Chapter Text
Nicholas was crammed into the backseat of Meryl’s car, crowded up against Vash and staring at a building that was, in his honest opinion, just as ugly as the ones surrounding it.
“You’re going to have to get out at some point,” Meryl said, impatiently tapping her fingers against her fluffy white steering wheel cover.
“Gimme a second,” Nicholas hissed, keeping his eyes on the building.
Meryl turned around, waving a hand in front of his face. “If we give you any more seconds, you’re going to be late.”
Nicholas clicked his tongue, finally looking away to glare at Meryl.
It had been six months since his release from the hospital, and he hadn’t gone within a mile radius of any psychiatric institutions in the city. Whether they were inpatient, outpatient, group or couples counselling facilities, it didn’t matter. They were to be avoided. Nicholas couldn’t even remember talking to a psychologist in the last ten years. He knew that he had. Everyone at the hospital was apparently required to, but he couldn’t seem to find the memories. It may as well have never happened, and that was more than fine by him.
But now, here he was. Sitting in front of Julai Behavioral Health Hospital—the same place he’d promised himself he’d never go back to—and stalling for time before his first outpatient therapy appointment since he was a teenager.
He’d agreed to this months ago, convinced he’d be fine by now, that the wait for such a prestigious hospital would be long anyway. He’d been right about the latter, at least, but a couple of months ended up passing much faster than he would’ve liked. Now all he felt was panic.
It was too late to back out now. Nicholas took a deep breath, turned his back on the rest of the car’s inhabitants, and opened the door.
He held up a hand when he noticed Vash unbuckling his seatbelt in order to follow. “I’ll be fine on my own, Blondie. You just enjoy your time with the girls.”
Vash blinked, a frown on his face. “But—”
“Don’t worry, Nick,” Milly interrupted, flashing a comforting smile. “We’ll make sure he has the time of his life! He won’t even notice you’re gone.”
Nicholas chuckled while an offended Vash stuttered. “I don’t know about all that, Big Girl, but I appreciate the effort.”
After a few more goodbyes and a couple of worried looks from Vash, Nicholas closed the car door and walked into the building without looking back.
The interior was the same as it was in the few flashes of memories he had: the colors were restricted to earthy tones, with the walls painted a deep shade of brown and the shelves kept sage green, and lovingly crocheted plants were displayed on every surface. A mahogany desk was placed at the center of the room and an assistant was seated there, ready to answer questions and hand out documents.
Nicholas’ steps were heavy as he walked to the front desk, anxiety flooding him and quickly receding over and over again in waves.
He could do this. He’d told Vash that he was ready to do this. He was ready to do this, and he was going to prove it no matter—
“How can I help you, sir?”
Nicholas froze. He couldn’t remember what he was supposed to say. The longer he tried to think about it, the less he came up with.
The woman looked at him with concern. “Sir?”
“Sorry, I—” Nicholas stammered. “I have a…um…an appointment?”
“Okay,” she said, clacking away at her computer’s keyboard. “Do you know who it’s with?”
“Dr. McFly.”
She typed in the information while Nicholas stood there awkwardly.
“Here you go.” She handed him a light stack of papers. “The doctor will be with you in a moment. Please fill this out while you wait. It will ask you for your information. Name, date of birth, insurance, that sort of thing. The third sheet will be a survey. It will help us get a sense of where you are mentally at the moment. Nothing in that section is mandatory, so feel free to leave questions blank if you need to.”
Nicholas nodded along, the words going in one ear and out the next and took his seat in the waiting area.
He got through the personal information well enough and turned to the survey. The questions were familiar. He vaguely remembered answering similar ones when he was 15, trembling in fear as Chapel sat next to him, watching over his shoulder with an icy expression and grunting with disapproval at every mark Nicholas put down.
He read the first question. How often in the past two weeks have you felt hopeless?
Easy. He bubbled in a 3 on the 1-5 scale. Better than usual.
Next: How often in the past two weeks have you felt the desire to harm yourself?
That one was a bit harder. If he were being completely honest, he’d say it was a 5, very often, but maybe that was a little too dramatic. If he marked that question too high, would they lock him up again? It asked about self-harm, not suicide, but Nicholas knew how often people conflated the two. He shifted his pencil over to 4 and moved on.
How often have you thought about ending your life in the past two weeks?
There it was. The question he’d been waiting for. The one that Nicholas had been trained to spot.
When he was first taken to see someone about his “unfortunate disposition,” Chapel had made his rules very clear. There were only two: don’t talk about what goes on at home and never, never, tell anyone that you want to kill yourself.
“They’ll try to trick you, Nicholas. Ask you all sorts of leading questions. But those two rules are not to be broken.”
Nicholas bubbled in a 2 and continued further down the list until he came to a true or false section.
True or false: I have been made to engage in sexual contact with another person against my will or without my consent.
Nicholas paused, the pencil shaking in his hand. He didn’t know how to answer. Had he been touched sexually when he hadn’t wanted it? Sure, but he’d agreed to it, eventually. Had he been touched after saying no? After struggling? Yeah, but he wouldn’t call it sexual. Not exactly. Had anyone ever performed a sex act on him without asking if he wanted it? Yes, but it was in the heat of the moment. How could he blame someone for that? There were too many variables, too many mitigating factors, and the people involved weren’t evil or bad. They had been nice to him, at least for a while.
He hadn’t been raped. He hadn’t been sexually assaulted. He wasn’t going to diminish the meaning of those words by saying that he had when he hadn’t, and he wasn’t going to make anyone out to be the kind of person that would do something like that to him when they hadn’t . But this wasn’t asking him that. That’s not how it was phrased, but Nicholas felt like that’s what it was supposed to mean, which only made him more confused. He just didn’t know.
He spent a while staring at the question, trying to figure it out. He’d been told that he could skip any of these if he wanted to, but what would that say about him? What would it imply? He continued staring until he finally heard his name.
“Nicholas D. Wolfwood?”
When he looked up, he saw a woman looking around the room with a clipboard in hand. She had vibrant red hair, left loose underneath a frankly impressive cowboy hat. Her clothes certainly matched the hat but seemed frankly out of place in a medical setting such as this.
Nicholas stood, gathering his papers and raising his hand slightly so that the woman knew he’d heard, before quickly making his way over.
The woman glanced at him. “Mr. Wolfwood?”
“That’s me.” Nicholas said, shifting awkwardly.
She nodded and turned, leading him down a hallway. “I’m Dr. McFly, but I’d prefer it if you simply called me Amelia.”
“Ah,” Nicholas said, unsure of how to respond. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
She was…different from the therapists Nicholas was used to having. For one, her clothes had much more personality, strongly deviating from the coldly professional attire that he’d come to expect. He’d also never been asked to call a therapist by their first name, but maybe that was just because the last time he’d actually been in therapy was when he was a teen. It still felt weird.
But even as he listed off Dr. McFly’s— Amelia’s differences, he was taking note of her similarities. Nicholas had only had one other therapist who was a woman, and her approach was almost the same as Amelia’s seemed to be. Brash and to the point. No nonsense. The men he’d had always seemed to put on a mask of soft-spoken friendliness that had only managed to put Nicholas on guard. His last therapist, though—the woman—had been much more straightforward. Maybe it was something that came naturally with being a woman in a male-dominated field.
Nicholas couldn’t say that it had worked, but it had been the closest thing to breaking that shell he’d insisted on at the time. It had been uncomfortable. It had forced him into a situation where his bullshit was called out. It had only lasted 6 weeks.
Amelia led him to a room at the end of the hall, to the right.
“Have a seat,” she said, gesturing to two cushioned chairs that were facing each other on opposite sides of a circular rug. One was near a desk with an open area behind it. The other was placed against a wall, a coffee table full of neatly arranged pamphlets and stress toys situated on its left. Nicholas chose the one on the wall.
As he sat, he took in the room. It was small, smaller than any he’d been in before. The walls were mostly bare, with only a couple of pictures of what Nicholas assumed were Amelia’s family. One featured a little girl with bright red hair and a missing front tooth dangling from the shoulders of an intimidatingly large man. Another showed that same girl, probably in her teens now, wearing a simple black dress and holding an award. The pictures went on like that, with the red-headed girl getting older and older. The intimidating man wasn’t in any other photo.
Some of the frames didn’t hold pictures, but children’s drawings, scribbled messily in crayon or painted in watercolor. There were no degrees on the walls. No bookshelves full of boring psychological textbooks that he could look at to avoid eye contact.
“So, Nicholas.” Amelia settled into the cushioned chair across from him and crossed her legs. “Since this is our first session, I’d like to gain a better understanding about your situation. Is this your first time in therapy?”
“No. I went for a little bit when I was a kid. High school.”
“And you haven’t been since?” she asked. Nicholas shook his head. “Can you tell me why you decided to come here today?”
“I, um.” Nicholas cleared his throat. “I tried to kill myself.”
Nicholas expected the same reaction he always got, pitying eyes and a meaningless “I’m sorry,” but Amelia simply hummed and nodded her head like attempting suicide was completely normal. Maybe in her line of work it was.
“And this was recent?” she asked.
“Not really,” Nicholas said, staring at a crayon picture of a misshapen purple sailboat. “It was ‘bout half a year ago.”
Amelia raised her eyebrow. “What made you decide that now was the time to go to therapy?”
“I…” Nicholas hesitated, considering just how much he was willing to reveal to this stranger. “I’m supposed to be goin’ back to work soon.”
“Did your job make therapy mandatory for you?”
“No.” Nicholas shook his head slightly. “No, this was my choice.”
“I see.” Amelia looked away for a second, eyes faraway in thought, before focusing in on Nicholas again. “What is it that you do for work?”
“I’m a teacher. Over at the Hopeland Orphanage.”
“A teacher at the orphanage,” she repeated. “I don’t imagine that’s a job that pays very well.”
“Not at all,” Nicholas scoffed.
“So then, why?”
Nicholas frowned. “I’m sorry?”
“Why did you choose this job?” Amelia asked.
Nicholas clenched his jaw. “It’s where I grew up. For a while.”
Amelia gently tapped her pen. “A while?”
“A man took me in when I was 14. With my little brother.”
“Little brother?”
“Not by blood. His name’s Livio. He’s about a year younger than me.”
“How fortunate. You two being fostered together.”
Nicholas’ eye twitched. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“No?” Amelia said, the rhythm of her tapping pen pausing slightly. “And why is that?”
Nicholas glared at the little purple sailboat, his throat constricting. He managed to grit out the words “Didn’t go well,” before snapping his mouth shut. Amelia nodded, moving the conversation back to where it had started.
“So, you’re about to get back to teaching at the orphanage,” Amelia recapped. “Are you here because you want to set a good example? Or is it something else?”
“I just…” Nicholas hesitated. “I wanna do better. For the kids. And the rest of my family, of course, but those kids…they call me their big brother. Some of them have known me since I was there. I don’t wanna let ‘em down.”
Amelia placed her pen down, uncrossing her legs and leaning forward. “You mentioned the rest of your family. Do you mean Livio, or are there others?”
“My partner.” Nicholas swallowed. “Vash. He was the one that found me.”
“That must have scared him.” Amelia said without blame, just stating the facts.
Nicholas nodded. “I’ve put him through a lot over the years. I don’t wanna keep doin’ that.”
“You’ve put him through a lot?” Amelia tilted her head. “Have there been other suicide attempts?”
Nicholas sighed, closing his eyes. He didn’t want to answer her question, so he didn’t. “College was…difficult. For both of us. We…did things. That we probably shouldn’t have.”
“And he supported you through all of it?”
Nicholas nodded. “Every time.”
“And you supported him?”
“I did what I could.”
He could hear the sound of her tapping pen start up again.
“It sounds to me, Nicholas, like you don’t give yourself enough credit.”
Nicholas opened his eyes, focusing in on Amelia’s face, and frowned. He didn’t speak.
“I see you’ve filled out the paperwork,” Amelia said, looking down at the stack of papers in Nicholas’ hands.
Nicholas gripped the stack a little harder. “I didn’t finish.”
“That’s alright,” she said, holding out her hand. “You can just give me what you have.”
Nicholas handed over the papers. If his hand shook while he did, neither of them saw it fit to comment on it.
“Here’s what I’d like for us to do, Nicholas.” Amelia placed the papers into her clipboard and set it behind her. “I want you to think about your goals. What do you want to get out of therapy? You don’t need to write anything down if you don’t want to, I just want you to think about it. Okay?”
Nicholas hesitated before nodding.
“Good. I’d like to see you weekly, if possible. Is that okay with you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, we’re all set then. Is there anything you’d like to say or ask before I end the session? It can be anything at all.”
Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “That’s it?”
“Pretty much,” Amelia said, shrugging. “First meetings are mostly introductions.” She smirked. “Did you think I’d ask you about your deepest, darkest secrets right off the bat?”
“Uh…kinda?”
Amelia chuckled, not unkindly. “Most people do. Even people who’ve been to therapy, like yourself. I’d rather we get comfortable with each other first.”
Nicholas hummed. “That makes sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” Amelia stood from her chair. “Now, if there’s nothing else, Mr. Wolfwood, then you are free to go.”
Nicholas stood and followed her down the hallway. After a quick goodbye, he left the building. He took a moment for himself before calling the girls to pick him up, sitting on the curb and breathing in the Julai air.
Going back to therapy hadn’t been the grand, memorable event he’d thought it would be. He hadn’t broken down under the weight of the traumatic memories, and he hadn’t had some grand revelation about how beautiful life truly was. It was a bit anticlimactic, but then again, wasn’t that a good outcome in and of itself? He told himself that it was.
After a few minutes, Nicholas decided that the polluted city air wasn’t enough. He pulled his cigarettes from his pocket, placed it between his lips, and dialed Milly’s number.