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Chapter Twenty
Point of View: Narrator

On day ten - the day after his family had come to visit - Nick had his first major relapse.

"I fucking hate it here!" he was screaming, throwing anything he could get his hands on. The rec room had cleared out as he threw his fit, and a male nurse, this guy Ted, was standing there tentatively trying to get Nick to calm down while they were waiting for Dr. Haseltine to get there. Nick was pacing, limping on his casted knee. He had flipped over the wheel chair, and now it sat sideways on the floor, the back right wheel spinning helplessly. He grabbed the paddle from the ping pong table and lobbed it across the room. "This is so fucking pointless!"

"Nick, we need you to calm down, please," Ted said in a soothing tone.

The tone only pissed Nick off more. He turned over a table and kicked a chair with his good leg and grabbed a lamp off a side table and yanked its cord out of the wall and brandished it like he was a lion tamer fending Ted off. "I don't wanna be here, let me go home!" his voice was shrill. Everyone in the whole ward could hear the commotion. In the hall people were peeking out of their rooms to see what was going on in the rec room.

Ted held up his hands to Nick, "Come on, put down the lamp, dude, this is ridiculous."

"I WANT TO GO HOME!" Nick yelled at the top of his lungs. He threw the lamp, and Ted made a dive to catch it before it hit the floor, only just making it. He landed on his stomach on the carpet.

A woman came running in the room, "Nick, Dr. Haseltine's here, he wants to talk to you."

Nick had flung himself, anguished, across the room and against the wall, where he'd rested his head on the wallpaper and closed his eyes, feeling overwhelmed. His balled fists had been held up, bracing him and he'd been sure he was about to cry. Somehow, the name of Dr. Haseltine made him feel a flood of hope. He didn't understand why. He bolted as fast as his knee would allow him to for the doctor's private office, stepping over Ted's form on the floor and pushing past the woman in the door.

Dr. Haseltine was just pulling on his lab coat when Nick came through the door and slammed it behind him. "Please," he said, dropping to the floor on the carpet the moment he was inside, "Please, I need something." Dr. Haseltine paused in the middle of adjusting the coat and looked at Nick. His eyes were blood shot, his hands were shaking. "Please, I'm in pain," Nick said, his voice desperate. "It needs to stop hurting. Please."

"What hurts, Nick?" Dr. Haseltine asked, his eyes knitting in concern. "Tell me where it hurts and we'll see what I can do."

"Everywhere, it hurts everywhere," Nick answered. He laid down on the floor and curled his knees to his chest.

Dr. Haseltine stood still a moment, considering him, then walked across the room and sat down on the floor awkwardly beside him. Even in his state, Nick recognized how strange it was that Dr. Haseltine was on the floor. The guy just wasn't the type. For some reason, the fact that he had sat on the floor comforted him, and made him like the guy a little bit more. "I need to know exactly where, Nick, or I can't give you any pain medication," he said slowly. The fact was, even if Nick could pinpoint a spot, the most he'd give him was Tylenol. Nick's pain was emotional, he knew, not physical. Nick just thought it was physical.

Nick looked up at Dr. Haseltine, considering him for a moment. Finally he clutched at his chest. "Here," he said, "On the inside."



On day thirteen, Dr. Haseltine was reading Nick's twelfth journal entry, the one when he'd described being sick in Germany and Jane's visit, when Nick came in for his appointment for the day. Since the night of the relapse, he was walking a little better on his knee and had forgone using the wheel chair any longer at all. He limped into the room and sat down in the chair opposite of the doctor, facing the fish tank and rested his busted leg up on Dr. Haseltine's coffee table. This had quickly become the regular stance.

"Nick, this is a very nice moment you wrote about your mom," Dr. Haseltine said, closing Nick's journal and handing it back to him. Nick took it and hugged the battered notebook to his chest. He'd abused the crap out of it in the two short weeks that he'd had possession of it. The entire cover was drawn over and marked up and it had been rolled and stuck into his back pocket so many times that the thing stayed permanently coiled inwards. The wire binding was coming undone at the top and the top four rings were pulled out. Nick had bent the wire into a knot that he hung his pen from.

"Yeah," he said, picking at the wire knot.

Dr. Haseltine paused. "Is that the only one you could think of to write for me, though?" he asked, "The question was what your best memory was with your mother."

"That was all I could think of."

Dr. Haseltine nodded, "Okay. That's fine, Nick, I was just curious if there was a reason you chose that one over another memory of her, perhaps?"

"I thought I died," Nick said.

"What?"

"When I woke up in the hospital in Germany and she was there," he said, "I thought for sure I was dead because she wouldn't have been there if I wasn't dying." Nick stayed staring at the fish, back to the bit of not looking into Dr. Haseltine's eyes.

Dr. Haseltine considered this information. "But you weren't dying."

"No," he said, "I wasn't."

"So she came just because you were sick," he said, "To be with you."

"She came because Johnny asked her to and she would've looked like a really shitty mother not to, especially since he paid the airfare," Nick replied bitterly, spitting the word 'mother' out of his mouth like it was poison.

Dr. Haseltine frowned, taking notes, "I'm sure she didn't come just to please your manager--"

"Hello? Were you not there the other day? Did you not see what a fucking phony bitch she can be?" Nick asked, looking up, livid. "Of course she'd go to Germany to please my fucking manager."

He's right, Dr. Haseltine thought.

Nick shook his head, "Like I've said all along, my family hates me and I'm fine with that. It's not a big deal. I can handle it. What I can't handle is when they all fight like they did the other day and I end up caught in the center of it. As long as they hate me far away there's no problem."

Dr. Haseltine considered this. "You've never told me why you think they hate you," he said slowly, "Why do you think they hate you?"

"Again. Did you not see that display the other day?" Nick demanded.

The doctor nodded, "Yes I did see it, Nick. But it doesn't explain why you believe that they hate you. What I saw the other day was a very broken family with a lot of repressed feelings and rage. I did not see hatred directed specifically at you."

"I'm the one that caused it," he said, looking again at the goldfish as it swam. "Its my fault they are like that. That started after I left. It was my fault, for leaving."

"But you left to begin your career in music, correct?" Dr. Haseltine asked.

"I left because of the band, yes," Nick answered, "Because someone needed to be doing something to keep them all fed."



On day fourteen, Nick came into Dr. Haseltine's office. "Why aren't they visiting me?" he asked.

Dr. Haseltine, who had not yet looked at Nick's journal entry for the day, asked, "Who?"

"Brian and AJ and Howie," Nick answered, "My friends. Why haven't they come?"

Dr. Haseltine sighed, "I don't know, Nick." He made a note on the clipboard to call these friends of Nick's and get them in there. They were obviously the next hurdle Nick needed to tackle.