Part 7 – Slipping Through the Cracks
This story is about equality and self-acceptance. It also, in some way, has become a statement about the mental health care system.
There are some places where people are treated with compassion and there’s great out-patient care available. There’s support systems in place for the patient and the patient’s family both. There isn’t quite such a stigma attached to the mentally ill.
And there are other places that come across like something out of Gothika. People in the area treat the mentally ill as though that’s all they are. They’re not people with lives they might want to get back to. They’re a dark secret to be locked away and shipped around the country because they’re nothing more than a drain on resources. Let them starve and disappear where no one has to see.
I thought Dr. Werth would be a frightening figure. Instead she’s been nothing but compassionate. It surprised me. Maybe the world is ready to retire the image of Nurse Ratchet and the terror inspired by the thought of seeing a therapist?
I guess I’m hopeful for the future. I want to see a world where people can walk into an out-patient facility and receive the help they need and have it be as casual as a spa treatment. “How have you been? Here’s your meds” and it doesn’t cost a month’s rent for a little therapy, medication, and counselors helping patients find jobs and get their lives together.
I don’t want great health care for everyone to just be some sci-fi fantasy I babble about. I want it to be real. And I don’t want it to be so expensive that only the wealthy can afford it.
Title: Slipping Through the Cracks
Author: Harper Kingsley
Character: Franz Caulder/Ryan Wilder, Dr. Pamela Werth, Nicole Carson
Genre: mm
Rating: mature
Summary: Kid Nitro went to sleep in his own bed, and woke up on another Earth in the body of an alternate Franz Caulder. It’s a world without metabilities, which is jarring enough, but it’s also a world where Other-Franz is a mental patient grappling with some serious problems.
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Having his meds changed didn’t really mean a whole lot at first. He couldn’t even tell the difference, especially when he burst into tears during another group session. Though he was able to walk out of the room under his own power and he appreciated that much.
In the normal course of his life, crying in public would make him want to hide his face forever, but in this place it was just something that happened. He wasn’t the only one experiencing a breakdown and it was very different from being in real life.
It was as though he’d taken a step out of regular reality. Normal rules did not apply.
Crying in front of everyone was embarrassing, but it didn’t really count. He was back the next day, listening to the stories of people that had been desperately trying to hold their lives together while in the outside world. They’d clung to their normal lives and had things fall apart on them anyway. It made him wonder why they hadn’t gone for help sooner, before they ended up in this place.
He was used to a broken mental health system that hid people away rather than helping them. This world had more understanding available than he ever would have thought could exist, with so many out-patient options available that it made his head spin a little.
*Crazy people always say they’re not crazy,* he thought. Then, “I’m not crazy,” he whispered.
It made him laugh, and the sound of his own voice scared him. He looked around the recreational room, but no one seemed to be paying attention. He did manage to catch the eye of Joshua, who gave him a little smile before going back to whatever he was doing. Obviously he hadn’t caused a complete scene.
Franz was half-curled in an armchair in the corner of the room with a large art book opened in his lap. It was supposed to be his “time of serene contemplation,” which basically meant it was the point in his day when he was supposed to do something alone.
He’d idly been flipping through the book while his mind churned away with ideas and plans he mostly discarded.
There was nothing he could do about going home from his end. He didn’t know how he had gotten here, so he didn’t even know where to start on reversing anything. He couldn’t even go for help because they didn’t have the technology to reach into alternate realities in this world. Without superscientists they were steering blind and as a result had to be several decades behind the tech he was used to.
He was trapped here.
Franz rubbed a hand over his face and forced himself to calm down before he started hyperventilating or something. He could handle this. He could handle anything.
He was Kid Nitro.
It was the only thing he had to hold onto. He was Kid Nitro, and he’d faced all kinds of unbelievable things and made it through. His training hadn’t encompassed this particular situation, but he was sure he would be able to figure things out.
He hugged the book tighter against himself, taking comfort in the feel of hard edges pressing into his chest. It was a reminder that things were real and touchable, that the problems in this life were things that he could handle.
Nigel had always told him that the best way to approach a given problem was to break it down into manageable portions and work through everything a piece at a time. Eventually the problem shrunk to manageable size, and there was never a problem he couldn’t solve if he just stopped panicking and thought things through.
What was his problem here? He was in another world. There was nothing he could do about that. But he could do something about being locked in a mental hospital. It would be a lot easier to get a feel for the world if he was out and about seeing things happen in person.
He closed his eyes and shifted himself so his cheek was resting against the arm of the chair. He did his best thinking when he didn’t let himself be distracted.
If this had been a movie, he would have already broken out of the mental hospital and gone in search of the people that mattered: Nigel, the rest of the League of Superheroes, Edamame Rose. He would have tracked them down and tried to get some help. Then it would turn out that he was locked in some virtual reality machine or something and there would be a lot of action and breaking of stuff before he escaped triumphant.
This was real life though. He was working with his real life skill set.
He was terrible with computers, which is why he always let Edamame Rose handle the tech aspects–she loved that stuff and he didn’t. He had no idea how to make himself a fake ID, and even if he did, things in this world were different from what he was used to. He didn’t know how to hot wire a car.
He wouldn’t get very far running. His picture would be plastered all over the TV and Internet: “Please help us find our lost mental patient.”
He’d thought things through and it was better to stay in the hospital. They fed him, they taught him about the world, they were trying to integrate him back into society. The drugs were annoying, but the doctors gave him some leeway in what he was taking. Dr. Werth had kept her word and lowered the dosages–he could read the pills–and she was honestly trying to help him.
It was better to wait here until they let him out, then when he was free he would be able to get a job and have some money behind his search. Go to ground, dig deep, actually pause, think, and consider. That’s what he needed to do.
He could do that. He could adapt and conform to his current situation and empower himself through the solidity of pure will and righteousness.
A giggle escaped his lips.
He opened his eyes and looked around. No one had noticed. He relaxed.
Franz mentally frowned. He hadn’t meant to come off looking that paranoid and freaked out. The body had acted on its own. It was doing that more and more lately. He wondered if it was a reaction to the drugs.
He would just have to keep an eye out on his reactions. His self-control was shot. He needed to work with the system here and wait it out.
Nigel would get him home.
He let himself fall asleep to the thought.
The days were slipping past and he fell into the routines of the place as though he’d always been here. It scared him a little, how comfortable he’d gotten with living in this place. It had gotten under his skin.
He should have been absolutely thrilled to wake up in the middle of the night to the sound of hurried movements and urgent voices in a room down the hall. It was excitement happening around him, breaking the routine. Except there was the worrying clatter of machinery being moved and voices calling out.
He started to open his door to peek out, but suddenly Joshua was standing there, blocking the view. “How about you just go back to bed there, huh champ? There’s some serious business happening and I think she’d appreciate some privacy.”
Franz chewed on his lip and craned his neck to see that all the action was happening in Nicole’s room. A nurse passed the open door and there was blood on her scrub pants.
Franz swallowed. “I’m going back to bed.” He saw Joshua nod as he closed the door.
He stood there for a long moment, wondering what he was supposed to feel.
He’d just met Nicole. He talked with her for the entertainment value. They weren’t friends.
So why did he feel as though someone had pulled a backyard wrestling move and slammed down hard on his lungs, knocking all of the air out of his entire body? His head was spinning and his stomach was churning with nausea.
He turned and stumbled back to his bed where he curled into a ball, his hood drawn so close around his face that his breath was sweaty against his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the darkness close around him. He clamped his legs tight together, focusing on the discomfort to take his thoughts off what was happening down the hall.
Because it was obvious that Nicole had hurt herself. And he *didn’t* want to know how she’d done it. He didn’t want to picture all the ways that she could have done it in this place away from knives and razor blades.
His breath rasped in his ears and he couldn’t resist the impulse that took him to start humming. It wasn’t even a song, just this tuneless sound that vibrated up his throat to escape his lips.
He curled up in the darkness and promised himself that he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life in this place.
“I’m Franz Caulder. I’m Kid Nitro,” he whispered, and his voice sounded young to his own ears. Young and hopeless and lost.
But he was strong. He would make it through.
TBC…
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