i thought i found the antidote this time. / for ryan!
OLIVIA RODRIGO, ACCEPTING ( ... ) FEATURING RYAN CROSS & MIN DAE-HYUN.
Metal chairs carefully arranged in a tightly knit circle feel as though they are beginning to close in. As if the swaths of thickly layered beige paint were going to swallow them whole, if they sat here for another minute. Psychobabble group therapy, in which she had said little more than her name when prompted by the supervising doctor. Forced, even, if they were being honest with themselves. Very little light leaked through her hollowed out eyes as she sat, unmoving in the way that a statue sits still. They hadn’t changed their clothes in what was coming up on three days now, knots running up and down the length of her hair. Numbed up and medicated, as if that was the solution to help her get over her affinity for being numbed up … and medicated. Evidently, it was okay so long as it was prescribed with a person in scrubs, or a white coat, for the sole purpose of a medically supervised detox. So long as it was just a little something to take the edge off of the withdrawal.
The last several days had been a blur of pushing vegetables they didn’t want to eat around a plate while an orderly stood nearby, making sure she swallowed every last bite. Silent card games with a man they didn’t know. Don’t forget the group therapy, the yoga, the late night bed checks every fifteen minutes on the dot, the theft of their shoe laces, and only soft pencils allowed. Whatever that meant. The worst part was, this wasn’t even their last stop. She’d be shipped off to the next facility, poked and prodded through yet another intake process for a different set of problems.
Their eyes flicker up to the man across from them, slowly … slowly registering the words that fall from his lips. The antidote. It was an interesting choice of words, one that had caught her attention. Her chin tilts upwards, finally staring somewhere other than the hyperpolished hardwood floors.
❛ Works pretty great when life is the toxin you're trying to rid yourself of. ❜ Ryan says, breaking the dreaded silence. It was the first time they had such much of anything at all, biting humor riddled into the rise and fall of their pitch. She almost smiles, and it’s almost inappropriate, given the somber mood that permeated everything … or at least it would have been inappropriate, if she could find it in herself to care. They could practically feel the holes that the psychiatrist was drilling into the side of her skull right about now, with those piercing dagger eyes.
