Who: Louis (Narrative) What: Louis' time in the hospital, and being set free. Where: The mental hospital he was checked into after the accident. When: After meeting with Toby. Warnings/Rating: Depression, various mental health stuff.
The hospital. The hospital was a series of check-ins and check-ups, of how-are-you-doings and -just-fine-thanks. The hospital was a harried phone call the day after being admitted to Louis' assistant, asking her to cite a sudden illness to any curious clients who called the office asking why there had been no progress in their cases, and to move on her own in any others that she was able to without him. The hospital was hoping his clients wouldn't see his name in the paper, or that it hadn't made the paper at all. Wasn't there enough going on in Las Vegas without tracking one more madman who had a run-in with police?
There were papers to sign, and there was medication to reluctantly take. Despite Toby's assurances that medication for depression was just the same as treating any other illness, Louis remembered. He'd been inside Evan's head for flashes of his time in prison, seen what that kind of medication could do to kill off the senses and dull the mind. He had never had any particular feeling about medication before then. Now, though, that feeling stuck with him, pricking at the back of his neck, and he turned down everything but sleep.
Sleeping pills were as severe as it got. Even they left him feeling groggy and strange when he woke up in the morning. Group therapy, which came after breakfast, was his least favorite part of the day. To have his shame put on parade for other people - where was the use in that? How was that meant to make him feel better? Then again, some of the stories other people told, some of the difficulties they'd faced and the things that plagued, well, they just made him feel guilty all over again for complaining.
His therapist didn't like it much when he told her that, how hard it was to feel as if he really needed care, or deserved the attention of the staff, when there was so clearly nothing for him to be complaining about. Not compared to his sisters, certainly. Not compared to the other patients. His therapist asked him why he always had to measure himself against others, even in his troubles, and he had no answer for her.
After a week, group therapy stopped stinging quite so much. One or two of the other inmates even managed to make him laugh, briefly, and that was nice. It felt like it had been a very long time since he'd laughed at anything at all.
When he'd been there a week and a half, Louis began to be resigned to the fact that he'd be staying for a while. When that happened, something shifted. He'd been spending his days in a haze, wandering from prescribed place to prescribed place, doing whatever was asked that seemed likely to get him released sooner. But when news came in that Ian was dead, it seemed so pointless. What was the rush, now, in getting out? What was the hurry in running headlong back into the world and becoming one more problem for the family to deal with?
His therapist didn't much like that either, reminding him that they were his family, after all, that he himself had said they were supportive, the ones he had yet to alienate. People had breakdowns, that was nothing to be ashamed of. Then why did it make his skin crawl, so? Why, before he drifted off to sleep, did he feel like he was never getting any of it back?
When it had been two weeks, he got angry.
It took that long, talking and reading and staring at pieces of supposedly therapeutic art before he started to have errant thoughts about burning the building down, about finding Ian's corpse and desecrating it, about shaking the nurse if she asked him one more time whether he wanted to take the antidepressants. In his room, in therapy, in the hallways, he paced. This place was a prison, and the only reason he was even here was because he'd wanted to help his sister. The more he thought about it, the angrier he got, until he was unrecognizable from the quiet, withdrawn figure he'd been when he was brought in by police just weeks before.
He tried to rationalize it. This had all been building up for a long time, that he had a lot of hate to burn before he was finished, but it just felt frightening, out of control. That sent him into a tailspin of anxiety - what might he be capable of? What now?
It made him want to do things he shouldn't, like call his parents and tell them exactly what he thought of the way they'd raised their children. It made him want to visit Evan and ask him why he'd been such a prat when that had really been the moment in his life when he could have used someone decent, someone good, someone who wouldn't have left him in worse shape than he'd started in. It made him want to go fuck practically anyone, as if that would be a fitting revenge. It made him want to call Lin on the phone and scream himself hoarse, because he just didn't understand. It made him want to see Iris' face when those pictures of Ian had surfaced, and know whether she'd felt pain like Sam had.
As if any of it would fix anything, make anything better except vent rage, let off the pressure. His therapist asked him why he couldn't do some of the more rational of these things, if he really thought they would help. Visit Evan, for instance, or call his parents and have an honest conversation with them. He had no answer for that, either. They likely wouldn't make him feel any better, since by the end he was bound to feel ashamed again for his behavior, for his lapse in self-control, for his ever widening weakness. He thought of the comments he'd heard in the past few years. He thought of Joseph, and the look in his eye, wondering how anyone so weak ever could have been on a police force.
Why was protecting everyone his job? Why did vulnerability make him any weaker than anyone else? Why did he always measure himself as less? Why did he constantly check himself against the ideal, and take accounts, and find himself wanting?
He didn't know. His therapist had a lot of questions he had no answer to, and his lack of answers only made him angrier. He'd wasted so much time, and what had tearing himself down ever gotten him except a string of people who pitied him, yes, but didn't really want to be around him? Not that he wanted pity - he loathed that pity, and they could take it with them when they left.
He wasn't taking the medication to go to sleep, anymore. Now, he burned so bright and hard during the day that sleep was a welcome relief, and he almost never dreamed about anything.
It wasn't his fault, or everyone else's fault, it was a combination of the two. The sooner he could shake off the guilt for being broken, shake the anger for having been broken and for breaking, maybe he could move on with his life, find something to do that didn't involve the measuring and the measuring and the measuring. He wouldn't cling, then, to brief, lost opportunities, and feel so pathetic about them. Perhaps being angry was a start, and not backing down, not cringing when failure came. Accepting that sometimes trying, embarrassing himself, calling everyone he knew, and driving around town with a gun and the intent, sometimes that really was it. Even without success, the intent could be enough.
When the weeks were up, Louis was exhausted, he had a collection of unanswered questions, and he was still angry. He felt different, but he wasn't sure how, and in that state, the state decided that he was sane again. They cut him loose.
The therapist with all the questions agreed to continue to see Louis after he got out, and she seemed pleased that he'd asked her to. That, she told him, was progress. He had admitted he needed someone to help him without being forced to do it by someone else. Louis didn't know. It felt like getting even weaker, but it also felt stupid not to admit he wasn't going to be able to do this again by himself.
But, really though, why couldn't he go do all the things he wanted to, when his blood was boiling and he had a thirst for revenge, for enough closure to move on?