt dry and his lips felt chapped and bitten raw. He couldn’t close his eyes without a pounding inside of his head. It moved left, then right, then to the front of his skull before the center of his brain. Two lines came into one arm each for IVs that had yellow and purple bruising surrounding the needles.
It took him a couple of minutes to realize the fact that he was alive.
“Don’t you dare fucking move, fucker.” Chase said.
Chase, Robert thought—he hadn’t even been able to write the man a letter. There were moments that week he sat on the floor with the pen in hand but he came up blank. There weren’t words to describe what it was that he felt or why he felt what he felt, nothing that would justify what was leading him to do what he was doing. Nothing that would make sense or that would help Chase cope. Now he was there and watching everything Robert couldn’t bring himself to say.
“If you keep tryna move that fuckin’ needle I will glove your hands again.” Chase spat out and smacked his hands. Robert hadn’t realized he’d tried to pull them out before. “Don’t make me rewrap you in those damn towels.”
Robert coughed. “Water?”
“Just a bit,” Chase said slowly. “You’ve been puking for about two days straight now.”
Robert nodded and drank slowly.
“Oh, Robert,” Chase’s hands were on Robert’s hips and the cuts there. Intentional. Robert remembered holding the scalpel up to the bone and trying his best to carve down to it—he got far enough for the scar to last at least a few months more. “When the fuck did you do all of this?”
There was hardly anything that he could keep down for long. Not bacon bits, the fluids or his stomach or the pills he had swallowed dry. His stomach quivered in and out of its spot and he could feel himself heaving—bile and blood burning through his throat.
“You need to learn how to talk about things Robert,” Chase said to him. “Sonar told me what you did after you had your first seizure. Fucker couldn’t call me sooner.”
Robert raised an eyebrow. Seizure?
“Four.” Chase said. Robert could feel the wetness of the baby wipes as Chase gave him a small wipe down. “So don’t fucking do this again.”
“Okay,” he whispered quietly. He could try to work with that.