Sasha Martin Stanford (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beautifulday) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2019-08-18 02:46 pm
beautifulday) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2019-08-18 02:46 pm
"Still falling, breathless and on again..."
Who: Sasha Stanford and Justin Campbell
What: Picking up the pieces
Where: Renal Unit, Mount Sinai
When: After this
Sasha didn’t even bother with his appearance today. His plan was to stick close to Justin in his hospital room and if that could, in any way, involve snuggling, that would be top of the list. Sweatpants, a t-shirt, a pair of Justin’s high-tops and his cap was all the effort he had in him. He stopped at Justin’s favourite cafes to get him a cup of freshly brewed tea, a specialty blend with real leave and none of the teabag crap Justin wouldn’t touch, no matter what.
When he stopped at Lorenzo’s florist shop near the hospital to get some flowers to brighten up Justin’s room, he had that sense he was being watched. He pretty much never got spotted for who he was if he was without Justin and today, when he didn’t want to deal with anyone, wasn’t the best day for it to start happening. Three girls around his age spotted him going into the florist, then while he was in there, they were watching him through the window. Why the fuck couldn’t he be a wizard who had the ability to just zap himself from one place to another?
Once he paid for the flowers, he took out his earbuds and shoved them into his ears. It was a relief he had them on him because he saw the girls trying to get his attention when he left the store and he could pretend like he didn’t hear them. He was also glad he got a cab so they couldn’t see him get into his own car to know what the make, model, and licence plate was. It was a juggling act with the two cups of hot drinks in a holder and a large bouquet of flowers to throw himself into a cab quickly but he breathed a sigh of relief once he was.
Today, he was just trying to get to a place where he was ready and able to talk about Justin’s latest suicide attempt. He hadn’t managed it yet. His stress and anxiety was through the roof, which gave him an awful migraine that left him bedridden. He wanted to be at the hospital with Justin but the fluorescent lights and smells were intolerable. All he could do was wait it out, sleep it off, and get back to the hospital as soon as he could. It was just so much more difficult that he hadn’t been able to talk to Justin since he was brought back to hospital with his kidneys starting to crash on him.
He was glad no one was visiting Justin when he got there. He wasn’t sure how much of a brave front he could put up and as selfish as it might be in a time when everyone wanted to see Justin and check he was okay, Sasha needed some time alone with him. Justin being who he was, sometimes, they both needed to lock themselves away alone together.
“Hey, beautiful,” he greeted Justin quietly when he arrived at his room, closing the door behind him so they had privacy. Thankfully, the hospital and staff were incredible protecting Justin’s privacy and confidential during times like this. They never minded if he needed the door closed. He was pretty much protected of being able to harm himself and would be on lower level suicide watch, meaning more observations, his room near the staff desk, all that shit. He came over, putting the flowers on the side of the bed so he could give Justin a soft kiss. “I’m so sorry. I feel like I failed you.”
“Baby, no. No. You know I ain’t gonna let you do that. Jesus fuck, I don’t even know if I can hug you like this.” Justin’s right arm was attached to thick tubes leading into the confronting-looking dialysis machine. It had freaked him out so much when they started to connect him to it that he burst into tears and had a panic attack. Really not his finest moment but everything was overwhelming as fuck right now. “Come lie on my other side?”
Sasha had been here when Justin freaked out about the dialysis. Before that, he had been withdrawn and not taking anything in. It wasn’t delusion. Justin was the least delusional person he had ever met. But it was information overload. Following his suicide attempt, Justin was on an emotional shutdown, so being confronted with the fact his kidneys were about as close to giving up the ghost as they could be without actually giving up the ghost was a huge hit for him. He shifted the flowers to the portable table and pushed it aside, making sure he didn’t knock over the drinks he brought. He was an expert with hospital beds, so getting the railing down was a breeze. He took his shoes off and nudged them under the bed. He was here for the long haul now he could sit up again without hurling.
He was also an expert in fitting onto that small strip of bed beside Justin, especially when he was unconscious and couldn’t make more room. Thank fuck this wasn’t one of those times. Once he was lying with Justin, he put his arm around him, nursing his head, squeezing his eyes shut so he didn’t start crying. After a deep breath, releasing it slowly, he stroked Justin’s hair back. “Now tell me how you are. Not the edited summarised version.”
“Only if you tell me how you are. I can tell just by looking at you it was one of your bad migraines but no one told me that. You’re walking like you’ve got jelly legs and your speech is a bit slurred. I hate this. I fucking hate when my shit makes me feel like my family can’t tell me things.” There was no anger in Justin’s words. He didn’t have the energy for anger. “I’m scared. I’m scared of myself. I didn’t know I was going to do any of this. I thought I was okay and that if I just kept going, the episode would pass. I was getting urges to hurt myself but I thought with everything going on, I could distract myself from it. I should’ve said something.”
“Jus, baby, I did tell you. I called you and you took the call but they’d given you Valium and pain meds so you weren’t really tuned in. I wouldn’t actively keep something like this for you but, yeah, it was one of the monster ones. I’m okay. I just feel a bit hungover. Some fans spotted me at Lorenzo’s getting the flowers and I’m pretty sure they thought I was drunk, so here’s hoping they didn’t take photos of me. I look like shit, I know.”
Justin closed his eyes, nose scrunching up a little. He hated Valium. That was no secret. It whacked him out and could barely function on it. But they always gave it to him when his manic episodes made him so agitated, it bordered on psychosis. He opened his eyes again and tucked his head against Sasha’s. “You look beautiful to me. Fuck ‘em. I’m so fucking sorry. I dunno why I did it. I was okay. But then, I just… wasn’t.”
Sasha brushed the backs of his fingers over Justin’s cheek. “You have bipolar. That’s why. I honestly just think it was because you haven’t been sleeping. You were trying to keep up with all your work like usual but you were running on empty. I know you’re scared people are going to think you can’t handle the tour or everything going along with it, but you were handling it. Then you had an episode. The whole world knows you’re mentally ill. No one can be shocked when you have episodes.”
“You saved my life…” Justin whispered, his hand tucked around Sasha’s waist tightening just a little, as if Sasha was a human life-preserver. Which he really was, in so many ways.
“And I’ll never stop trying to,” Sasha vowed. He could say it with more confident now but in the immediate wake of trying to get Justin to keep breathing through the overdose, he had fallen apart. “I had to give you CPR. I’ve never had to do that to anyone before. I can barely even remember actually doing it. I know you can’t help it, but it hurts so much when I know you have those feelings that you don’t want to live anymore. If I was allowed to perform one miracle, it would be to take that away from you. And if you need a kidney, I’m fucking giving you one so don’t even try to argue with me, bitch. I’m not letting you go yet.”
That part Justin didn’t know. Not the kidney. He had already pre-empted in his mind that Sasha would step forward to offer a kidney. “I didn’t know you had to give me CPR. They just said you made me throw up to get the pills out. What happened? Was anyone else there.” He shook his head, biting his lip. “I’m not letting it get there. I can’t think about the fact I might’ve fucked my kidneys for good. I haven’t. I’m gonna get through this.” If he needed any sort of organ transplant, he would almost certainly have to give up his career as a performer and a dancer. If that happened, he would take his own life. There were no two ways about that but no one would say that out loud, even if they were thinking it.
“Are you sure you really want to hear it all, baby? It’s a lot. Fuck. You don’t need to know,” Sasha sighed, but if Justin was already edging into these uncharted waters, it was unlikely he would sway.
“You had to deal with it, so I need to know. I have to face up to it. It might help me deal with it. I dunno. I dunno how to deal with any of it. I hate that I pull you into my fucking mental shitstorm.” Justin was about to roll onto his back but Sasha stopped him. He felt Sasha’s hand against his back, holding him. His thumb was rubbing soothing circles somewhere just below Justin’s shoulder blade. “Don’t rehash it if you can’t,” he eventually added softly.
Sasha wet his lips, then caught the corner of the lower between his teeth. “I came into the hall with our drinks. I got you matcha, I know it’s your new favourite. No one else was in the hall when I got there. You were on the floor of the stage, lying next to the piano. I could see from the way you were lying, something was wrong. I dropped the drinks and just ran to you. The flu pill packets were nearby and empty. I only noticed later that your fingertips were sliced from where you must've been trying to get the pills out of the blister packs in a rush. You had smears of blood across your mouth, so I didn’t know you’d been coughing up blood or what. I just panicked as soon as I saw the pill packets. You were semi-conscious but not really responsive. I just… got you on your side and stuck my fingers down your throat. People were there at that point. Don’t ask me who. There was shouting and stuff around me. A whole lot of pills came up when I made you sick. I remember someone telling me the ambulance was on the way. And I thought, okay, good… help was coming, you’d be okay. But you were coughing a bit after you threw up, then you just stopped. You stopped breathing and went limp. I was doing CPR when the paramedics arrived and they zapped you. I was so… so angry while it was happening. Not at you. Just at everything. It was this weird rage. It was like after I heard Andi chose to die without letting me say goodbye. It was this weird rage that the people I love have to hurt so much. I lost my shit so bad when you most needed me to keep it together.”
Justin was inevitably going to end up in tears hearing all this. They trickled over, even if he was trying to blink them back. “I never need you to fucking keep anything together. Maybe you’ve always known I was sick and known shit wouldn’t be easy a lot of the time but that doesn’t mean you just have to be okay when it isn’t. How can you fucking be okay? I’m not. I know no one who loves me is. I wish they could be. I wish I didn’t exist so they didn’t have to deal with it. If I can just… just erase myself and set everyone free from this.”
He wiped the tears from his eyes, trying to sniffle them back. “And I think that was some of it… maybe. I could feel myself slipping again and I didn’t want to put y’all through this all over again. Once that… that claw of pain clutches into my brain, I can’t ever pull it back. But I knew she had the pills. I watched her take them the day before and saw where she put them in her bag.”
“You’re safe now,” Sasha whispered and gave Justin a kiss, tasting the salty residue of tears on his lips. “Don’t think I’m ever going to stop trying to rescue you. As long as you’re fighting, I’m fighting with you. I’m just so fucking glad I got back to the auditorium when I did. You don’t remember the Tylenol?”
Justin looked at his arm, nursed in against his side. The dialysis was hurting. They told him it would. They had inserted two painful ports beneath his skin attached to thick tubes to feed his blood in and out of him to filter it, doing what his kidneys couldn’t right now. The hope was if they rested his kidneys for a little while with dialysis diversion, it would give them a chance to heal and hopefully start working properly again. When they started to pack it in after he injured them with the OD, he had been so sick. He never realised how important kidneys were until they were telling him his were staging a protest over his chemical onslaught. “She didn’t have the Tylenol. I did. I didn’t buy it to hurt myself. I was getting a sore throat, so I was trying to stop it before it turned into anything. I thought I was okay, Sash. I wanted to be okay. Please don’t hate me.”
“You know I’m never going to hate you, baby. I just want to understand as much as I can, so we can try to prevent it in the future.” Sasha took Justin’s hand, entwining their fingers. Then he had a closer look at Justin’s hands. “I need to Cas or Reecy to come and give you a manicure. Your nail polish is all chipped. I know how much you hate that.”
Justin groaned, letting Sasha examine his hands. Not something he let many people do because he was self-conscious about his self-harm scarring. The worst was covered in tattoos on his inner wrists but people didn’t realise he was very self-conscious about all his scars. It’s why he covered so much of it up with glam and makeup. It was like a security blanket to hide his true self. Only the people he loved and trusted the most had access to his scars. Even when he held hands with fans, he would never let them take his face-up. “I need, like, a whole day at a spa. Have you seen my hair? The curls are starting to come out. No one needs to see that.”
Sasha knew then that Justin was coming through the darkness. When he was in the worst of his depressive episodes, he wouldn’t even look at himself in the mirror, let alone think about grooming. And Justin was impeccably groomed when he was well. He waxed, had one of the best personal stylists and hairdressers in the world, and got regular manicures and pedicures. None of which Sasha understood so the girls were happy to be his day spa partners. “Oh, I think the world would go nuts if they knew your hair was naturally curly,” he decided, smirking as he feathered his fingers through Justin’s hair. “And you know I don’t have any issues when you’re not waxed. I’m pretty hot for when you go au naturale. Your dad told me that once they know you’re tolerating the dialysis okay, they might be able to transfer you to outpatient treatment. If they can, I’ll take you to a spa for the day. If you try to drink a little tea that I brought you. Deal?”
“After another psych assess.” Justin tugged his lips to the side. He knew they had to assess him to be safe for discharge but he struggled with them at the best of times. “Okay, but… what kind of tea is it, and can I make a counter-offer?”
“Does it involve sex…?” Sasha was pretty confident it wouldn’t, all things considered, but Justin was a genius at throwing anyone a good curveball. He reached behind him and pulled the portable table closer to get Justin’s tea. “It’s an organic Australian tea blend for kidneys. It’s got a whole bunch of stuff in it but it smells fruity. Just see if you like it.”
Justin had a little smirk at that. “No. Fuck, baby. Like I wouldn’t put that on you after everything. I don’t know when that’s going to be able to happen again with everything they’ve got me on.” He let Sasha hold the tea cup to his lips and he took a sip, bracing himself for the taste. He was a big tea drinker but there were blends that had made him gag. Some of the herbal stuff could be vile. “Mm, tastes like berries and licorice. I don’t hate it. I just want you to bring me my guitar and my notebooks. I don’t know how to heal without music and there’s so much going on in my head.”
Sasha waited to make sure Justin tolerated the tea okay and offered the cup to him again. He had his other hand resting on the pillow above their heads so he could keep stroking Justin’s hair. It was nice to just be alone and still with him, where he was breathing and still had a pulse. “I can do that for you, baby. That you want to keep writing is a good sign. Sometimes you disconnect from that when you’re sick. How do you want to tackle all this? Do you want anyone to know what’s happened or do you want to just leave it at you recovering from the OD and need a little more time? Your dad said he hadn’t had the chance to talk to you about it. You haven’t been up to talking much. He thought I’d have a better chance. He said because I’m prettier than him,” he added with a laugh.
“True that,” Justin agreed with an amused huff before he had a little more of the tea. “I just ain’t felt like talking so much. I’m tired of everything. Not tired of everyone just my brain fighting itself. The healthy me fighting the not healthy me. Part of me wonders if I should just… I dunno, put it out there and own it so people understand how dangerous it can be. But then, I don’t want the cunts of the world to get on their high horses and try to say I’m too damaged and fragile to be able to perform and take on what I am. None of this is about my fucking work. They don’t get it’s very separate for me. I can still do what I do when I’m sick. Even if I can’t get on stage and need a timeout, I can still play music, I can still write, I can plan setlists, and I can condition. I don’t wanna be minimised to a mental illness again. Will all that be a huge black mark against my tour? Assuming I can do it. The doctor can’t clear me yet. So, I guess I owe my fans the explanation.”
Sasha shook his head. “No. No, you don’t owe anyone anything. This is your body and your health. If you don’t want to put that on show, that’s your choice. Jus, just because you’ve had an attempt and the world knows you’re mentally ill, that doesn’t mean you owe them your privacy. We’re going to protect that. But if you want to share what’s happened, you do it on your terms and in your time. Not yet, okay? You have to adjust to this and focus on getting better so your kidneys can heal and you get back on track. Can I take care of you? You want me to help?”
“Yeah, I do. I always do.” Justin gave Sasha a small smile. “Like, right now? Because I think I need to pee.”
Sasha put the tea onto the table and propped himself up on his elbows. “For sure, baby. What’s the deal? Are you allowed to get up to go to the bathroom or is it the whole awkward staying in bed thing? I might not be able to fully support your weight to help you to the bathroom, is all. My legs are still a bit funny.” He was careful getting up off the bed again. No one needed him to end up roadkill on the floor when Justin was the patient. He helped Justin onto his back again, making sure he didn’t disrupt the dialysis ports in his arm, and wound the bed up a bit more.
“They don’t want me up yet. My blood pressure’s real low or something, so it’s the awkward bed thing. They left one here for me somewhere they said.” Justin fixed the blankets over his lap, trying to see if he could spot where the nurse left the bottle thing. “Winston might be coming to work for the company, writing articles and stuff. I thought maybe I could talk to him about it all, that he could write a story about what’s happened.”
Sasha found the bottle and handed it to Justin, folding the blankets down for him. “He would be true to what you wanted to say. Would you want to talk about the kidney thing or just the suicide attempt? Not that I think there’s anything ‘just’ about it. I’m just… these are the times I struggle with your spotlight. I want you to do whatever you feel you need to do but I’m tired too.”
“Hang on, baby, let me finish peeing. You need my full attention for what I wanna say.” Not like it would take long. Justin was hardly able to go to the bathroom, which wasn’t unusual for dialysis patients, apparently. They called for a nurse to come take it away for whatever monitoring they were doing. The doctors and nurses were talking a lot about input and output but Justin’s attention span fizzled out as soon as he saw them coming at him with this fucking scary looking dialysis machine. No one had been anticipating him to have a complete meltdown about that, least of all Justin himself. He thought he was weathered to medical shit but hearing you might have caused vital organs to fail probably wasn’t something he was going to come through unscathed when his bipolar was already flared up.
Sasha waited until Justin was done and squirted some hand sanitizer into his hands for him to wash them while he watched the nurse leave, closing the door behind her. “Is it a bad sign that you hardly did anything?” He had a lot of catching up to do on where Justin stood medically. He just wanted to get here to see him, he would talk with Mark and Gen later on anything Justin couldn’t tell him himself.
Justin shrugged. “All I remember them saying is it would be a bad sign if I wasn’t doing anything? That would mean no kidney function at all. They said a lot of stuff but they were plowing antipsychotics into me at the same time, so I dunno. They could’ve told me I was a unicorn and it probably would’ve made me freak the fuck out even more. I was having a shit fit. I made myself throw up and pass out. Not my finest hour.” He reached for Sasha’s hand but Sash was trying to get him to have more tea, so he obediently had another mouthful. “Baby, I’m gonna ask you something and I want you to give me a flatout honest answer so we can talk about it. Is it too much for you being pulled to the forefront with me, as my partner?”
Sasha chewed his lip again, a habit he always had when his mind was ticking over, and he slowly sat on the side of the bed beside Justin. He held Justin’s hand, playing with his fingers but he soon shook his head. “Not in general, no. I love sharing it all with you. It’s just… now. This. Having to save your life and pull you back. Do you know how hard it is to pull someone back you doesn’t want to keep living? I fucking felt guilty and selfish.” Tears welled in his eyes again. They would never not talking about this. “And I don’t feel like talking about how that felt to any strangers. I barely feel like talking to anyone but you about it. It feels like a really fucking private thing, that’s all. I don’t want fans or media or anyone looking at it like I pulled some miraculous heroic act, interrogating me about how it felt.”
It was always hard for Justin to see the flipside of what was going on in his own head. Mental illness incapacitated rational thought processes. All the abuse he endured started when he was a young child, when his brain hadn’t even had the chance to fully develop so it would never function the same way as a normal adult mind. It had grown at exacerbated speed, having abuse not even adults should endure happen to him long-term meant his mind matured and had to find coping mechanisms for the trauma. His mind would forever be in a suspended state of fight/flight/freeze, emotional combat, disassociation, or shutdown when faced with emotional experiences. That meant there was little room for him to be able to see the bigger picture and he needed times like this where the people he loved worked through this with him. It was really painful and he started to cry again too. Sasha’s confession that he felt guilty and selfish about saving his life was possibly one of the hardest things he ever had to hear.
Sasha shifted closer so he could settle back into the spot on the bed beside Justin. He melted into his side, cuddling him around his tummy so they could, at the very least, cry it out together. Sometimes, Sasha didn’t want to tell Justin these things but he learned early on the best way to deal with Justin’s mental illnesses was to keep it real with him. Be honest with him. He couldn’t rationalize and he couldn’t read anyone’s mind to know how they were dealing with it. Just like no one knew what it was like to live with the crippling psychology Justin had, he didn’t know what it was like to be in their shoes either. He couldn’t see the world without the veil of bipolar and C-PTSD. “I thought you’d gone, okay? I really did think for those really fucking long minutes I was trying to do CPR that you were gone. I’m okay if you want to talk about this publicly and be open about it but I need some time. And maybe some strategies about no one talking to me about it. Otherwise I’m probably going to walk around feeling like I’m going to constantly cry or vomit for the next two years of my life. Your exposure and popularity will go through the roof with your tour. I need some privacy and room to breathe.”
Justin kissed him. Words weren’t enough. The cuddle wasn’t even enough. Nothing felt enough. They just held each other, knowing they had to feel all this even if it hurt. He had known when Sasha walked into his room a little while ago that there was a lot behind his eyes and in his face they had to get out there. It always took time to navigate. Whatever happened, none of this was ever solely about Justin’s welfare. Sasha was his other half and no matter what, Justin always needed Sasha to be protected, perhaps even more so than his own wellbeing.
LOG, COMPLETE
What: Picking up the pieces
Where: Renal Unit, Mount Sinai
When: After this
Sasha didn’t even bother with his appearance today. His plan was to stick close to Justin in his hospital room and if that could, in any way, involve snuggling, that would be top of the list. Sweatpants, a t-shirt, a pair of Justin’s high-tops and his cap was all the effort he had in him. He stopped at Justin’s favourite cafes to get him a cup of freshly brewed tea, a specialty blend with real leave and none of the teabag crap Justin wouldn’t touch, no matter what.
When he stopped at Lorenzo’s florist shop near the hospital to get some flowers to brighten up Justin’s room, he had that sense he was being watched. He pretty much never got spotted for who he was if he was without Justin and today, when he didn’t want to deal with anyone, wasn’t the best day for it to start happening. Three girls around his age spotted him going into the florist, then while he was in there, they were watching him through the window. Why the fuck couldn’t he be a wizard who had the ability to just zap himself from one place to another?
Once he paid for the flowers, he took out his earbuds and shoved them into his ears. It was a relief he had them on him because he saw the girls trying to get his attention when he left the store and he could pretend like he didn’t hear them. He was also glad he got a cab so they couldn’t see him get into his own car to know what the make, model, and licence plate was. It was a juggling act with the two cups of hot drinks in a holder and a large bouquet of flowers to throw himself into a cab quickly but he breathed a sigh of relief once he was.
Today, he was just trying to get to a place where he was ready and able to talk about Justin’s latest suicide attempt. He hadn’t managed it yet. His stress and anxiety was through the roof, which gave him an awful migraine that left him bedridden. He wanted to be at the hospital with Justin but the fluorescent lights and smells were intolerable. All he could do was wait it out, sleep it off, and get back to the hospital as soon as he could. It was just so much more difficult that he hadn’t been able to talk to Justin since he was brought back to hospital with his kidneys starting to crash on him.
He was glad no one was visiting Justin when he got there. He wasn’t sure how much of a brave front he could put up and as selfish as it might be in a time when everyone wanted to see Justin and check he was okay, Sasha needed some time alone with him. Justin being who he was, sometimes, they both needed to lock themselves away alone together.
“Hey, beautiful,” he greeted Justin quietly when he arrived at his room, closing the door behind him so they had privacy. Thankfully, the hospital and staff were incredible protecting Justin’s privacy and confidential during times like this. They never minded if he needed the door closed. He was pretty much protected of being able to harm himself and would be on lower level suicide watch, meaning more observations, his room near the staff desk, all that shit. He came over, putting the flowers on the side of the bed so he could give Justin a soft kiss. “I’m so sorry. I feel like I failed you.”
“Baby, no. No. You know I ain’t gonna let you do that. Jesus fuck, I don’t even know if I can hug you like this.” Justin’s right arm was attached to thick tubes leading into the confronting-looking dialysis machine. It had freaked him out so much when they started to connect him to it that he burst into tears and had a panic attack. Really not his finest moment but everything was overwhelming as fuck right now. “Come lie on my other side?”
Sasha had been here when Justin freaked out about the dialysis. Before that, he had been withdrawn and not taking anything in. It wasn’t delusion. Justin was the least delusional person he had ever met. But it was information overload. Following his suicide attempt, Justin was on an emotional shutdown, so being confronted with the fact his kidneys were about as close to giving up the ghost as they could be without actually giving up the ghost was a huge hit for him. He shifted the flowers to the portable table and pushed it aside, making sure he didn’t knock over the drinks he brought. He was an expert with hospital beds, so getting the railing down was a breeze. He took his shoes off and nudged them under the bed. He was here for the long haul now he could sit up again without hurling.
He was also an expert in fitting onto that small strip of bed beside Justin, especially when he was unconscious and couldn’t make more room. Thank fuck this wasn’t one of those times. Once he was lying with Justin, he put his arm around him, nursing his head, squeezing his eyes shut so he didn’t start crying. After a deep breath, releasing it slowly, he stroked Justin’s hair back. “Now tell me how you are. Not the edited summarised version.”
“Only if you tell me how you are. I can tell just by looking at you it was one of your bad migraines but no one told me that. You’re walking like you’ve got jelly legs and your speech is a bit slurred. I hate this. I fucking hate when my shit makes me feel like my family can’t tell me things.” There was no anger in Justin’s words. He didn’t have the energy for anger. “I’m scared. I’m scared of myself. I didn’t know I was going to do any of this. I thought I was okay and that if I just kept going, the episode would pass. I was getting urges to hurt myself but I thought with everything going on, I could distract myself from it. I should’ve said something.”
“Jus, baby, I did tell you. I called you and you took the call but they’d given you Valium and pain meds so you weren’t really tuned in. I wouldn’t actively keep something like this for you but, yeah, it was one of the monster ones. I’m okay. I just feel a bit hungover. Some fans spotted me at Lorenzo’s getting the flowers and I’m pretty sure they thought I was drunk, so here’s hoping they didn’t take photos of me. I look like shit, I know.”
Justin closed his eyes, nose scrunching up a little. He hated Valium. That was no secret. It whacked him out and could barely function on it. But they always gave it to him when his manic episodes made him so agitated, it bordered on psychosis. He opened his eyes again and tucked his head against Sasha’s. “You look beautiful to me. Fuck ‘em. I’m so fucking sorry. I dunno why I did it. I was okay. But then, I just… wasn’t.”
Sasha brushed the backs of his fingers over Justin’s cheek. “You have bipolar. That’s why. I honestly just think it was because you haven’t been sleeping. You were trying to keep up with all your work like usual but you were running on empty. I know you’re scared people are going to think you can’t handle the tour or everything going along with it, but you were handling it. Then you had an episode. The whole world knows you’re mentally ill. No one can be shocked when you have episodes.”
“You saved my life…” Justin whispered, his hand tucked around Sasha’s waist tightening just a little, as if Sasha was a human life-preserver. Which he really was, in so many ways.
“And I’ll never stop trying to,” Sasha vowed. He could say it with more confident now but in the immediate wake of trying to get Justin to keep breathing through the overdose, he had fallen apart. “I had to give you CPR. I’ve never had to do that to anyone before. I can barely even remember actually doing it. I know you can’t help it, but it hurts so much when I know you have those feelings that you don’t want to live anymore. If I was allowed to perform one miracle, it would be to take that away from you. And if you need a kidney, I’m fucking giving you one so don’t even try to argue with me, bitch. I’m not letting you go yet.”
That part Justin didn’t know. Not the kidney. He had already pre-empted in his mind that Sasha would step forward to offer a kidney. “I didn’t know you had to give me CPR. They just said you made me throw up to get the pills out. What happened? Was anyone else there.” He shook his head, biting his lip. “I’m not letting it get there. I can’t think about the fact I might’ve fucked my kidneys for good. I haven’t. I’m gonna get through this.” If he needed any sort of organ transplant, he would almost certainly have to give up his career as a performer and a dancer. If that happened, he would take his own life. There were no two ways about that but no one would say that out loud, even if they were thinking it.
“Are you sure you really want to hear it all, baby? It’s a lot. Fuck. You don’t need to know,” Sasha sighed, but if Justin was already edging into these uncharted waters, it was unlikely he would sway.
“You had to deal with it, so I need to know. I have to face up to it. It might help me deal with it. I dunno. I dunno how to deal with any of it. I hate that I pull you into my fucking mental shitstorm.” Justin was about to roll onto his back but Sasha stopped him. He felt Sasha’s hand against his back, holding him. His thumb was rubbing soothing circles somewhere just below Justin’s shoulder blade. “Don’t rehash it if you can’t,” he eventually added softly.
Sasha wet his lips, then caught the corner of the lower between his teeth. “I came into the hall with our drinks. I got you matcha, I know it’s your new favourite. No one else was in the hall when I got there. You were on the floor of the stage, lying next to the piano. I could see from the way you were lying, something was wrong. I dropped the drinks and just ran to you. The flu pill packets were nearby and empty. I only noticed later that your fingertips were sliced from where you must've been trying to get the pills out of the blister packs in a rush. You had smears of blood across your mouth, so I didn’t know you’d been coughing up blood or what. I just panicked as soon as I saw the pill packets. You were semi-conscious but not really responsive. I just… got you on your side and stuck my fingers down your throat. People were there at that point. Don’t ask me who. There was shouting and stuff around me. A whole lot of pills came up when I made you sick. I remember someone telling me the ambulance was on the way. And I thought, okay, good… help was coming, you’d be okay. But you were coughing a bit after you threw up, then you just stopped. You stopped breathing and went limp. I was doing CPR when the paramedics arrived and they zapped you. I was so… so angry while it was happening. Not at you. Just at everything. It was this weird rage. It was like after I heard Andi chose to die without letting me say goodbye. It was this weird rage that the people I love have to hurt so much. I lost my shit so bad when you most needed me to keep it together.”
Justin was inevitably going to end up in tears hearing all this. They trickled over, even if he was trying to blink them back. “I never need you to fucking keep anything together. Maybe you’ve always known I was sick and known shit wouldn’t be easy a lot of the time but that doesn’t mean you just have to be okay when it isn’t. How can you fucking be okay? I’m not. I know no one who loves me is. I wish they could be. I wish I didn’t exist so they didn’t have to deal with it. If I can just… just erase myself and set everyone free from this.”
He wiped the tears from his eyes, trying to sniffle them back. “And I think that was some of it… maybe. I could feel myself slipping again and I didn’t want to put y’all through this all over again. Once that… that claw of pain clutches into my brain, I can’t ever pull it back. But I knew she had the pills. I watched her take them the day before and saw where she put them in her bag.”
“You’re safe now,” Sasha whispered and gave Justin a kiss, tasting the salty residue of tears on his lips. “Don’t think I’m ever going to stop trying to rescue you. As long as you’re fighting, I’m fighting with you. I’m just so fucking glad I got back to the auditorium when I did. You don’t remember the Tylenol?”
Justin looked at his arm, nursed in against his side. The dialysis was hurting. They told him it would. They had inserted two painful ports beneath his skin attached to thick tubes to feed his blood in and out of him to filter it, doing what his kidneys couldn’t right now. The hope was if they rested his kidneys for a little while with dialysis diversion, it would give them a chance to heal and hopefully start working properly again. When they started to pack it in after he injured them with the OD, he had been so sick. He never realised how important kidneys were until they were telling him his were staging a protest over his chemical onslaught. “She didn’t have the Tylenol. I did. I didn’t buy it to hurt myself. I was getting a sore throat, so I was trying to stop it before it turned into anything. I thought I was okay, Sash. I wanted to be okay. Please don’t hate me.”
“You know I’m never going to hate you, baby. I just want to understand as much as I can, so we can try to prevent it in the future.” Sasha took Justin’s hand, entwining their fingers. Then he had a closer look at Justin’s hands. “I need to Cas or Reecy to come and give you a manicure. Your nail polish is all chipped. I know how much you hate that.”
Justin groaned, letting Sasha examine his hands. Not something he let many people do because he was self-conscious about his self-harm scarring. The worst was covered in tattoos on his inner wrists but people didn’t realise he was very self-conscious about all his scars. It’s why he covered so much of it up with glam and makeup. It was like a security blanket to hide his true self. Only the people he loved and trusted the most had access to his scars. Even when he held hands with fans, he would never let them take his face-up. “I need, like, a whole day at a spa. Have you seen my hair? The curls are starting to come out. No one needs to see that.”
Sasha knew then that Justin was coming through the darkness. When he was in the worst of his depressive episodes, he wouldn’t even look at himself in the mirror, let alone think about grooming. And Justin was impeccably groomed when he was well. He waxed, had one of the best personal stylists and hairdressers in the world, and got regular manicures and pedicures. None of which Sasha understood so the girls were happy to be his day spa partners. “Oh, I think the world would go nuts if they knew your hair was naturally curly,” he decided, smirking as he feathered his fingers through Justin’s hair. “And you know I don’t have any issues when you’re not waxed. I’m pretty hot for when you go au naturale. Your dad told me that once they know you’re tolerating the dialysis okay, they might be able to transfer you to outpatient treatment. If they can, I’ll take you to a spa for the day. If you try to drink a little tea that I brought you. Deal?”
“After another psych assess.” Justin tugged his lips to the side. He knew they had to assess him to be safe for discharge but he struggled with them at the best of times. “Okay, but… what kind of tea is it, and can I make a counter-offer?”
“Does it involve sex…?” Sasha was pretty confident it wouldn’t, all things considered, but Justin was a genius at throwing anyone a good curveball. He reached behind him and pulled the portable table closer to get Justin’s tea. “It’s an organic Australian tea blend for kidneys. It’s got a whole bunch of stuff in it but it smells fruity. Just see if you like it.”
Justin had a little smirk at that. “No. Fuck, baby. Like I wouldn’t put that on you after everything. I don’t know when that’s going to be able to happen again with everything they’ve got me on.” He let Sasha hold the tea cup to his lips and he took a sip, bracing himself for the taste. He was a big tea drinker but there were blends that had made him gag. Some of the herbal stuff could be vile. “Mm, tastes like berries and licorice. I don’t hate it. I just want you to bring me my guitar and my notebooks. I don’t know how to heal without music and there’s so much going on in my head.”
Sasha waited to make sure Justin tolerated the tea okay and offered the cup to him again. He had his other hand resting on the pillow above their heads so he could keep stroking Justin’s hair. It was nice to just be alone and still with him, where he was breathing and still had a pulse. “I can do that for you, baby. That you want to keep writing is a good sign. Sometimes you disconnect from that when you’re sick. How do you want to tackle all this? Do you want anyone to know what’s happened or do you want to just leave it at you recovering from the OD and need a little more time? Your dad said he hadn’t had the chance to talk to you about it. You haven’t been up to talking much. He thought I’d have a better chance. He said because I’m prettier than him,” he added with a laugh.
“True that,” Justin agreed with an amused huff before he had a little more of the tea. “I just ain’t felt like talking so much. I’m tired of everything. Not tired of everyone just my brain fighting itself. The healthy me fighting the not healthy me. Part of me wonders if I should just… I dunno, put it out there and own it so people understand how dangerous it can be. But then, I don’t want the cunts of the world to get on their high horses and try to say I’m too damaged and fragile to be able to perform and take on what I am. None of this is about my fucking work. They don’t get it’s very separate for me. I can still do what I do when I’m sick. Even if I can’t get on stage and need a timeout, I can still play music, I can still write, I can plan setlists, and I can condition. I don’t wanna be minimised to a mental illness again. Will all that be a huge black mark against my tour? Assuming I can do it. The doctor can’t clear me yet. So, I guess I owe my fans the explanation.”
Sasha shook his head. “No. No, you don’t owe anyone anything. This is your body and your health. If you don’t want to put that on show, that’s your choice. Jus, just because you’ve had an attempt and the world knows you’re mentally ill, that doesn’t mean you owe them your privacy. We’re going to protect that. But if you want to share what’s happened, you do it on your terms and in your time. Not yet, okay? You have to adjust to this and focus on getting better so your kidneys can heal and you get back on track. Can I take care of you? You want me to help?”
“Yeah, I do. I always do.” Justin gave Sasha a small smile. “Like, right now? Because I think I need to pee.”
Sasha put the tea onto the table and propped himself up on his elbows. “For sure, baby. What’s the deal? Are you allowed to get up to go to the bathroom or is it the whole awkward staying in bed thing? I might not be able to fully support your weight to help you to the bathroom, is all. My legs are still a bit funny.” He was careful getting up off the bed again. No one needed him to end up roadkill on the floor when Justin was the patient. He helped Justin onto his back again, making sure he didn’t disrupt the dialysis ports in his arm, and wound the bed up a bit more.
“They don’t want me up yet. My blood pressure’s real low or something, so it’s the awkward bed thing. They left one here for me somewhere they said.” Justin fixed the blankets over his lap, trying to see if he could spot where the nurse left the bottle thing. “Winston might be coming to work for the company, writing articles and stuff. I thought maybe I could talk to him about it all, that he could write a story about what’s happened.”
Sasha found the bottle and handed it to Justin, folding the blankets down for him. “He would be true to what you wanted to say. Would you want to talk about the kidney thing or just the suicide attempt? Not that I think there’s anything ‘just’ about it. I’m just… these are the times I struggle with your spotlight. I want you to do whatever you feel you need to do but I’m tired too.”
“Hang on, baby, let me finish peeing. You need my full attention for what I wanna say.” Not like it would take long. Justin was hardly able to go to the bathroom, which wasn’t unusual for dialysis patients, apparently. They called for a nurse to come take it away for whatever monitoring they were doing. The doctors and nurses were talking a lot about input and output but Justin’s attention span fizzled out as soon as he saw them coming at him with this fucking scary looking dialysis machine. No one had been anticipating him to have a complete meltdown about that, least of all Justin himself. He thought he was weathered to medical shit but hearing you might have caused vital organs to fail probably wasn’t something he was going to come through unscathed when his bipolar was already flared up.
Sasha waited until Justin was done and squirted some hand sanitizer into his hands for him to wash them while he watched the nurse leave, closing the door behind her. “Is it a bad sign that you hardly did anything?” He had a lot of catching up to do on where Justin stood medically. He just wanted to get here to see him, he would talk with Mark and Gen later on anything Justin couldn’t tell him himself.
Justin shrugged. “All I remember them saying is it would be a bad sign if I wasn’t doing anything? That would mean no kidney function at all. They said a lot of stuff but they were plowing antipsychotics into me at the same time, so I dunno. They could’ve told me I was a unicorn and it probably would’ve made me freak the fuck out even more. I was having a shit fit. I made myself throw up and pass out. Not my finest hour.” He reached for Sasha’s hand but Sash was trying to get him to have more tea, so he obediently had another mouthful. “Baby, I’m gonna ask you something and I want you to give me a flatout honest answer so we can talk about it. Is it too much for you being pulled to the forefront with me, as my partner?”
Sasha chewed his lip again, a habit he always had when his mind was ticking over, and he slowly sat on the side of the bed beside Justin. He held Justin’s hand, playing with his fingers but he soon shook his head. “Not in general, no. I love sharing it all with you. It’s just… now. This. Having to save your life and pull you back. Do you know how hard it is to pull someone back you doesn’t want to keep living? I fucking felt guilty and selfish.” Tears welled in his eyes again. They would never not talking about this. “And I don’t feel like talking about how that felt to any strangers. I barely feel like talking to anyone but you about it. It feels like a really fucking private thing, that’s all. I don’t want fans or media or anyone looking at it like I pulled some miraculous heroic act, interrogating me about how it felt.”
It was always hard for Justin to see the flipside of what was going on in his own head. Mental illness incapacitated rational thought processes. All the abuse he endured started when he was a young child, when his brain hadn’t even had the chance to fully develop so it would never function the same way as a normal adult mind. It had grown at exacerbated speed, having abuse not even adults should endure happen to him long-term meant his mind matured and had to find coping mechanisms for the trauma. His mind would forever be in a suspended state of fight/flight/freeze, emotional combat, disassociation, or shutdown when faced with emotional experiences. That meant there was little room for him to be able to see the bigger picture and he needed times like this where the people he loved worked through this with him. It was really painful and he started to cry again too. Sasha’s confession that he felt guilty and selfish about saving his life was possibly one of the hardest things he ever had to hear.
Sasha shifted closer so he could settle back into the spot on the bed beside Justin. He melted into his side, cuddling him around his tummy so they could, at the very least, cry it out together. Sometimes, Sasha didn’t want to tell Justin these things but he learned early on the best way to deal with Justin’s mental illnesses was to keep it real with him. Be honest with him. He couldn’t rationalize and he couldn’t read anyone’s mind to know how they were dealing with it. Just like no one knew what it was like to live with the crippling psychology Justin had, he didn’t know what it was like to be in their shoes either. He couldn’t see the world without the veil of bipolar and C-PTSD. “I thought you’d gone, okay? I really did think for those really fucking long minutes I was trying to do CPR that you were gone. I’m okay if you want to talk about this publicly and be open about it but I need some time. And maybe some strategies about no one talking to me about it. Otherwise I’m probably going to walk around feeling like I’m going to constantly cry or vomit for the next two years of my life. Your exposure and popularity will go through the roof with your tour. I need some privacy and room to breathe.”
Justin kissed him. Words weren’t enough. The cuddle wasn’t even enough. Nothing felt enough. They just held each other, knowing they had to feel all this even if it hurt. He had known when Sasha walked into his room a little while ago that there was a lot behind his eyes and in his face they had to get out there. It always took time to navigate. Whatever happened, none of this was ever solely about Justin’s welfare. Sasha was his other half and no matter what, Justin always needed Sasha to be protected, perhaps even more so than his own wellbeing.
LOG, COMPLETE