Phia's Fragile and Fantastic Fingers || ONC 2023

Safe

I end up sitting on the floor with my knees drawn up and my head pressed hard into them. If I press hard enough maybe the voices will stop and my brain won't feel like the inside of a blender.

The med center is still three doors away, and I'm not going to it. I don't want to. I want to sit and wait until it all just goes away. I want it to go away.

It's a long while before I realize John's talking to someone. Then Mercy is because of course she's here too. She's the team leader and all that. I wonder if everything John was saying before was a lie. He was just going along with me to make me compliant. So I wouldn't accuse him of trying to lock me up. When he gets back and crouches next to me I glare at him. Not out of any real malice, but because I don't know what else to do. I don't want to be crazy. I don't want to be like this.

"You don't believe me do you," I say. There's tears around the word. Everything feels wet and messy.

"I actually do," John says, and his face is so open and honest and genuinely worried for me that I believe him. "You're crazy, but also incredibly smart."

Bipolar isn't a superpower, most of the time it just hurts. But sometimes, mania feels like having the power to fight god himself. I'm right. I know I'm right. I worked hard, stayed up too long and looked too closely at everything. I figured it out.

The thing about mania is, it feels great and it also feels like screaming and crashing and breaking.

I drop my head against the wall and stare at him. My brain is pulling me in fifty directions, each thought a rubber band stretched to its limit.

"What's the doctor gonna do?" I ask.

"Turns out your medical business is your medical business," John says. "I was just letting them know what I saw. I thought it might help speed the process along."

Oh, right. The process. The try-this-med-and-see-what-it-does-to-you process. The process that began with them giving me an antidepressant that sent me into the wildest two week manic episode of my life. I ended up in a forest thirty miles from headquarters. I don't want to change meds. I want the ones that worked a year ago to still be working.

"Might just need a tweak, or, you know, it's been a stressful couple of months, so it could just be bad luck," John says. He's read up. A lot. Like a panicked amount of reading about bipolar. He picks nervously at his pant leg while he waits for me to do or say something. I don't do anything but stare at him and hope the shaking that is my entire body stops.

"I still want to get Penelope," I say stubbornly.

"I do too," John echos. "But I want you to feel better, because this-" he waves around me, "is not okay."

His earnestness makes me laugh. Not a full belly laugh, but a heartfelt sad kind of desperate laugh.

"Mercy still over there?" I lean around John to see if Mercy is talking to the nurse. Sure enough I see her slick outline and soft hair. I don't see her face. I remember the kiss, and wonder if that was real. I feel hot and nervous. It almost doesn't feel real, because why would Mercy cheat on John with me? Maybe I made that up too. The broiling of anger in my stomach at Mercy is still kind of there. The shock and disbelief is real. I feel shaky.

"You and Mercy are dating, right?" I ask John. I should have asked why Mercy would lie about it, but that's not the question that came out of my mouth.

John looks utterly confused. He looks over his shoulder at Mercy then back at me. He looks like I've lost my mind.

Mercy looked at me like I had lost my mind.

"No," John says, tentatively, like somehow he doesn't know if they're dating. "No?" Now he's definitely looking at me like I'm crazy. "Did you think?"

I didn't think.

I knew. 100% certain. I knew. I saw them ki-

Or had I seen them kiss?

"John." I swallow, feeling sick and scared. "I need to go see a nurse or something." I slide up the wall, feeling like the floor is falling out from under me. I don't like this. I want out. I want-

"Yeah. 'Course." John holds me at my elbow. He looks scared, like I might pass out on him at any second. I'm not going to pass out, but maybe fall. Maybe fall through this reality and hit another one on my way out. I'm not sure. I'm really scared, and hot, and god I'm crying again. 

I knew they were dating. 

I was certain.

"I just. I want. This. I was wrong." I try to string a sentence together that will explain what it feels like to not know. I can't.

"Harper?" John calls down the hall to the nurse. She turns her head, and then must realize what's going on because she hurries toward us.

"Hey Phia." Harper's using her nurse-steady voice. "John tells me your having a rough day."

I roll my eyes, because I know Harper, and the first time I was manic she printed me out three hundred coloring sheets that I hastily scribbled on. She's knows I'm nuts and won't hold my melodrama against me, but this is not the time for the phrase "rough day." This is more than a rough day. This is my world dropping out from under me. I want to cry. Cross that out. I'm already very much crying.

"I don't feel good," I say. Which isn't exactly right, but I can't think of a better way to explain that everything is wrong, and nothing is real anymore.

"I see that," Harper says. "How about we go play some roulette with your meds?"

"Yes please." I nod desperately. I just want Harper to fix it. Fix it fix it fixit.

"When did you sleep last?" Harper asks, "We can get you some Trazodone." They handed me Trazodone like it was tick tacks when I was first manic or when they don't want to deal with me. Right now though, I don't want to sleep. I want to go rescue Penelope. I can't do that though. John said I can't. I'm kind of curious if the magical sleepy meds will shut up the screaming.

I can't say yes, so I just nod.

"Sounds like a plan kiddo." She puts a hand on my back and walks me toward the med center. At the last minute I grab John's shirt. He starts walking with me to match pace. I press my hand into the knit of his shirt. He's real. He's there. He's real.

"Be right here," he says, without me even having to ask him anything.

Mercy's standing by the door, right where Harper left her.

"I'll get your blanket from your room and your favorite sweater," Mercy says. She looks small and scared. Not her usual self. She's scared of me. I shoot her a quizzical look. She didn't cheat on John? I did shove her. I don't know anymore. Everything is confusing.

I could really use some sleep.