Day 52: Intercom, Dawn

[damned_intercom]

There was no telling if the next announcement came hours or minutes after the previous one, but regardless of that, it did come on with the onset of dawn. Like clockwork, like always, someone was there to greet the half-groggy patients as they woke up in their beds

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[damned_nurses]

The lack of a shirt hadn't bothered her too much. That wasn't too out of the ordinary. Some patients saw the face printed on the uniforms as some sort of threat (she didn't quite understand why, but they were mentally ill), and so they refused to wear the clothing until they were forced. The fact that he was holding clothes hangers (with the clothing still on them) was more abnormal, but--

Either way, Mr. Peace didn't waste any time in trying to use those as projectiles. One got close to hitting her, but she managed to duck out of the way in time. But before she could get a word in edgewise, he started with the shouting again.

"Just listen," she attempted, but the patient continued babbling on about a flea (what was that?), and then came the foul language and the raised tone. "Stop it!" she demanded. What he was saying was completely out of hand, with threats to top it all off. He wasn't threatening her, but before long his fists were doing the talking.

The nurse was prepared, though, and she ducked out of the room the second he started to run for her. "Get him!" she snapped at the orderlies, and the two rushed to block the doorway, both prepared to catch the patient in their strong grips and restrain him.

[angeritself]

Get him, that was familiar, that he knew, years and years and years of them picking fights, guys with something to prove, wanting to fight, pulling bats and knives and iron knuckles, not giving two shits that he hated violence hated violence! Shizuo's momentum slowed at the sight of the two men, but not for long, not really, a target was a target and he'd figured them out, all of them, the whole damn place.

Get him, they wanted to get him violent, like everyone wanted to get him violent, not caring what he wanted. He'd said it before (not that he remembered) and he'd say it again: just because they wanted him violent meant he shouldn't give in and get violent, didn't mean he wouldn't get violent, he'd get violent and beat them within an inch of their lives, within a centimenter, a fucking millimeter, and then he'd beat them again! There wasn't enough time or space to shout this, or anything but a garbled thing that might have been IHATE VIO before he was swinging one fist at one man, and aiming to crash his elbow into the other.

[damned_nurses]

The attacks that should have caused the orderlies to double over in pain did hardly any damage at all. The male nurses refused to budge, both standing there like brick walls as they allowed the patient to attempt his onslaught. Each one let out a small grunt of pain, but that was the extent of it -- almost as if their skin was armor instead of flesh.

When the patient's elbow hit the one, he reached out and grabbed for his arm, pulling it into an impossibly tight grip. With that arm restrained, it was easier for the other orderly to move around behind Shizuo and grab the second limb.

"It'll be easier if you calm down now," one said, a final chance being given to the rowdy patient. The nurse, meanwhile, stayed outside of the room, waiting for their signal.

[angeritself]

The other side of the fence: it was enough to give Shizuo a proper, stalling shock. For his fist to hit skin that felt like brick, to not cause pain but only feel it, as if he were the typical human. It wasn't that Shizuo took pride in his strength, that he adored or cherished it, that right now, he missed it. But, neither his body nor his mind could comprehend this, this, his arm wrenched back, his arms held, by strength greater than his.

What? A stupor, but through it, that sense, the prickling, the shred of logic no one, certainly not Shizuo, knew he possessed. What was this place? Monsters to hold the monster who, how, why, how, too many questions, too many words, only one answer made sense, had to be the flea, the damn flea, had found this place to hold him, but he wouldn't be held.

"You want me to calm down?" he asked, voice not level, reverberating with rage, as if a plucked string whose note kept on in violent vibrato. "You get me violent and grab me, like you're gonna put me away, or worse, and I shouldn't think it's a threat, ehh? You make me violent, and I'm supposed to calm down, no WAY-"

Impossibly tight grip, but hell if Shizuo didn't try. Didn't slam his head back, into one man's face, didn't try to swing all of his weight down (and let his arms strain, strain), to furiously try and bodily crash into the other, and if that didn't work he'd kick and kick and kick, he'd kill them! Kill them, then hunt down Izaya and kill him, too!

[damned_nurses]

"No one is making you violent," the nurse responded as she moved back into the room, watching the patient as he still tried to force himself out of the orderlies' iron grips. She sighed and shook her head, wondering what it was that caused so many of the new arrivals to react this way. She understood that the situation was disorienting, but fighting against the people who were trying to help them would do no good.

The two men were forced to endure a few painful hits, but they were trained to take the damage without letting go, and so that was what they did. The nurse had to watch carefully for an opening, waiting for Mr. Peace to be distracted enough that she could swoop in with the syringe that she had already procured and uncapped.

Eventually, the opening was there, and she followed protocol, aiming the needle for his arm. It took only a second or two for the sedative to enter his system, and she removed the needle just as quickly.

"You can let him go now," she said, expression worn, and so they did.

[angeritself]

Always something, always something -- but, in truth, Shizuo didn't have that persecution complex. He knew where the blame lay. That could have been it, what weakened him here, though the new sense, suspicious, itch, did not argue this fury, that of held down and misnamed, mistreated, in some fashion imprisoned, within walls, arms, words, mind games.

He struggled, body and mind both unable to grasp its futility (mind unable to grasp that it could grasp, in a dimension other than his anger's insane logic), and squirmed, helpless in a way he never had been. In this situation, like this, it wasn't a relief. Not as the needle pierced and he could feel it, muscles tensing and jerking still at the sudden, surprising pain. Nostalgic. Dimly, he understood what they intended to do; flashes of memory, police lights coloring his face, metal restraints (as if holding back a beast) holding him against the fence, words like elephant tranquilizer, and Shizuo feeling nothing.

This must have been what it should have felt like. Like years ago, when he'd shattered his pelvis and the anesthesia worked (now, he never went to the hospital, now, he never needed surgery that intensive, to have to go under -- a lucky thing, the gas probably wouldn't work). But instead of falling asleep, everything sagged. A haze of a completely different kind suffused him, dulling mind and senses, in a way not at all like fury. Its effectiveness shocked him back into a dull calm, which coupled with the drugs, served to put him, briefly, completely out of his head.

Shizuo felt aware, distantly, of a hot, damp spot on the back of his head, and a throb. There were words drifting over,

bleeding

shirt on,

and a pressure on his arm that lead him further into the room. His foot caught, tripped on a drawer's corner, and he nearly fell. A woman (that woman, a muted furrow in his brow) steadied him, guided his arms through a gray shirt. mess you've made tsking, the door opening onto a strange hallway. He found his lips moving, shaping a muttered "Sorry" , as if she was Tom-san, as if she deserved it. His stomach twisted unhappily, but that was all.

that's better, Mr. Peace, so for

milk

his feet dragged and his thoughts, with gradual cohesion, stirred, chafing beneath that which had not faded below the syringe's plunge: the odor, the lifting of the hairs on his neck and knuckles, the understanding, feeling and gut more than word, that this something everything was wrong wrong wrong screwy fucked up screwy distorted wrong but for right now, for this moment, he dragged his feet.

[to here]