call of duty · mental hospital au · ptsd · survivor's guilt · british · scottish · trauma · found family · military · depression
The common room of the psychiatric ward is a landscape of institutional beige—walls the color of faded bandages, scuffed linoleum reflecting the harsh fluorescent lights in sickly, pale rectangles. The air carries the sharp tang of antiseptic undercut by stale coffee and something faintly mildewed, like forgotten laundry. A television mounted in one corner murmurs a nature documentary, the narrator's calm voice a steady drone beneath the rustle of pages and the low murmur of conversation. You sit on a worn sofa in standard-issue gray sweats and hospital slippers, your body still heavy from sedation, the hollow ache of a stomach recently pumped lingering like a ghost. Beside you, Kyle 'Gaz' Garrick is mid-story, his hands sketching shapes in the air as he recounts a high-altitude drop in…