#also the guitar pillow is a waifu pillow james' friends had made

[the-whumpening]

My Own Worst Enemy, Part 3 [Son of Bat]

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CW: hospital, medical content, vomit/gagging, intubation, trichotillomania, reference to alcohol abuse, thoughts of self harm, mention of past parental abuse

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A bright, pinpoint light shone in James' eyes as he woke to a quiet, dimly-lit hospital room. It must still be the middle of the night, he guessed, his head aching but growing slowly clearer. Air was forced in and out of his lungs, and he realized there was a tube down his throat.

He glanced around frantically, searching for some kind of explanation or help. His body was heavy; a groaning fire in his nerves demanded he stayed still. A hand squeezed his fingers.

"James? Can you hear me, baby?" He knew the voice, though his eyes swam, unfocused and unsure, to find her face. The word that came to his mind was 'mom,' though something about that seemed off.

Debby. Of course. She smiled when his eyes landed on her face. She was crying. He wanted to comfort her, but he couldn't find the strength to move yet. He tried to speak, but to no avail; he was only able to gag against the tube.

"It's okay, I'm here. Everyone else is here, too. Vince and Eddie and Molly . . . " She shot a look at someone else in the room and dropped her voice. "Can't we do something about that? Does he still need that tube now that he's awake?"

Someone responded, but James wasn't paying attention. There was too much to take in. This hospital room had been dappled with personal items—things he recognized as his own. Pictures of his friends, his guitar pillow, even a stack of his favorite books. How did they get here? How did he get here?

While he was lost in thought, he felt a tug at the oppressive tube in his throat. Someone turned his head to the side and loosed the tube from his mouth, a coughing spout of vomit following its exit.

Familiar hands gently cleaned his face, but his eyes squeezed shut against the ensuing dizziness. He groaned, the pain in his body finally reaching his consciousness. What happened to him?

A few murmured voices alternated in offering soothing words. When his eyes finally settled and began to focus again, he realized it was his friends. They all looked so tired, so stressed—what the hell's been going on? He tried to piece together his foggy memories; at the moment, all he could recall was driving home from the gym.

"Can you squeeze my hand, sweetie?" Debby asked.

He concentrated, trying to tap back into his lethargic and painful body. His fingers twitched. The control was there somewhere, he just had to find it. Maybe . . . After a moment, he curled his hand around Debby’s and limply grasped. Sighs and breathless laughter of relief circled the room

Through choking tears, Debby said, "That's it—you've got it!" She held his hand tightly in both of hers. "We've been so worried about you, James. It's so good to see you awake."

That's weird . . . I can't have been out for that long . . .

Seeing James' face scrunch in confusion, Vince half-whispered to Debby, "He probably doesn't remember anything. How much can we tell him?"

She pressed her lips in a tight line before quickly returning her attention to James. "We need to step out for a second, honey. Molly and Eddie are right here; I promise we'll be right back." Her cool hands brushed his forehead as she gave it a kiss, then left the room with Vince.

Molly quickly took her place by James' side, Eddie closing the gap on the other and carefully squeezing James’ exposed fingers. James could see the warmth in them light up as soon as they saw him. Truthfully, he felt a little warmer, too.

But mostly, he just felt pain. Being awake meant trying to move—consciously or not—and trying to move meant jostling every broken and bruised part of his body. He swallowed the pain as best he could; he wanted to be awake for just a little longer.

"H–" he started, before realizing his chest was too sore and his throat too raw to speak. He tried to take a deeper breath to whisper, but a sharp pain from his ribs rejected that idea. Despite his best efforts, he couldn't keep the grimace off his face.

Molly leaned in and brushed her fingers against his warm forehead. "It's okay, bud. We'll call the nurse and get you some pain meds soon.”

Confusion still wracked his brain. He was struggling to place the wheres and whens and whys of it all. His body felt foreign and disconnected, trapped in a cocoon of casts, braces, wires, and tubes but somehow still on fire. Every thought was slow and effortful; he'd already forgotten and remembered Molly’s presence twice since she last spoke.

Some memory nagged at the back of his mind, but he couldn’t quite place it—a terrible, familiar dream, maybe? An anxious sadness welled up in his chest, pressing against his sore muscles and broken body from the inside; he needed something specific, someone specific, to help soothe this ache in his heart.

With what little strength he could summon, he returned Eddie’s squeeze on his fingers. His eyes drowsily swam, unfocused and bloodshot, and he mumbled a single syllable: “Mom . . .”

Eddie froze, looking to Molly for help—certainly James didn’t mean his own mother, right? She combed her fingers through James’ hair, and he began to settle under her touch. “Do you want us to get Debby, bud?”

He nodded, a tiny fraction of a movement, closing his eyes as his head began to spin. Eddie loosed his fingers from James’ limp grasp and slipped out of the room. Molly didn’t try to fill the silence; as much as she wanted to pepper James with questions and smother him with affection, she knew it would be better to hold her tongue for now and let him rest. When Eddie returned, Debby and Vince in tow, Debby rushed to his side once more and fumbled for the call button for the nurse.

James’ eyes cracked open once again at the gentle sound of Debby’s voice and her hand on his face.

“Hi, sweetie. I’m here; it’s okay.” She smiled, the lines beside her eyes crinkling softly. “I'm not going anywhere.” As soon as she began to speak, James’ anxiety began to quell. The familiar fruity smell of her shampoo, the quiet hum of her voice; it wrapped him in comfort in a way his own mother never could. (Is that okay? he wondered. Is that normal?) “James, honey . . . Do you remember anything about what happened?”

What did he remember? After he left the gym, it was all flashes—he took the same road he always took, but he never got home, did he? It got dark . . . and his chest slammed against something hard. He remembered fear, the dread deep in his gut that the breath forced out of his lungs would be his last. He remembered a shattering sound, his ears ringing, and pain—blinding, stabbing, searing pain. He remembered the metallic taste in his mouth, a bitter mixture of bile and blood. From there, it was all a blur of colors and sound until his vision finally faded.

He shook his head barely an inch, held in place with the neck brace and his own pain. Even if his memories were more clear, he couldn't communicate them just yet.

"You were in an accident driving home from the gym. You got hurt pretty badly, and you've been in the hospital for a while. The doctor said you might have trouble moving around and thinking clearly for a little bit."

A flood of questions poured into James' head. The noise was overwhelming; he couldn't parse out any singular thought with the static of a dozen others in the way. He squeezed tighter on Debby’s hand, trying to stifle the confusion and panic bubbling beneath the surface, but hoarse and keening groans of pain slipped past his lips against his will. She returned his grasp, rubbing the top of his hand with her thumb.

"I know this is a lot, and I know you must have a lot of questions. But right now, you need to rest." At the flash of panic in his eyes, she continued, "We're not going anywhere, I promise. We'll still be right here. You're just gonna get some medicine to help with the pain, that's all."

He felt like a child, too small and too fragile to face the world. Every wave of emotion hitting him seemed to drown him entirely; he couldn't control his body's reactions to the constantly shifting tides. Whatever growth he'd made since childhood—physically, mentally, and emotionally—seemed to temporarily leave his grasp. He was once again in that tiny, vulnerable body that imprisoned him as a child.

Vince felt sick as he heard James' whimpers and saw the doe-eyed fear in his expression. It had been years since he'd seen James like that—nearly decades, even. He had to turn away to collect himself.

"Why don't I, um, try to find a nurse?" he asked through a choked voice, but his offer was rendered unnecessary almost immediately.

James' eyelids fluttered against the drowsiness of the medicine. Maybe I can just sleep for a little bit, he reasoned. That might . . . be nice . . .

As soon as his eyes closed and his breathing grew slow and heavy, Vince made a beeline for the nearest bathroom and allowed the nausea to take over. In the old days, he'd drown out this nagging guilt and self-hatred with alcohol—or simply pushing it down and ignoring it until it swallowed him whole. The latter had been his way of dealing with the past weeks, and he was exhausted. What little control he had left over himself was waning quickly; in the cramped stall, long-forgotten memories jabbed at his burning throat, the contents of his stomach spilling out violently.

He hadn’t seen James as he was in that hospital room. He saw the brown-eyed little boy who’d sat on his lap and begged for more stories before bed. He was scared of the dark, scared to go to bed alone, and he loved his older sibling more than anyone in the world. He remembered using his lamp to make shadow puppets and soothe the little boy. He remembered the fallout when they were found awake past curfew, and how he taught his brother to sneak and hide like him.

He saw the scared, lonely little brother he’d kept his distance from years ago. The little brother he wanted to protect—desperately—but who he’d let fend for himself far too much. He remembered the day James broke his wrist when they were kids. He remembered how confused and scared James had been, how angry their mother was, how much Vince wanted to hide and avoid her wrath . . . and how relieved he’d been when she left him at home to take James to the doctor.

He remembered that little boy growing up to be big, to be angry, to be hurt by his family and lash out in response. He remembered resenting that big, angry boy for leaving him behind to face their parents alone—but then, Vince wondered over the years with increasing self-hatred, did he not do the same to James? Letting him take the fall and divert attention away from himself, letting him be the scapegoat and the family punching bag just to save himself? Letting James slip from his grasp and wander all on his own, so he could pretend that everything was fine?

He hated every cell in his body for it; he hated that he’d let James down over and over again, and he hated that he could ever resent him for setting himself free. And now, knowing that his neglect of James—I should’ve known; I should’ve noticed he was overworking himself—had once again caused him immense harm . . . the guilt was unbearable.

When the fits of heaving finally stopped, he propped his sweaty head in his hands. His fingers itched to pluck the fine hairs of his scalp—something, anything to distract from the racing thoughts. He roughly scrubbed his scalp with his nails, hoping the scratching would alleviate the temptation at least a little.

Knock, knock.

A timid hand tapped on the stall door. “Vince?”

Was that Eddie? He’d hardly spoken the entire time James was under; Vince was shocked to hear his voice. He cleared his throat and tried to quickly clean his face.

“That you, Eddie?”

“Yeah. Are you okay?”

“Just . . . feeling a little sick, that's all.” He stood up, leaning wobbly against the cubicle walls. “I think I should maybe—maybe go home for a little bit.”

He tried to maintain an air of calm as he unlocked the door and stumbled to the sink; the cold counter beneath his arms helped soothe his feverish skin. Even so, Eddie knew something was off.

“Hey.” He grabbed Vince’s arm as he headed for the door, loosely holding him in place. “I dunno if you should be alone right now, man. You know you can talk to us, right?”

Vince flashed an unconvincing smile and waved him off. “I appreciate it, but really—I’m fine.”

But, as he turned to leave, a sinking feeling weighed deep in his gut. Maybe he’s right. Vince knew his own true intentions; he knew that if he went home, unsupervised in his current state, he would surely end up raiding cabinets for booze or scratching himself raw in an effort to quell his mounting panic.

He stopped, his back still to Eddie. “But let’s say, for argument’s sake, that I wasn’t okay. That, just for example, seeing James hurt and scared like that brought up some really painful memories that I don’t know what to do with. Things that make me feel guilty and ashamed . . . What, um,”—his voice started to waver and caught in his throat—“what should I do?”

Eddie thought for a moment. He knew most of what James and Vince had been through, but he’d never heard much of Vince’s side of things. For him, it had been difficult to see James so vulnerable and small—he’d always been Eddie’s protector, the strong and unshakeable one, still powerful and huge even in his lowest moments. It was strange, unnerving even, for him to whimper and cry rather than rage and scream. But staying by his side, despite that dissonance, made Eddie feel like he could return the favor and protect James, even if only in spirit.

“I think . . . maybe it would help to do the things you wished you’d done before. Like, taking all those old memories, but changing the ending.” He suspected he knew what Vince might have been referring to, but he guessed there were probably a dozen more stories like it in their past. “I think it would mean a lot to him if you were here when he woke up. But I don’t know, this is all hypothetical, of course—if you think you should go home, at least let one of us come with you. Personally, I’m still feeling a little anxious about people driving alone right now . . . ”

Vince knew he was right; Eddie always had a way of finding solutions no one else could. And, as much as he hated to admit it, Eddie often seemed to know James better than him. Maybe because he got to see the happy, unfiltered, unrestrained version so much more—all Vince had ever really known of James before coming back into his life was the suppressed, beaten-down kid that had nearly given up on everything.

“I . . . I’ll stay with him a while.”

Alone with James in the dim hospital room, Vince sat at his side and retrieved the small paperback book from his bag. The spine was cracked and nearly laid flat; the pulpy-thin pages were stained along the edges and fluttered easily to the passage Vince had read time and time again. His quiet voice warbled, a lump pressing painfully in his throat:

"‘We may even get lost and be frozen by frost. We may die in an earthquake or tremor. Or nastier still, we may even be tossed On the horns of a furious Dilemma. "But who cares! Let us go from this horrible hill! Let us roll! Let us bowl! Let us plunge! Let's go rolling and bowling and spinning until We're away from old Spiker and Sponge!’"