All in my Mind

VII.

Breaking a bone sucks by the way. It doesn't feel how you'd expect it to feel, but it still sucks. There was that initial "Ouch my hand fucking hurts and I regret being the hero," thing. Then there's the ache that lasts long after the initial ouch is over. That ache is genuinely somehow worse. Especially when you have nurses and doctors or whoever else trying to numb it away with anything you'll willingly take.

Being med compliant was not doing it for me the way they always promised it would. Willingly swallowing everything I was offered just pulled me further and further from reality. Everything was muddled and sleepy and slow, and that wasn't just because I was refusing to get out of bed.

I was refusing to get out of bed by the way.

It was just too easy. Everything they gave me made me sleepy and lethargic and the room was warm. I'd asked for a blanket from one of the nurses the same day they'd put the cast on my hand, and because they seemingly felt bad about it the request was immediately fulfilled. It was red and very soft.

Getting out of bed in my condition seemed quite pointless anyways if I bothered to consider it. I couldn't use my right hand correctly which was upsetting if I thought about it too much. You couldn't exactly talk nonsense to the window with your hands when your thumb was splinted down to keep shape. They'd effectively silenced that behavior out of me for the time being. Whenever I focused on what that meant I felt nauseous, so the solution was to keep my cheek plastered against the mattress without moving.

I was pretty sure they had me on Vicodin or something of the sort. I'd read about drug interactions quite a bit when I thought I was going to be a doctor. I'd not really researched psych meds until after Alexander had diagnosed us, but I knew a few things about central nervous system depressant drugs, and I knew for sure they'd loaded me up on a few of them. I could barely move.

It was probably intentional. I'd finally cracked and hit someone and now they were punishing me by holding me down. The only issue was that they weren't entirely cleared to restrain me physically unless I really slipped into the psychosis, and so their only option was to do it medically.

Except for if they really wanted to keep me in bed, they'd stop sending people in to bother me.

"Are you doing okay, Alex?"

"Aren't you hungry?"

"Do you maybe want to go for a walk?"

"You missed your appointment with the therapist. Why don't we go down there and see if she's busy?"

"You're so fucking useless just laying there like a lump. Get up!"

Logic could maybe tell me which ones were real intruders, and which ones weren't, but it just didn't matter to me. Everything was a blur. None of it was actually real in any way that counted.

Then I stopped sleeping. I don't know how many hours I managed to wallow in bed motionlessly, but the sun had gone down twice out my window so it was atleast more that 36. It was maybe even encroaching on 48. Or more. Who knows, really? Eventually I had to pee. That's what did me in. I though that not eating or drinking anything besides what it took to swallow pills would prolong it, but my bladder started begging and eventually it began to hurt. I thought about ignoring it. I envisioned it getting to kidney infection levels again, and I thought that if they put me in the medical center I'd probably get to zonk out on the even better drugs. Then I remembered there weren't any windows in there, and I needed the window because I'd get paranoid if I couldn't move or see the sun coming up and down. I'd start having delusions about the world ending while I was trapped and I wouldn't be able to fight them off.