Chapter Text
Philza and Wilbur were the only two left by his bedside, watching his face in anticipation as he was spoken to.
“You’re very lucky you’re alive, sir,” the nurse said as she changed the saline bag. Schlatt’s eyes followed the plastic tube down to his wrist, his breath hitching as they landed on the needle taped to his skin.
He took a breath and looked away before his heartbeat spiked, nodding at her gently.
The woman quickly disposed of the empty bag and grabbed the clipboard hung at the end of his bed. “I assume you’re aware of the situation with your treatment?” He gave another nod, “There are a few things I’d like to go over with you before you’re taken there.” Her fingers flicked each page as her eyes moved back and forth. Schlatt’s chest grew heavy, and anxious tears welled in his eyes. His breath shook this time as he looked up to hold his tears back, fists clenching as much as they could in his pathetic state. A warm hand slipped into his own, and Wilbur turned to him, giving him a solemn smile. It only made Schlatt want to cry more.
“Here it is… Alright… Due to the procedure they did last night, you’re going to be on a liquid diet for a couple of days. We’ve already let the doctors at L’Manberg know what medications you may be able to take. You’re most likely going to be out of it, due to both your recovery and the withdrawal, so please, take it easy…” A few pages were flipped, and she continued. This time the words flew in and out of Schlatt’s ears, not hitting his brain as he focused on her delicate hands, the bright hospital lights, the figures walking by the door. His vision blurred and he took another breath. The same weight in his chest pulled his eyelids down, the drone of the heart monitor pounded into his mind.
He was far too sober for this.
“...and that’s about it,” her voice suddenly boomed over the silence that he’d created in his mind. “Do you three have any questions? If not, I’ll let you be and tell the doctor you’re ready to be transferred tomorrow morning.”
Schlatt’s mouth hung open dumbly as he came out of his haze, “Uhm- No, that’s- that’s fine.”
“I’d just like to clarify a few things about the place before he gets transferred tomorrow, if that’s alright.” Phil grabbed the paperwork he’d been filling out for Schlatt from the side table and walked over to the nurse.
Schlatt instantly drowned out the noise again, eyes slipping shut as he squeezed Wilbur’s hand with his own clammy one. The pressure was reciprocated, and Schlatt forced himself to smile.
“There’s no realistic way he will be able to play this season. I’m sorry, sir.”
Phil had been expecting that. His heart sank into his stomach nonetheless.
“Do you have an estimate of how long he’ll be at the clinic?” She shook her head.
“It’s anywhere around one to three months, but Schlatt is in a grey-zone as far as the severity goes. It can be hard to tell how long it’ll take. It’s up to him to make the changes.”
Phil nodded. It was going to be a long three months.
It was only a day between his overdose and his referral to rehab. Thanks to his anxiety going through the roof, those 24 hours felt like forever and no time at all. A blur of pain and exhaustion, numbers and words and directions he couldn’t understand without the help of Phil and Techno.
Schlatt still couldn’t believe Phil was paying for it.
There was a lingering dread at the forefront of his mind. So much of him hated having to do this. So much of him didn’t want to do this.
The one thing he had to remind himself was that it wasn’t just for him, but for them too.
Schlatt wasn’t allowed to walk, and his withdrawal was estimated by the doctors to be “moderate to severe”, whatever that meant, so he was taken there in a wheelchair while remaining hooked up to an IV. The way his skin itched where the drip was inserted was beginning to drive him mad. Pins and needles had begun to travel both into his now-trembling hand and up his forearm, into his shoulder, and slowly to the rest of his body. His clothes felt like sandpaper on his skin. His skin felt like sandpaper on his insides.
It didn’t take a genius to know this was only the start.
“I’ll be right back, mate,” Phil parked the wheelchair in the lobby next to the other seats. “I’m gonna sign you in.” Schlatt nodded and followed his path with blank eyes. The room felt fake all of a sudden, the white walls like mirrors reflecting the early morning sunshine. The gaudy bright blue carpet that was somehow pristine paired with a sleek dark wood floor practically mocked Schlatt’s condition.
This place was too fucking good to be true. It had to be.
“Hey,” Techno said from the seat next to him, “I can see you thinking, you know. What’s up?”
“...What if this doesn’t fix anything?”
Techno frowned, “You haven’t even been here for 5 minutes, Schlatt.”
“I- I know, but it– it feels wrong, I-” Schlatt shook his head, wincing as the motion mixed with the brightness of the room made him dizzy. He pressed his thumb and forefinger into his eyes, pinching his nose bridge. “Fuck, man.”
Techno’s gentle, calloused hand placed itself on Schlatt’s shoulder. “I’m sure it’s gonna take some getting used to, but you’re going to get help, man. That’s what matters the most.”
“I don-” I don’t want help, is what he would’ve said if it weren’t a lie.
“Don’t what?”
“I…” Schlatt sighed heavily, letting his eyes focus on his lap. He was still wearing a menthol-green hospital gown. The color alone pissed him off. Clenching at the fabric in his lap with white knuckles, he took another breath, “I don’t know. I just…” Schlatt’s words were already dead on his tongue.
He wanted this to be worth it, he just wasn’t sure he could make it.
Once Phil was done, his soft footsteps boomed through the near-empty lobby. A doctor came with him, explaining something important to Schlatt but getting little attention. He glanced back at Techno with fearful eyes as he began to be wheeled away.
Anxiety was all Schlatt felt. His body was tense and hot and his chest was being pressed on by some force that wanted him to suffocate. The machinery loomed over him like a beast, whirring and ready to rip his insides out.
He had to be drugged up just to go through the CT scan without having a panic attack. He wanted to throw up at the sight of the blood they’d drawn for another test; the thick red liquid oozing out of his arms and into the plastic vials made him feel like he was being experimented on.
He was back in a haze by the time they were finished. Schlatt had seen blood before but it didn’t matter. This was his blood, his body, his life at stake here.
Once he obediently nodded along with the doctor, he was wheeled back to his assigned bedroom. “Bedroom” was putting it nicely: it was just another hospital bed, the only difference was it faced out towards a view of the lush forest down the hill.
“Close monitoring”, he remembered one of them saying.
Withdrawal . He didn’t need that explained to him. His despondency told the nurses otherwise.
Schlatt was alone in no more than 5 minutes. The IV no longer taunted him from where it stood high above, watching him like a smiteful god. A tray of newly prescribed medication sat on a nearby counter, along with a list of his symptoms and their causes and every mistake he’d ever made in his damn life in the span of two sheets of paper. Either they wrote very small or they were giving him way more credit than he deserved. The pills had been forced down his throat no matter how much his body wanted to refuse. They were supposed to help. Schlatt almost hoped they didn’t.
Past that point, the night morphed into a dilapidated image of blue and white and grey, with differently colored faces greeting him every so often. He never read anything more than their lips.
Schlatt woke up and it wasn’t even light outside. Normally, he’d groan and go back to sleep, but he was glad he could keep his eyes open without light getting in. His head hurt like a bitch. The worst part was that he couldn’t even move where he was laying because his stomach was empty and yet he was about ready to hurl.
The only thing he could do was slap his hand on the nightstand for his phone in the darkness. He eventually grabbed it without dropping it and clumsily put in the passcode. Not only was he typing with his right hand but it was trembling as though he’d been standing in a snowstorm. Cursing silently to himself as the screen blinded him, he lowered the brightness and opened his messages.
God knows why he did what he did. He hadn’t talked to either of them since the night he saw Ted.
He took just about the worst selfie he’d ever seen, the flash overexposing his disheveled look and sending a sharp pain through his eyes. It’d turned into a full blown migraine at this point.
The last thing that Ted or Charlie had sent were concerned messages (Schlatt was too busy ignoring his problems to care, he was a terrible friend). That’s all their private conversations were, too. Schlatt had turned off read receipts a while ago, he never knew it’d come in handy.
It wasn’t funny, but he huffed out a laugh anyway.
Schlatt sent the picture with no context, only realizing the time when the message registered as Sent at 3:44 AM .
He knew this wasn’t fucking funny. Some sick part of him thought it was, he guessed. Maybe that sick part was just all of him. He felt pretty sick after all.
Sick enough to turn off the phone and set it back where it had been. The light had made the room appear naturally darker and the pressure behind his eyes began to ease. His nausea hadn't though.
Slowly, Schlatt sat up and winced at the pain in the back of his throat. He wasn't supposed to be walking, but stood up anyway, feeling around in the darkness towards the general direction of where he was told the bathroom was. Not bothering to turn the lights on, he leaned over the sink, coughing from walking just a few feet. The visceral feeling of pressure on his lungs left Schlatt breathless, soon hurling the little he'd eaten in the past day into the sink. It was vile and painful and awful and he was so used to this feeling that it was second nature to just let it happen. Schlatt ran the tap, leaning on his elbows and panting, legs shaking as though he had just took his first steps. In a few minutes the nausea was nearly gone, the vomit washed away like nothing ever happened.
He spat, rinsed out his mouth, and crawled back into bed.
Just like every night before.
He didn’t know how the fuck he managed to avoid getting pulled over.
Ted hadn’t talked to Schlatt in over a week, and this is what happens? He lands himself in the hospital? Ted was grateful he had Quackity’s phone number or he would’ve never fucking come.
‘Schlatt’s in rehab right now’ was what Q had told him. ‘He almost overdosed on alcohol’.
He gripped the steering wheel tighter and took a breath. Asking to visit him seemed like it’d be a big mistake; he knew how Schlatt was when he wasn’t feeling well, but now he was also battling a fucking addiction he’d had for God-knows how long. It was at most a year, Ted knew that much.
Quackity was a saint for giving Ted the go-ahead in visiting.
Ted was there after all. The night it went downhill.
He told Charlie, and naturally, he wanted to go, too.
“How far are we, Charles?” his worry-creased brows caused his voice to come out gruff.
“Like, five more minutes, man… It’s the next left.” Charlie had been uncharacteristically quiet for the entire hour they’d been on the road. It was only nine in the morning and they could only hope they’d actually be let in, let alone see Schlatt while he was awake.
They were let in, directed to room number 204, and shared a tense silence as they rode the elevator. The hallway seemed infinite as they walked down it.
“Are you okay?” Charlie cut the air with a knife. Ted stiffened and sighed.
“I don’t know… I just want him to be alright, you know?” Charlie nodded. “He didn’t even respond to our damn texts, Charles, he could’ve fucking died! ”
“I know, man… God this… fuck,” he ran his hand through his brown hair, messing it up more than Ted had ever seen. He couldn’t blame Charlie for the exasperation as they stopped at the door. Ted found it unlocked when he grabbed the handle and it turned down with ease.
They shared another look and Ted opened the door.
He quickly realized that this place was more like an apartment. The walls were white and blue with grey accents, the gold and dark wood of the furniture offsetting the brightness. There was a small living room, dining area, kitchenette (though, it was only stocked with the hospital’s provided food, he assumed), and even a private bathroom.
Schlatt was on the couch wrapped in a blanket, a trash bin placed on the floor nearby.
“Schlatt?” Ted called, and the man in question jolted.
Schlatt looked at the duo with wide, inset eyes, their sockets dark and tired against his pale skin. His hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in days, strands sticking to his sweaty forehead. “How’d you– What the fuck are you doing here?!”
Ted rushed over to hug Schlatt, not even giving an answer. The acrid smell of sweat and puke hung in the air. Sickness just stuck to Schlatt’s entire being and Ted couldn’t help but feel at fault. If they’d left that bar an hour earlier, when Ted had noticed his friend’s drunken stupor, maybe, just maybe, he could’ve talked to him. Maybe Schlatt would’ve accepted his help before he nearly killed himself.
He held Schlatt tight, but not so tight as to break him. Ted had never seen him so fragile.
Schlatt stammered to get his words out but they didn’t get anywhere. Ted’s chest grew tight and he shut his eyes as though he knew what Schlatt was saying.
I’m sorry I let you down.
He felt Charlie join the hug, and a shaking hand grabbed his side.
They sat there enveloped in each other’s presence, and if any of them cried it didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Schlatt was alive. Schlatt was here with them.
The weight on their shoulders was gone, and this was an unspoken promise to help Schlatt get rid of his own.