Chapter Text
~Three Weeks After the Decision~
Will Graham could finally rest.
“Bright lights.” He came to, bleary, sore, exhausted. He couldn’t move and could hardly see, but he didn’t exactly need to, yet.
He was laid under a warm blanket and nobody came to bother him except to make sure he was still resting. They kept him hydrated and comfortable.
More importantly, nobody was making him stare cruelty in the face or embody the pain that plagued the worst of humanity.
But this wasn’t exactly what he wanted.
The hospital wasn’t a nice place to be, even though he was finally able to stop worrying. As the hours passed, he started to become more and more aware of his surroundings. His head was wrapped in bandages and a tight helmet, and his left eye was covered too. He was still exhausted. He stared at the blank white wall ahead of him with his good eye.
Monitors on either side of him beeped every second or so. He turned his head to the right. A curtain almost covered a wall of windows leading to a larger floor. He could see people walking back and forth through the small gap in the curtains.
A woman in a white coat and dark red scrubs knocked on the door and slid it open. “Will Graham. Welcome back to earth.” She sat down on a chair next to the bed and shined her penlight in his eye. He blinked.
“My name is Dr. Erica Miller. You’re in the intensive care unit because you had an emergency surgery for a gunshot wound to the head. You’re a lucky man. We couldn’t save your eye, but you’re alive.” Will nodded. He was alive. Maybe he’d feel an emotion about the rest of it later.
“According to our scans, you have had extensive damage to parts of your brain. We’ll know more about exactly what’s wrong as you heal, but you can expect some problems with communication.” Will nodded again. He understood her just fine.
She pulled a sheet of paper from your clipboard. “Since you’ve been awake for a few hours, I’d like to do a short test. We’ll do more physical examinations later. Do you think you can write?”
Will had signed a statement for the social worker an hour ago. He picked up the pen.
“I’ll read the questions out loud. I’m first going to give you a memory test.” She held up a paper close to Will with eight pictures and pointed to the first one. “Tell me the name of this.”
“Elephant,” Will said, and she nodded. They repeated this for each image. She put the paper face down.
“Please name as many vegetables as you can in a minute. I will time you.”
“Carrot,” Will said. “Lettuce. Tomato. Broccoli. Greens. Corn. Root.” He shook his head. “No, not root. Potato. Spinach. Spear. Ugh, no. Asparagus.” His head started to hurt. Some problems with communication, huh. He knew what he wanted to say, in his head, but something was getting in the way before he could speak. As if she sensed his building frustration, the doctor placed a hand next to him.
“It’s okay. Remember, you’ve suffered a gunshot to the head and survived. You’ll make progress.” Will nodded again, not trusting himself to speak.
“Do you know what today’s date is?”
Will shook his head.
“It’s Monday. November 18th, 2013.”
“Monday,” Will said. “Okay.”
“Alright, Will. Next, I’ll need you to draw a clock.”
This again.
She handed him the paper she’d been holding and pointed to a small square box. “Draw 10 past 11 on an analogue clock with all of the numbers.”
Will felt the spark of stress for the first time since he’d woken up. He’d drawn enough clocks in the past weeks. He clicked the pen and quickly drew a circle, the numbers, and the hands.
“Can you order these arrows? They are right, up, left and down. Please put them in order of up, down, left, and right. The up arrow is labelled with a one for you already. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Will said. He jotted down the other numbers and handed back the paper.
“Okay, Will, thank you. Now I’d like you to try and recall the images you looked at earlier. You don’t need to do them in order, and you can take your time.”
“Elephant,” Will said. “Balloon. Um… boat. Spider. Pear. Um…” he paused. “Comb.”
“Can you remember the body part?”
“Thumb.”
“And the tool?”
Will thought hard. “No.”
“Alright, Will, thank you. You’re doing very well considering the severity of your injuries. I’ll leave a notepad with you, in case you find it easier to write than speak. There’s a remote right next to your left hand with a button to call a nurse if you need anything,” Dr. Miller said. Will turned to his left, focusing hard, but without his glasses he was struggling to see the contrast between the pale remote and the pale bedspread. He groped around with his hand until he could lift it up. The call button was large and round.
“Glasses,” he said.
“You can’t wear your glasses yet, Will.” She paused. “I’ll see if I can get someone to find you a magnifying glass.”
Dr. Miller left. Now he was alone with his thoughts.
He’d seen it once, before. A gunshot to the head that didn’t kill. They’d had someone in for questioning, once. He had been bruised all around his eye and face. Everyone present assumed he was making shit up because nothing he said made any sense.
Did Will still make sense?
~Six Weeks After the Decision~
How long do I have to stay? he wrote. He’d gotten a second surgery to replace the part of his skull they’d removed and was now in a general ward. The doctors had told him he’d only be there for another few days to recover, but it had been two weeks.
Dr. Miller “You’re recovering well from the injury, but right now you’re still on immunotherapy. We want you in the hospital for that, and we also want you to meet with a psychiatrist before we discharge you to a lower level of care.” She tilted her head in what seemed like an empathetic gesture. “I understand it may be hard to accept, but you’re going to need ongoing care for some time.”
Will wasn’t in denial about that. He was focused on something else. What do I need immunotherapy for? he wrote.
“We discovered something else while evaluating you after your surgery. We had to conduct a craniectomy to reduce swelling. However, your swelling did not reduce by much or as quickly as expected. We did some additional tests and found out that you have an autoimmune condition that caused brain swelling. Your psychiatrist showed us some testing he had done that was consistent with this diagnosis.”
Will felt a chill run through him.
“The clock drawing you did when you recovered consciousness was one tool that showed us that you’re doing much better. One of the drawings you did a few months ago looked like this,” Dr. Miller said, holding out a piece of paper. Will took it. The clock was long and incomplete. The numbers were all on one side, and the hands pointed in random directions.
Dr. Lecter must have known that this wasn’t normal.
But that didn’t matter right now.
~The Decision~
He was crazy. Or he wasn’t crazy. It didn’t really matter which one it was, at this point. He was losing his mind even if it was physical. He had lost so much time that he didn’t even know what was real and what was a dream.
And someone was using it against him. He knew that for sure. He knew who it was, too, but there was nothing he could do about it. Nobody would believe him. The physical evidence would paint him as the perpetrator. Of that he was certain.
Even if, somehow, someone believed him, the real killer would take care of them.
And God knows that the nightmare wouldn’t end inside a prison, even if the problem was physical.
So Will had taken the only option he had left. He stared his FBI-issued firearm down the barrel and pulled the trigger.
He was going crazy, after all.
Will Graham could finally rest.