Right, tis the last chapter! Hope everyone likes it – seems hard to believe I've been writing this since July 2007!

Many, many, many thanks to Corrine, for putting up with my crappy snippets and madness in the early hours, and also to starsofandromeda, for help with the eating disorders stuff in the last chapter.

Anyway. On with the show...

"Another one?" Sighs the tired-looking consultant, Markman, Putting a clip file record onto the reception desk. She pushes one hand through her hair. "We shouldn't have to deal with drunks and addicts. Last week we had two clowns, and someone in a leather cat suit, plastered, arguing over who used the coffee machine first. " She continues, taking a mint from the dish next to the equally comatose admin staff. "All Friday and early hours of Saturday we get 'em coming in, chucking up everywhere and we're still paid bloody peanuts. Things get stranger by the day around here, I swear." This earns a grunt of agreement from behind the monitor. She pauses, looks around guiltily, and on seeing the ward director at the far end of the ward, disappears into a random cubicle, where she is confronted by a particularly effeminate looking man surrounded by someone in a particularly lurid Hawaiian shirt and a tiny person in a turban. Yeah. Stranger by the day.

"Is there any news?" Howard jumps up and almost shouts in Markman's face, wincing slightly at the cliché. Not caring though.

She paused, and spun on the balls of her feet.

"There's no news as such. Your friend has undergone gastric lavage due to alcohol intoxication and is currently under tertiary level sedation." Howard looked perplexed, slightly agitated. "He got drunk, had his stomach pumped and is sleeping it off." She says, with practiced ease, although after flipping through the patient history chart, the crease in her brow deepens a little.

"Is there a history of eating disorders in his family?"

"We...we don't-I mean Vince doesn't really talk about his family much. His mum phones on his birthday though. Don't you have these things on record?"

"Not when names or locations change...it's why we ask patients to alert us of these things. But back to the point. Since he was last admitted he's lost three kilos. Three and a half if you consider water loss. This is a dangerous amount of weight to loose in such a short amount of time. We have to consider the possibility of anorexia-"

"I knew it." Says Naboo from the background. It's the first time he's spoken, and he sounds all wrong. Prehaps a little bit choked up, like seeing someone's ribs through a hospital gown has suddenly made everything so much worse. How can you expect someone to get better when they're so fucked up they stop eating altogether? A reality check.

Howard can hardly think straight. He's gone from elation to worry to anger and finally, to guilt, because why didn't he do something sooner? He was always telling Vince to eat, always threatening, but never actually doing anything. He hadn't even twigged when he'd found the full length mirror in the bin (one shard missing), or the batteries missing from the scales months before Vince had actually blatantly cut his food intake and started to obsess.

There's a stirring from the bed, but the doctor continues talking.

"It also says here about a suicide attempt, possible self harm issues. It seems to be pointing towards some degree of depression, its not uncommon, but I will refe-"

The rest of the words filtered out, swallowed up in the unrelenting silence and the heart monitor going barely half a beat faster. The rasprasprasp of someone struggling to breathe around the intubation.

...

The problem comes when Vince's brain wakes up before his insides do and blind panic sets in when he finds he cant actually breathe. He hasn't even opened his eyes yet, but he can just tell there's a flurry of movement around him. Weirdly distorted shouts bounce off the walls as something is getting pulled out of his throat, scraping and ripping and making him gip, but then, when he tries to inhale, the air goes in instead of getting caught behind the plastic valve.

Okay. I can breathe. Wait. Where the fuck am i?

He tries to open his eyes – succeeded. Everything was blurry. Random shapes and the stark smell of clean and the crinkle of starched-white sheets.

No... Not here, again. How did he even get he-wait why. Why am I here? I can't think. Have I done something stupid again? Have I fucked things up for good? Got the attention I always wanted-

Everything drops into focus too quickly, too many bright colours and blinding ivory. Someone's got their fingers clasped around his wrist, holding on tight. He reflexively flinches away, even though the paper hospital gown shows off every single scar – a paint palette from vivid red to beige, barely visible.

Vince eventually hauls himself upwards, so he's leaning back on the mattress. Thoughts suddenly flash back up, and everything that was fine suddenly isn't, and he remembers every painstaking detail and every hurt of the past few weeks in Technicolor. Howard hates him. Naboo doesn't even care anymore. He's sure of it.

So why are they here?

"Whha" Is all that stutters out. Croaks. He can't even speak now. A failure like always. Somewhere from the side a doctor with pointed, youthful features hands him, or rather tips the contents of a glass tumbler down his throat. It feels oily-sweet. Fattening? But at least it makes it easier to talk.

"What are you doing here?" It's still a small voice, bitten off oddly towards the end. Howard has smudgy dark circles under his eyes and Naboo doesn't even know his turban is on upside down and back to front. They both stare at him. Howard makes a gruff little whimpering noise that Vince thinks might be upse-

No. He's better off without you. Don't make him feel guilty. Don't make him stay.

He still finds himself hoping though.

"You don't care." It just slips out. Unintentional and only faintly more eloquent.

"What?" Naboo sounds pissed off more than anything. A bit hurt. "Are you stupid? We've been looking for you for weeks. We thought you were dead, we thought we'd never see you again! " Howard tries to silence him, but the unyielding tension is still there.

"We do care." Someone's holding his hand, but he doesn't really dare take his gaze away from the curtain opposite, wavering in the breeze. Besides, its reassuring, in an odd way.

Vince still doesn't fully believe it though. That they are actually here, for some other reason that to warn him to stay out of their lives forever. He automatically says something about how sorry he is. Howard starts talking again, all rushed, unrehearsed and comforting.

Relief.

"It's gonna be okay though, Vince. We're gonna get it sorted this time. The doctors know what's wrong and-and it's going to work." He's actually on the verge of tears. Vince is too, but only on the inside. Its like he wants to cry but...he just can't.

And...oh. So this is what it's been like for them. You thought you were making everything alright and you haven't you've just made it worse. You can't keep being selfish.

You can't. The first clear thought in a while.

"It's gonna be okay." Snaps him out of the daydream, the delusions.

Slowly, Vince nods.

-The End-

Okay, that's it. I /tried/ to make it a happy-ish one (namely, as, if I hadn't, someone in particular would've killed me in my sleep).

Please tell me what you think and click the review button ;)

xxxx