8.

Blaine didn’t expect anything pleasant from the week at the mental hospital; he saw it as something to survive and promptly forget about, just like that time he had his tonsils taken out. But it turns out to be much more of a challenge. Right from the first day – the Tuesday after Kurt went back to New York – he dislikes the place; the feeling intensifying by the hour.

It’s not a big hospital, and the diagnostic ward where he’s placed is small and has an air of forced coziness. There are only about twenty patients there right now, but there’s absolutely no privacy or silence, two things that Blaine feels he needs like air. Instead, he’s made to interact with others, talk to people and take part in group activities. His initial interview with the lead psychiatrist is scheduled for tomorrow; this first day is supposed to be the time for him to get settled and comfortable with the surroundings.

He’s far from comfortable, though. By bedtime – which is ridiculously early for him at 9.30 – he’s tense and on edge, wanting nothing more than just to go home, to his room; hell, anywhere where he can close the door and sit in silence, do nothing. He feels weak and exhausted, his body still recuperating after the shock of losing so much blood, but when he lies down, the bed unfamiliar and too soft, his spinning mind won’t shut up. He lies in the not-quite-darkness of the dimly lit single room, frustrated and wide awake. It feels like hours pass sleeplessly, and every thought in Blaine’s head seems to mock him with memories of Kurt – his face, his words and touches, their time together. When a nurse comes in to check on him, he asks to be given something for sleep.

The relief of the small white pill is fast and wonderful, bringing deep sleep with no dreams, but once Blaine gets awakened for a morning meditation and breakfast, he regrets ever asking for it. His brain feels strange and different, every thought and sensation is fuzzy around the edges, unclear. It’s like his mind is muddled and still half asleep, and his usual clarity of thought and coherence of speech is somehow impaired. It’s strange and unsettling, and doesn’t pass until late in the afternoon, which means Blaine goes for his interview and psychiatric evaluation at noon still in a fog of slight confusion.

Which is probably the main reason for the way it goes. Because Blaine came here open to the promise of help he was offered. He didn’t believe anyone could really help him, not when he was obviously just faulty and damaged on some deep, basic level, but he would allow them to try, would do his best to cooperate and not hide anything.

Except when the psychiatrist – a middle-aged, unsmiling woman – looks up from Blaine’s file and asks him what led to his suicide attempt, he has trouble putting it all into words. His sentences uncharacteristically broken, disjoined, he manages to tell her about it not being planned, about the surface things like Kurt going to New York and how he has no close friends and nobody appreciates him in Glee,  about his parents always being busy and away. He wants to tell her how often he feels like he doesn’t fit anyone’s expectations, or how he’s always knew that there’s something essentially wrong with him; but he fumbles, searching for the right words.

Anything that he might have been trying to say dies in his throat, though, when he happens to look up at the psychiatrist then. Maybe she’s having a bad day and forgot to control her reactions properly, or maybe it’s just him overanalyzing, but he can clearly see judgment in her pale blue eyes behind thick glasses, and can almost hear her thinking “Oh, just another kid trying to kill himself to draw attention. What a weakling.” One blink and it’s gone, the psychiatrist’s eyes are focused and carefully neutral again, but the damage is done.

A realization hits Blaine and there’s no way to disregard it now. God, he’s such a loser, isn’t he? Slitting his wrists because his boyfriend went to college and he felt lonely, seriously? It sounds so stupid he could laugh if it wasn’t his own life. Pathetic.

So no, he has no other reasons to give, no deeper insight about his past or his insecurities. It doesn’t matter. He isn’t worth losing time and effort over. For the next half hour he answers more questions, automatically, half-heartedly, but it’s just to get this over with. Just like he thought, they can’t help him anyway. Nobody can fix what is wrong with him.

The following days only confirm his conviction. There are three other patients after suicide attempts on the ward and their stories, shared during the group therapy, as well as their stares than he feels every time he turns his back, make Blaine feel deeply ashamed and even more worthless. People have so much bigger problems than his; what right does he have to bother anyone with his silly trouble? To take space, time and money that could have been put to better use helping others?

There’s a man who tried to kill himself after he was diagnosed with HIV and learned that he inadvertently infected his pregnant wife. There’s a woman whose entire family was killed in a car crash, and another who lost her house and savings because of her husband’s gambling addiction. There are people with other serious problems here, and Blaine feels like a preschooler trying to discuss his childish misfortunes with a group of adults.

Rationally, he knows that nobody is probably making fun of him behind his back or judging him too harshly – they all have way too much on their own plates to think about some misguided teenager. But it’s enough that he knows the truth and understands the implications of it. And these are simple enough: no one can really help him, because there’s nothing to help with. He’s a failure; it’s not something that can be cured, it’s just what he is, like his sexuality and his curly hair. The only decent thing he can do is stop being a nuisance for other people – his parents, Kurt, the society in general.

He won’t try suicide again; it was a stupid impulse, and he promised himself and Kurt that it wouldn’t happen again. He just needs to disappear. Well, not literally – now that would be a nuisance – no, he would just fade into the background. Learn not to draw attention, to be invisible. Stop trying so hard to prove to himself and others that he’s worth something. Because he isn’t, and it’s time to accept it.

So for the remaining days in the hospital Blaine does what he’s an expert at – he puts on a show face, grits his teeth and pretends that everything’s good, steadily better. Pretends that he sleeps through nights even though he never asks for sleeping pills again; that he takes everything he can from the therapy sessions and group activities, and starts feeling more hopeful. Anything, just to survive the rest of the week and go home on Monday.

He must be good at that, too, which actually surprises him, because aren’t therapists and psychologists supposed to see through such tricks? But they don’t, not really – they take his quiet participation in everything and occasional weak smile as a good sign.

On Monday morning, after the last individual therapy session, his therapist tells him with a smile that thankfully, his depression was caught early and isn’t severe yet, and with him trying so hard to get over it, he should be able to get much better soon with therapy alone, without medication. He’s assigned a therapist outside the hospital and given a schedule of sessions for the first month – three times a week, for starters. If he continues to improve, he’ll be allowed to go back to school after Christmas break.

Blaine feels a little guilty that what the young woman sees as a therapeutic success is nothing more than a dupe, but he quickly tells himself it’s better in the long run. He’ll do what he needs to for everyone to believe that he’s fine and to save them trouble. His mother won’t have to worry and spend money on meds and counseling, which won’t help anyway. Kurt will be able to leave him behind without feeling guilty for deserting him in need. And Blaine will finally allow himself to stop fighting for unattainable goals and just let the currents of life take him wherever.

When he gets home that afternoon, his room welcomes him with blessed absence of other people, and silence he can drown in while his mom works quietly in her office downstairs. Blaine drops face down on the bed and just lies there, reveling in being alone at last.

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because when he opens his eyes, he’s groggy and stiff, it’s after 8 pm and his mom is sitting on the edge of his bed, a little frown of worry on her face.

“Honey, are you okay? I wanted to tell you dinner’s in a half hour, but I can bring you sandwiches instead if you just want to eat and go back to sleep. You look pale.”

The instinct to protect her and not cause her any more trouble kicks in instantly, the mask slides on easily, seamlessly, and Blaine manages a small smile.

“I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep too well in the hospital, you know? There was always a light on and unfamiliar sounds around. I guess I needed some rest now.”

She looks at him as if trying to see through him, read the truth in his eyes, like she could easily do when he was a child. But that particular “mom power” doesn’t work anymore, it seems, because Blaine can see her believing his words, his face, and relaxing visibly. She smiles and brushes sweaty curls off his forehead the way she used to do back then, years ago.

“Okay. Will you eat with me then? You must be starving.”

He isn’t, not really. His body keeps forgetting about its basic needs lately. But he doesn’t want to raise his mother’s suspicions, so he nods and sits on the bed.

“I’ll be down in twenty minutes.”

Five minutes later he’s in the shower, the water as hot as he can stand, the way he likes it. His thoughts swirl and wander, and of course they have to go to Kurt, where else?

He needs to call Kurt, he promised he would.

He also has to start getting used to not having Kurt in his life. It’s a little over a month till Christmas and Blaine needs to do everything he can by then to let Kurt go, to widen the gap between them somehow, let the feelings cool off on both sides, make the ever present need weaken and allow Kurt to focus on his new life, new friends, and to slowly forget. And when he comes home for Christmas, Blaine will be busy and a bit distant, or maybe he’ll even convince his mom to get away this year? Visit his grandparents in Australia, perhaps?

The plan sounds logical and reasonable and right – when it’s abstract. As soon as Blaine tries to imagine actually applying it to his life and holy shit letting Kurt go, he starts to fall apart immediately and has to step out of the shower and sit down on the small stool in a corner because his knees are about to give way. It’s as if Kurt’s love is the glue keeping together all the barely fitting parts of Blaine’s life that would fall apart otherwise, leaving him a mess of useless shards of a human being.

But it has to be done, he has to let Kurt free. He will deal with the fallout later, somehow. Blaine may be weak and faulty and wrong, but at least in this one case he has to be tough, no matter how much it costs him. Because Kurt deserves better. He deserves the best.

He’s quiet all through dinner, eating automatically and without really tasting the food. He excuses himself without touching dessert, saying that he’s tired and he needs to call Kurt. It takes all of his courage and leftover strength to actually pick up the phone, though. When he finally does, he feels numb – just thinking about what’s about to change soon is too much – his mind closes it off. So Kurt’s voice doesn’t affect him at all, the anxiety and care in it just flowing through Blaine without leaving a mark. When he hangs up, he doesn’t really know what they talked about; he just lies down on the bed, staring at the ceiling.

Nothing matters anymore. Nothing at all.