Justin Mark Campbell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
likefatherlikeson) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2023-03-05 12:15 am
likefatherlikeson) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2023-03-05 12:15 am
"All the times that I wanted to die, I made a choice I was gonna survive..."
Who: Justin with Sash
What: At last
Where: Hospital in Sydney, Australia
When: After this
Justin really didn’t want to lose his shit in front of a roomful of medical staff. Which was probably stupid, considering he had been doing that constantly on and off since he arrived at this hospital. This time was different. This time, it felt like he just didn’t want an audience because of what it meant. He did rationally know they weren’t there to invade his privacy but it was one of those times, he didn’t want to be looked at or observed. All he wanted was to be alone with Sash and he had no fucking idea how he would actually be when that finally happened but he was already trying to hold back tears when they wheeled him into the connecting room through the sliding glass doors, holding a hand over his mouth in a desperate attempt to stop himself crying.
He couldn’t even look right away. With his eyes trained down on his blanket-covered feet, he could hear the machines and that was enough. He needed just a little bit of time to brace himself before seeing Sash attached to them. Panic started to flutter in his gut and he suddenly wished he wasn’t doing this alone but he also only wanted to be with Sash. That emotional tug-of-war deep inside him was always unsettling and distressing, it wasn’t like this was his first proverbial rodeo with that, though. It was bipolar. It was C-PTSD. And n matter how much experience he had feeling it, it never got easier to cope with. He wasn’t an expert on it just because it sometimes felt like his default state. In fact, it was often the reason he didn’t want to keep living because he needed so painfully to switch it off. Today felt different. It was a distressing mix of woozy emotional unsteadiness where he both did want to switch it off but also wanted to somehow keep fucking holding on the best he could because Sash needed him. These things has been spinning around and around in his head for days. Talking didn’t help anymore. Not with this. Nothing helped this. How the fuck could anything possibly help this?
While the hospital assistant positioned the bed and made sure the brakes were secured and the blankets were tucked in around Justin’s legs, Justin found it strangely comforting to hear the steady rhythm of beeps from the cardiac monitor in the room. They were louder than those coming from the smaller and portable one Justin was connected to and the beeps were slower. But it was the first direct evidence he had that Sash really was still alive, even if they machines were doing most of the work. The nurses checked he was okay, to which he merely nodded in response, before raising the head of the bed, and then carefully lowering the foot of the bed, so he was in more of a seated position. Justin had no idea what they were doing but it took a little time and bustling around him checking things and consulting each other before they seemed satisfied he okay to give him some time alone with Sash like he requested.
“Wait,” Justin got out through a heavy swallow before the final nurse exited the room after asking him one more time if he was okay and needed anything. It was only then that he could draw his eyes from his feet to glance up at her and realised it was Ava. He had been so hyper-focused on trying to get through this part that he hadn’t realised she had been overseeing getting him into Sash’s room. It made sense. Mhari had told him it was Ava she asked to help with getting the specialised equipment. His dad and his uncles trusted her, knew her for many years, so Justin trusted her too. His voice was scratchy and shaky from trying to hold so much back. “Am I allowed to touch him?”
“Of course you are,” Ava murmured, reaching for his hand slowly so he could see she was going to take it. There was a momentary flinch but she could see it was reflexive. He didn’t recoil to her touch, so she guided his hand closer to the bed beside him and placed it over Sasha’s that as resting on a pillow cushioned between his hip and the bed rail, covered with a blanket to try to keep him warm because his temperature had been low since his admission.
As soon as Justin felt Sash’s hand beneath his, and the coolness of Sash’s skin against his palm, it broke him. He started sobbing, all thoughts of medical staff, bed transfers, medical equipment giving way to finally opening his eyes and looking at Sash through the blur of tears. Behind him, Ava ushered all the staff out of the room, but he wasn’t conscious of that either. He wanted to reached over and wrap his arms around Sash and never let go, but it wasn’t possible. The only part of Sash he could reach was his hand and he struggled not to squeeze it in his desperation to be closer to him. The distance between them felt wider than ever and Justin felt sick seeing with his own eyes — not through a screen on a phone — how badly Sash was hurt.
He really didn’t know how long he sat there being able to do nothing but cry his eyes out but Sash’s obs were taken at least three times until his lingering energy to sustain it wiped out. His whole head and face ached by the time he lost his steam and his eyes and nose stung. It was a mix of feeling way too much and not wanting to feel anything at all. The deep chilled feeling was back and he was shivering, wiping a hand over his face trying to get his shit together somehow. Not once did he let go of Sash’s hand the whole time he was crying and he was pretty sure he felt even worse now but at least he was finally with him.
Brushing his thumb over Sash’s knuckles, he wet his dry lips and took a shuddery deep breath, letting it out slowly to brace himself now he could finally clearly see Sash without tears obscuring his view. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so fucking sorry. It should be me in that bed. It never should’ve been you…” Grabbing a handful of tissues from the box one of the nurses made sure he had tucked in next to his leg, he wiped his eyes and nose, shaking his head to himself.
“And I know you’d be so pissed off at me for saying that but fucking seriously, baby, you gotta give me this one. Nothing bad should ever fucking happen to you, let alone something like this.” He looked over Sash’s face, taking in all the mottle of bruises and cuts marring his beautiful features that Justin had spent so many hours mapping out during their most intimate moments together. If he closed his eyes long enough, he could almost take himself back to one of them. Only almost. “I— I don’t know if you’re in pain. Everything looks so painful and I don’t want you to be in pain, beautiful. You were the day it happened, I know. More than you were probably letting on. I keep trying to think back, if I missed what I should’ve been able to see without you having to tell me. You always know with me, when I’m hurting. I wish you’d could’ve known to give me some sort of clue so I would’ve done everything to stop us getting in that fucking car that day.”
Justin tried to reach further, to be able to touch more of Sash than just his hand but as soon as he reached and got his palm no further than Sash’s chest, his his torso contracted with a shooting spasm of pain from his own injuries and the places he’d been operated on. He stopped himself crying out and stifled it down to a hoarse whimper, followed by a collection of swear words when he could’ve reach further, no matter how much he desperately needed to. He knew if he did something stupid like fuck up his own healing process, they might pull the plug on him using this new equipment to sit with Sash so he reined in his impulse to be closer. It was closer than he was a little while ago. He had to just keep telling himself that. The pain brought the tears back, though not as intense as before. It was frustration at himself more than anything. His own pain he could deal with. It was Sash’s he couldn’t handle. He couldn’t really handle the pain of anyone he loved. His therapist had posited to him in a session once that maybe one of the reasons he kept trying to shoulder so much pain himself was because it was like he could bargain some of it away from the people who had come into his life and loved him unconditionally after a time he never thought anyone would truly really love him. The therapist had a point, he knew that. There was some accuracy in it on some level but it was really only one of many reasons why pain was his biggest demon. It was true that if he could take away the pain of everyone he loved and put it on himself, he would. In a fucking heartbeat.
Beneath his palm, Sash’s chest rose, and then fell, in complete unison with airy compressions of the ventilator. He looked up at the screen of the cardiac monitor, the steady heartline dancing across it, reminding him with every incline that Sash was still alive, even if he wasn’t managing on his own. At a time in the past, these machines and monitors used to terrify Justin. When his dad had his heart attack, the first time he had seen anyone attached to anything like it, he had multiple panic attacks even just hearing the sound of the beeps. Until Uncle Sam sat down with him and explained how they all worked and how each thing play its part in helping a seriously unwell person heal and recover. They were a comfort now, on some level. It wasn’t the monitors, the wires, the tubes, the buttons, the braces holding everything in place. It was the bandage around Sash’s head that was the most distressing part.
He swept his fingers back and forth to Sash’s chest through the hospital gown, swallowing when his throat contracted with a bolt of emotion he had to focus so hard on not letting bubble over because it kept making him freak out and panic. About every-fucking-thing. The bandage was such a unassuming reminder that even if Sash somehow fought this and woke up, he might be permanently brain-injured or severely neurologically disabled. “Sash, baby, it’s okay if this is too hard to fight. If the pain’s too much, if you can’t come back… i— it’s okay if you have to let go.” His lower lip trembled and his voice cracked and wavered as he said it. “You won’t be alone. Andi will be waiting for you. You guys will be together again. She’ll make sure it won’t hurt anymore. I don’t really think I can do any of this without you anymore but it’s okay. I don’t want this to keep going for you if it hurts too much. I know you, beautiful. You’re fighting as hard as you can. If you need to let go, it’s okay. I’m right here. That’s all I wanted, to be here so you’re not alone if you have to. I love you. I’m never gonna stop.”
The only response he got was the steady cadence of the cardiac monitor tone and the inhale/exhale compression of Sash’s artificial breaths of life. He used the now soggy wad of tissues to wipe his eyes again. “But okay, if you wanna be stubborn and stick around, I won’t argue,” he murmured, taking Sash’s hand to hold again. He loosely wove the tips of his fingers between Sash’s, the way Sash always liked to hold his hand, right from the first time they ever had. Even cuddled in bed together or sleeping, this is how Sash liked to hold his hand. He couldn’t lace their fingers fully because Sash had a complicated network of IV lines feeding into his hand and right up his forearm to the crook of his elbow. He didn’t know what any of them were doing so he couldn’t risk compromising the lines by bumping or pulling them. “Things have been so fucking horrible, baby. Can’t blame you for wanting to stay checked out. The crash. Your aneurysm. Uncle Sam’s got cancer. And Dad… Dad—”
He closed his other hand around his upper arm where, beneath the sleeve of his gown, there was a tattoo of a rainbow Celtic knot, which was the symbol for father and son. He and his dad both had the same design inked on them in the same place on the same day, which was from a pendant his dad had given him during the recovery from the suicide attempt at Bondi. “Dad fell off the wagon again. In a real bad way. I don’t know if he’s gonna be okay this time. I don’t even know he’ll—” He stopped, shaking his head. If he started down that path, he wouldn’t be able to pull himself back and they’d probably rush him out of Sash’s room to intervene. “But a couple of really amazing things happened too. Uncle Sam asked for my blessing to propose to Mom, which… it’s incredible. It really is. Just complicated. Like I have so much to think about but my brain feels like it doesn’t work anymore. I don’t have music to help me think. I don’t have you to talk to. Not in the way where I know you’re listening and you don’t even need to say a word back. You just look at me in the way that I know, there’s nothing else in the world you’re thinking about but what I need to say. Or those times where we’re saying nothing at all, just like our song. I miss that quiet. I miss you. It’s never quiet here. Never. There’s always noises and I can’t figure out everything in my head over them. I just want to be back home in our bed, with my arms wrapped around you. I’m sorry I can’t hold you, beautiful. You’re too sick and this is the best we’ve got. It fucking sucks…”
Justin kissed the tips of his fingers and this time carefully and slowly reached to touch them to Sash’s chest, letting them linger there. Every part of him felt like it was burning to hold Sash and kiss him. He never took a moment he had with Sash for granted, but now it felt like he wanted to remember each and every kiss. Every cuddle. Every time they had sex. Every time they did everything but have sex. Every time they just laid together naked, feeling their warmth against each other’s skin. It ached inside when his mind stumbled onto scattered thoughts he had been trying to hold off like wondering if he would ever be able to feel Sash like that again. It was yet another train of thought he couldn’t fall into or it would panic him into another breakdown. At least he had medication to thank for keeping him calm enough to get this far. No matter how much he always wanted to keep his shit together, sometimes it was impossible for him.
“And Reecy and Kyan are having a baby. At least… I— I think they are. I’m pretty sure she was here and told me that but it’s gotten messed up in all this other shit in my head. I… I’ve been checking out a bit, I think. Some things feel so clear and overwhelming, like I can’t escape them. Then others, I get all mixed up and not sure if I’m imaging some of it or dreaming about it. I’ve just been trying to focus on getting here to you. If I got too far away from that, it might’ve slipped away and I’ve got to be here for you. I’ve got to be here in case you… you…” He stopped talking and clenched up all over, biting on his lip so hard, he pierced the skin and drew blood. The trembling was back, like when you got caught outside in the winter without a coat but he wasn’t cold. The watery mouth and the sick roily sloshing of his stomach. All those parts he couldn’t control. All the parts about his mental illness that he hated so fucking much.
As much as he wanted to come in here stable and fully rational for Sash, the harsh reality was he really wasn’t well himself. He was trying. He had his moments where, with enough medication, he could hold it together for a little while but the thought of Sash dying distressed him so much, it was like pulling the ground out from under him every time the palpable, crippling realness of this horrible turn of events hit him again. Everything he had sworn to Sash was true. It was okay if Sash couldn’t fight and he had to go, but that really, really didn’t mean Justin would be able to keep fighting too, if things crashed and burned and Sash lost the battle. With that awful sensation like someone was trying to choke him, Justin fumbled for the nurse call button the nurse had looped around the bed railing for him with a desperate gasp of, “I’m so sorry,” to Sash.
LOG, COMPLETE
What: At last
Where: Hospital in Sydney, Australia
When: After this
Justin really didn’t want to lose his shit in front of a roomful of medical staff. Which was probably stupid, considering he had been doing that constantly on and off since he arrived at this hospital. This time was different. This time, it felt like he just didn’t want an audience because of what it meant. He did rationally know they weren’t there to invade his privacy but it was one of those times, he didn’t want to be looked at or observed. All he wanted was to be alone with Sash and he had no fucking idea how he would actually be when that finally happened but he was already trying to hold back tears when they wheeled him into the connecting room through the sliding glass doors, holding a hand over his mouth in a desperate attempt to stop himself crying.
He couldn’t even look right away. With his eyes trained down on his blanket-covered feet, he could hear the machines and that was enough. He needed just a little bit of time to brace himself before seeing Sash attached to them. Panic started to flutter in his gut and he suddenly wished he wasn’t doing this alone but he also only wanted to be with Sash. That emotional tug-of-war deep inside him was always unsettling and distressing, it wasn’t like this was his first proverbial rodeo with that, though. It was bipolar. It was C-PTSD. And n matter how much experience he had feeling it, it never got easier to cope with. He wasn’t an expert on it just because it sometimes felt like his default state. In fact, it was often the reason he didn’t want to keep living because he needed so painfully to switch it off. Today felt different. It was a distressing mix of woozy emotional unsteadiness where he both did want to switch it off but also wanted to somehow keep fucking holding on the best he could because Sash needed him. These things has been spinning around and around in his head for days. Talking didn’t help anymore. Not with this. Nothing helped this. How the fuck could anything possibly help this?
While the hospital assistant positioned the bed and made sure the brakes were secured and the blankets were tucked in around Justin’s legs, Justin found it strangely comforting to hear the steady rhythm of beeps from the cardiac monitor in the room. They were louder than those coming from the smaller and portable one Justin was connected to and the beeps were slower. But it was the first direct evidence he had that Sash really was still alive, even if they machines were doing most of the work. The nurses checked he was okay, to which he merely nodded in response, before raising the head of the bed, and then carefully lowering the foot of the bed, so he was in more of a seated position. Justin had no idea what they were doing but it took a little time and bustling around him checking things and consulting each other before they seemed satisfied he okay to give him some time alone with Sash like he requested.
“Wait,” Justin got out through a heavy swallow before the final nurse exited the room after asking him one more time if he was okay and needed anything. It was only then that he could draw his eyes from his feet to glance up at her and realised it was Ava. He had been so hyper-focused on trying to get through this part that he hadn’t realised she had been overseeing getting him into Sash’s room. It made sense. Mhari had told him it was Ava she asked to help with getting the specialised equipment. His dad and his uncles trusted her, knew her for many years, so Justin trusted her too. His voice was scratchy and shaky from trying to hold so much back. “Am I allowed to touch him?”
“Of course you are,” Ava murmured, reaching for his hand slowly so he could see she was going to take it. There was a momentary flinch but she could see it was reflexive. He didn’t recoil to her touch, so she guided his hand closer to the bed beside him and placed it over Sasha’s that as resting on a pillow cushioned between his hip and the bed rail, covered with a blanket to try to keep him warm because his temperature had been low since his admission.
As soon as Justin felt Sash’s hand beneath his, and the coolness of Sash’s skin against his palm, it broke him. He started sobbing, all thoughts of medical staff, bed transfers, medical equipment giving way to finally opening his eyes and looking at Sash through the blur of tears. Behind him, Ava ushered all the staff out of the room, but he wasn’t conscious of that either. He wanted to reached over and wrap his arms around Sash and never let go, but it wasn’t possible. The only part of Sash he could reach was his hand and he struggled not to squeeze it in his desperation to be closer to him. The distance between them felt wider than ever and Justin felt sick seeing with his own eyes — not through a screen on a phone — how badly Sash was hurt.
He really didn’t know how long he sat there being able to do nothing but cry his eyes out but Sash’s obs were taken at least three times until his lingering energy to sustain it wiped out. His whole head and face ached by the time he lost his steam and his eyes and nose stung. It was a mix of feeling way too much and not wanting to feel anything at all. The deep chilled feeling was back and he was shivering, wiping a hand over his face trying to get his shit together somehow. Not once did he let go of Sash’s hand the whole time he was crying and he was pretty sure he felt even worse now but at least he was finally with him.
Brushing his thumb over Sash’s knuckles, he wet his dry lips and took a shuddery deep breath, letting it out slowly to brace himself now he could finally clearly see Sash without tears obscuring his view. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’m so fucking sorry. It should be me in that bed. It never should’ve been you…” Grabbing a handful of tissues from the box one of the nurses made sure he had tucked in next to his leg, he wiped his eyes and nose, shaking his head to himself.
“And I know you’d be so pissed off at me for saying that but fucking seriously, baby, you gotta give me this one. Nothing bad should ever fucking happen to you, let alone something like this.” He looked over Sash’s face, taking in all the mottle of bruises and cuts marring his beautiful features that Justin had spent so many hours mapping out during their most intimate moments together. If he closed his eyes long enough, he could almost take himself back to one of them. Only almost. “I— I don’t know if you’re in pain. Everything looks so painful and I don’t want you to be in pain, beautiful. You were the day it happened, I know. More than you were probably letting on. I keep trying to think back, if I missed what I should’ve been able to see without you having to tell me. You always know with me, when I’m hurting. I wish you’d could’ve known to give me some sort of clue so I would’ve done everything to stop us getting in that fucking car that day.”
Justin tried to reach further, to be able to touch more of Sash than just his hand but as soon as he reached and got his palm no further than Sash’s chest, his his torso contracted with a shooting spasm of pain from his own injuries and the places he’d been operated on. He stopped himself crying out and stifled it down to a hoarse whimper, followed by a collection of swear words when he could’ve reach further, no matter how much he desperately needed to. He knew if he did something stupid like fuck up his own healing process, they might pull the plug on him using this new equipment to sit with Sash so he reined in his impulse to be closer. It was closer than he was a little while ago. He had to just keep telling himself that. The pain brought the tears back, though not as intense as before. It was frustration at himself more than anything. His own pain he could deal with. It was Sash’s he couldn’t handle. He couldn’t really handle the pain of anyone he loved. His therapist had posited to him in a session once that maybe one of the reasons he kept trying to shoulder so much pain himself was because it was like he could bargain some of it away from the people who had come into his life and loved him unconditionally after a time he never thought anyone would truly really love him. The therapist had a point, he knew that. There was some accuracy in it on some level but it was really only one of many reasons why pain was his biggest demon. It was true that if he could take away the pain of everyone he loved and put it on himself, he would. In a fucking heartbeat.
Beneath his palm, Sash’s chest rose, and then fell, in complete unison with airy compressions of the ventilator. He looked up at the screen of the cardiac monitor, the steady heartline dancing across it, reminding him with every incline that Sash was still alive, even if he wasn’t managing on his own. At a time in the past, these machines and monitors used to terrify Justin. When his dad had his heart attack, the first time he had seen anyone attached to anything like it, he had multiple panic attacks even just hearing the sound of the beeps. Until Uncle Sam sat down with him and explained how they all worked and how each thing play its part in helping a seriously unwell person heal and recover. They were a comfort now, on some level. It wasn’t the monitors, the wires, the tubes, the buttons, the braces holding everything in place. It was the bandage around Sash’s head that was the most distressing part.
He swept his fingers back and forth to Sash’s chest through the hospital gown, swallowing when his throat contracted with a bolt of emotion he had to focus so hard on not letting bubble over because it kept making him freak out and panic. About every-fucking-thing. The bandage was such a unassuming reminder that even if Sash somehow fought this and woke up, he might be permanently brain-injured or severely neurologically disabled. “Sash, baby, it’s okay if this is too hard to fight. If the pain’s too much, if you can’t come back… i— it’s okay if you have to let go.” His lower lip trembled and his voice cracked and wavered as he said it. “You won’t be alone. Andi will be waiting for you. You guys will be together again. She’ll make sure it won’t hurt anymore. I don’t really think I can do any of this without you anymore but it’s okay. I don’t want this to keep going for you if it hurts too much. I know you, beautiful. You’re fighting as hard as you can. If you need to let go, it’s okay. I’m right here. That’s all I wanted, to be here so you’re not alone if you have to. I love you. I’m never gonna stop.”
The only response he got was the steady cadence of the cardiac monitor tone and the inhale/exhale compression of Sash’s artificial breaths of life. He used the now soggy wad of tissues to wipe his eyes again. “But okay, if you wanna be stubborn and stick around, I won’t argue,” he murmured, taking Sash’s hand to hold again. He loosely wove the tips of his fingers between Sash’s, the way Sash always liked to hold his hand, right from the first time they ever had. Even cuddled in bed together or sleeping, this is how Sash liked to hold his hand. He couldn’t lace their fingers fully because Sash had a complicated network of IV lines feeding into his hand and right up his forearm to the crook of his elbow. He didn’t know what any of them were doing so he couldn’t risk compromising the lines by bumping or pulling them. “Things have been so fucking horrible, baby. Can’t blame you for wanting to stay checked out. The crash. Your aneurysm. Uncle Sam’s got cancer. And Dad… Dad—”
He closed his other hand around his upper arm where, beneath the sleeve of his gown, there was a tattoo of a rainbow Celtic knot, which was the symbol for father and son. He and his dad both had the same design inked on them in the same place on the same day, which was from a pendant his dad had given him during the recovery from the suicide attempt at Bondi. “Dad fell off the wagon again. In a real bad way. I don’t know if he’s gonna be okay this time. I don’t even know he’ll—” He stopped, shaking his head. If he started down that path, he wouldn’t be able to pull himself back and they’d probably rush him out of Sash’s room to intervene. “But a couple of really amazing things happened too. Uncle Sam asked for my blessing to propose to Mom, which… it’s incredible. It really is. Just complicated. Like I have so much to think about but my brain feels like it doesn’t work anymore. I don’t have music to help me think. I don’t have you to talk to. Not in the way where I know you’re listening and you don’t even need to say a word back. You just look at me in the way that I know, there’s nothing else in the world you’re thinking about but what I need to say. Or those times where we’re saying nothing at all, just like our song. I miss that quiet. I miss you. It’s never quiet here. Never. There’s always noises and I can’t figure out everything in my head over them. I just want to be back home in our bed, with my arms wrapped around you. I’m sorry I can’t hold you, beautiful. You’re too sick and this is the best we’ve got. It fucking sucks…”
Justin kissed the tips of his fingers and this time carefully and slowly reached to touch them to Sash’s chest, letting them linger there. Every part of him felt like it was burning to hold Sash and kiss him. He never took a moment he had with Sash for granted, but now it felt like he wanted to remember each and every kiss. Every cuddle. Every time they had sex. Every time they did everything but have sex. Every time they just laid together naked, feeling their warmth against each other’s skin. It ached inside when his mind stumbled onto scattered thoughts he had been trying to hold off like wondering if he would ever be able to feel Sash like that again. It was yet another train of thought he couldn’t fall into or it would panic him into another breakdown. At least he had medication to thank for keeping him calm enough to get this far. No matter how much he always wanted to keep his shit together, sometimes it was impossible for him.
“And Reecy and Kyan are having a baby. At least… I— I think they are. I’m pretty sure she was here and told me that but it’s gotten messed up in all this other shit in my head. I… I’ve been checking out a bit, I think. Some things feel so clear and overwhelming, like I can’t escape them. Then others, I get all mixed up and not sure if I’m imaging some of it or dreaming about it. I’ve just been trying to focus on getting here to you. If I got too far away from that, it might’ve slipped away and I’ve got to be here for you. I’ve got to be here in case you… you…” He stopped talking and clenched up all over, biting on his lip so hard, he pierced the skin and drew blood. The trembling was back, like when you got caught outside in the winter without a coat but he wasn’t cold. The watery mouth and the sick roily sloshing of his stomach. All those parts he couldn’t control. All the parts about his mental illness that he hated so fucking much.
As much as he wanted to come in here stable and fully rational for Sash, the harsh reality was he really wasn’t well himself. He was trying. He had his moments where, with enough medication, he could hold it together for a little while but the thought of Sash dying distressed him so much, it was like pulling the ground out from under him every time the palpable, crippling realness of this horrible turn of events hit him again. Everything he had sworn to Sash was true. It was okay if Sash couldn’t fight and he had to go, but that really, really didn’t mean Justin would be able to keep fighting too, if things crashed and burned and Sash lost the battle. With that awful sensation like someone was trying to choke him, Justin fumbled for the nurse call button the nurse had looped around the bed railing for him with a desperate gasp of, “I’m so sorry,” to Sash.
LOG, COMPLETE