Clips in no particular order: Roswell , The Messenger, the Theory of Everything, Stonehearst Asylum, A Beautiful Mind, Bad and Crazy, Stargate SG-1, Awakenings, the Queens Gambit, Vienna Blood, Mädät Omenat, the Iron Fist, and a few vintage psychiatric case study videos from YouTube for some of the soundbites
This video is about misunderstood and mislabeled psychiatric whumpees, aka Alfie, Max, Averil etc. everyone says they’re dangerous and they’re sick and twisted but they’re just holding on for dear life. I love it when they call one of my oc’s a monster when it couldn’t be further from the truth… but he gets still treated accordingly…. :)
I forgot this is a character in Averils story! But it is. :)
Welcome Henry!
Suicide attempt mention.
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He tried, he went through with it, he thought it would work. He hadn’t considered it might not- By the time he had woken up in some hospital emergency room with both wrists stitched up, the ink was drying behind some door far away.
It didn’t really matter what he said after that though, not once the hand shake was made and first check handed over. After that he was entrusted to Saint Agathes for perpetuity… or unless the checks stopped.
When he’d woken up in the dimly lit triage room with the scorching pain of each freshly stitched wrist present to inform him what happened… first he felt a crush of anguish and shame for not completing what he sent out to do… then came the fear.
For he had already been decisive. he had chosen blissful removed death instead of this alternative. He was smart enough to know his best option and this disaster was not it.
He spent a few days in that little hospital ward, where nurses were obviously alarmed by him and doctors shook their heads. They had restrained him to the bed before he ever woke so no part 2 of the attempt was in order.
After 4 days of his wrists knitting themselves back together and no infection arose, people in new uniforms came.
They spoke in low voices and injected him with smiles before he could ask who they were. The new uniforms undid his restraints and put his rag doll body into a wheeling chair.
When he groggily tried to protest a soft voice told him he was going to be alright- he was going to be taken care of.
Then there was a ride and a new gown and a new room and new restraints.
The first few months in his “new home” as they called it were foggy at the clearest of times. They called it the acclimation period. It took weeks before he was trusted to not pull at his stitches, months before the sedatives lightened at all.
He wasn’t given a roommate like the rest of the patients due to his perversions so he stayed in solitary silence and adjusted to no longer hearing his own voice speak. He spent hours, weeks and months tracing the tiles in his room… watching the dust float… and willing himself to sleep every moment alone so he could escape his new existence.
But he always woke up.
He was evaluated daily weekly monthly yearly but he suspected the notes rarely varied from their initial lines marked down.
It wasn’t until the second fall that he tried to escape. He had waited. He had watched. But like everything else, he failed. He had made it into the river, not caring if he perished instead of making it across.
But in the late November icey water, they still caught up to him. One guard laid a truncheon over his head. Others drag his limp body out of the shallow water and still others latched the chains on his wrists and ankles which he was led back in as he regained consciousness.
They had made sure everyone had seen him, face bloodied and white with cold. A frame hunched under the weight of clinking restraints. He was to be a lesson.
And with lessons, it is followed through until there is certainty the child has learned. He started ect therapy the next day. They continued it for three years.
He hadn’t tried to elope since. He understood now. They had taught him patiently and thoroughly. There was no escape.
Some patients came and went over time but there was never any discussion of Henry ever leaving. The doctors spoke as if it were a foregone conclusion. Henry would remain a patient until he was wheeled down to the morgue. He only wondered how many years would go by before that happened.
But he didn’t allow himself to wonder about many things. When he did it was often disastrous.
For instance when he considered his little sister. She would be married by now he expected. Likely kids too. He knew they probably told her he had died all those years ago. Hopefully they told her it was an accident.
He knew with certainty that the true purpose of the checks they sent each quarter were never going to be shared with her. If one day when her children were grown up and she was going through her parents affairs in their old age, that the family lawyer would tell her those regular checks sent over decades were another philanthropic contribution the family had a responsibility to uphold. She then would start signing the little slips of paper herself, unaware that a man with a name she had never heard of who looked like ghost of her dead older brother paced that institution’s halls. Or that same man had once carried her on his shoulders. Or took long Sunday walks with her or taught her how swim.
Or, what if they had told her the truth all those years ago? And like the rest of the family, she too has elected it was better to leave him be. That thought was too terrible to consider. That was why he tried not to wonder. Reasonable conclusions had a way of marring into morose tragedies too quickly.
So, he understood life here- it took years to teach him but he understood now. And some routines can be comforting with enough medication and repetition.
That was what made his first roommate after 9 years so shocking.
Averil Lansing. 23 years old from Madison Avenue.
After 9 years of solitude he suddenly wasn’t alone. He wondered if it was a test, a new evaluation… two subjects to be observed… but they seemed more focused on the new patient… Henry was just another piece of furniture.
