Nope, unless Word Of God says otherwise, that’s probably just a colored whiteboard that the nurse used white markers to write on. My mom had something similar in her room during her hospital stay, although it wasn’t behind her head. If you look at the first panel, the shadows are all caused by the light coming in the window, not from the whiteboard.
I’ve been to two hospitals; the first time, I was too young to remember anything, and it wasn’t me in trouble the second time. What I did see is basically the same as what AgentKeen is saying, and that was at one of the more distinguished hospitals in the country. I suppose it depends on the hospital and the quality of their services, but I haven’t seen anything like that flatscreen before. Still, I’m definitely naïve and young, so I’ll trust Willis’s call on what is a relatively minor detail anyhow.
I dunno about Indiana hospitals, but this screen is directly copied from an Ohio hospital from one of our more recent stays. I had to cheat the screen to be way less space-efficient in real life to keep some of the details out of view.
“Welcome back to Citadel Station. We hope your somnolent healing stage went well. T-t-today is the 6th day of November, year 2072. You are currently in the Healing Suites located on the first level.”
Well, the last time I was in the hospital, in December, they had a whiteboard with that kind of stuff written on it. But it was on the other side of the room, so I could actually see it from bed.
Seriously though! Clearly I was in a low-end mental hospital. No screens except a tube tv in the tiny “common area.” Hell we didn’t even have real mirrors, just foggy plastic shit so that you couldn’t break it and cut yourself. No way they would give personal screens. And definitely no hospital beds. I’ve never heard of any place like this :/ I kinda woulda liked a futuristic set up like this.
You should see the place I work in (a combo hospital/mental health hospital). The mental health side is designed for long term stays, made to look as little like an institution as possible. The clinical side is pretty nice too…for a hospital. We have screens like that in the ER and OR but for keeping track of patients so doctor’s and nurses know where the patients are at any given time. We have screens at the bedside too, on arms, but for patient TV’s and internet. Was supposed to also be for docs and nurses to use but that didn’t pan out. This is in Canada mind you but don’t get any ideas that the hospitals here are flush with money…they most definitely are not. This one just happens to be a newer hospital and so had the money to invest at build time.
Yeah, it’s the fear that all the bad will come back when you’re outside the hospital doors, forgetting that the coping strategies they gave you aren’t actually going away.
Well, that and the fact that a few days worth of hospital can’t impart nearly enough coping skills for the life awaiting you outside. That’s what ongoing therapy is for.
Plus she face all these stressors while being really depresses in a less-ridiculously-safe environment, which reinforces all her depressed habits! Hooray.
She was taken to the hospital Sunday afternoon/evening, so Wednesday would be 3 days out – aka when a 72 hour involuntary hold would expire. So she could be leaving then, barring any decisions by the doctors to get an openended voluntary* extension.
*Speaking from personal experience, the definition of voluntary allows for a substantial amount of coercion.
I had a different experience. The hospital became a safe space to explore issues and to get away from the world. An oasis in life. Going home was the hard part. I’m guessing that’s the anxiety Ruth is feeling.
That’s what I took from it too. In the hospital, Ruth doesn’t have to worry about anything but sorting out her issues. Back in tbe dorms, she’ll have to worry about classes, eating, not drinking, and everyone else’s judgement again and she’s not sure if she’s ready for that. Maybe this will encourage her to get professional counceling; self-medication and internalizing everything only caused a misery feedback loop.
The hospital is generally a terrible experience. But depending what’s going on in the world outside (or inside your head), it can be a safe place to regroup.
That said, my shrink asked me yesterday if I should go there, and I said hell no. I try to save it for the biggest emergencies. And even with that philosophy, I’ve been there at least 10 times. Sorry for rambling. Been a weird few days.
I must admit, this conveys a lot of emotion – fear, frustration, and concern – without a single word. It reminds me of how I felt after my impromptu trip to see my grandmother, when I felt reality about to hit me.
Yep, the comic has gone so slowly that 100 years of medical advances have passed since Ruth entered the hospital. It all equates to one big, blue, beeping screen over her head. Which is the only thing left working, thanks to the apocalypse and all that.
Last July, I was hospitalized for three days following an aborted attempt on my own life, followed immediately by an attempt to cut all ties with my family and render myself homeless.
I’m glad to see Ruth getting help, and that she has friendly doctors and group therapy, and that she’s allowed visitors. I’m thrilled to see that she’s been made aware of when she’s allowed to leave. And I can only assume that whatever medications are listed are correct based on the available data, but I feel confident in that assumption, because this place seems to have been good for Ruth so far.
All the same, none of this lined up with my own experiences. Which isn’t to say it had to. (Or even that it’d make sense to–Ruth was, to put it mildly, far more passive about this than I was.) Just that, while I am incredibly glad Ruth’s getting help–I don’t know if I could’ve handled it if her condition deteriorated these past six months–I also can’t help but be a little jealous, and feel a little strange about what I’m seeing.
I also can’t decide whether having a giant screen displaying my medical data would’ve made me more or less depressed over the course of those three days. I suppose it would’ve been better than the screen I had in my room, which was consistently blank, a cruel reminder of all the TV I could be watching if I hadn’t tried to kill myself.
I hope you’re doing a lot better than you were. Judging by the million places my sister’s been, inpatient psychiatric care has a large range of quality.
It is normal to feel that way. I don’t think that anyone who has been there didn’t feel a little strange about her story. It hits me in weird ways too.
Also, don’t kick your own ass for what happened. You were in a bad place and needed help. Maybe you needed meds or different meds. Maybe you needed therapy. Maybe you were going to therapy but lying to them. Whatever the case, you are doing better now.
My OD would have succeeded if not for dumb luck of a friend finding out. That time I was lying to my therapist about how bad I was and not telling anybody that the med that made me less depressed (cymbolta I think is how it’s spelled) also somehow made me extremely suicidal. Between going off one med cold turkey, going on a new one, and the side effects of the stuff that did absorb before I got taken to the ER, I was out of my freaking mind for a while, made no sense, and lost all my friends but 2 (who I am still friends with) with most of them saying I lied about the whole thing (some of my family too). My dad and boyfriend at the time told me if I ever got stupid again they would throw me in a nut house from then on and wash their hands of me which years later after going off my antidepressant because my (now ex) boyfriend wanted kids (turned out to be a lie) led to a very close call where I was barely able to stop myself and call for help. I wouldn’t have gotten that bad if they hadn’t have said what they said, but I did get that bad. Got out that time to my home I had paid the down payment on taken by my ex and me in no head space to fight him. My savings got drained. I lost almost everything. Had to move back in with my dad. I could sit here all day and call myself stupid for what I did, but the point is that I wasn’t in my right mind either of the times these things happened and for a bit afterward. I wasn’t myself. And now I’m okay. After over a year and a half living with my dad I saved up enough to get a nice little apartment and some second hand furniture. The area is nice and my landlord was my friend in grade school and she’s cool with me growing a vegetable garden on my lawn. I talk to the friend who saved my life nearly every day and her husband thinks of me as his sister in law. I got to therapy, take an antidepressant, get outside, and take my dogs on nature walks. I might have acted like a dumbass a couple times, but so do people who get blackout drunk. You just have to accept that you did something you aren’t proud of while in an altered state of mind, move forward, and try to minimize the risk of it ever happening again.
A day late, but in case you come back and check, that was a metric ton of work you did, thank you for sharing, and congratulations on your rad progress. Best of luck for continued recovery 🙂
Laying in the after glow, I only want to learn what you know,
But now you’re leaving…
How many hearts must you break? How many calls must I make?
But now you’re leaving…
In this world, all that I choose has come unbearable
But love is in your touch–Ooh, it’s killing me so much
Only When You Leave/I need to love you
And when the action has all gone
I’m just a little fool enough to need you
Fool enough too long
Only When You Leave, you’ll leave in danger
Oh, I’ll make sure that you pay
So give a little passion to a stranger
And take this soul away–Spandau Ballet
Ugh. That feeling where you can’t wait to get out and be able to do things like take a shower without supervision, but you know the reality you’ve been neglecting for so long is waiting to punch you in the face the moment you leave.
It can’t be the 5th, because the year is ‘now’, meaning it’s either Oct 2016 or Oct 2017, and neither of them was the 5th of October was/will be Tuesday. The last Tuesday Oct 5 was 2010, and the next is 2021. (Then 2027, 2032, 2038, and 2049…then nothing until past 2050.)
The way I view it, the setting is always “now”, but the dates do not necessarily line up to the days those dates correspond to in whatever the current year is, though it has the corresponding contemporary cultural phenomena. It’s not as if the exact year isn’t somewhat inherently ambiguous as well – does the in-comic year correspond to the current academic or calendar year?
You’re overcomplicating it. It’s Tuesday, October 5, 2016 (or Tuesday, October 5, 2017, if you prefer, but I generally round to the nearest). The fact that neither October 5, 2016, nor October 5, 2017 are tuesdays in the real world is irrelevant to the matter.
That screen is really nothing more than a high-tech version of the old-time charts we used to see hanging off the foot of a hospital bed. How is that a HIPPA violation? Just because a visitor could see certain information (such as what meds she is on?) Hell, if she was on an IV drip a visitor could see the label on the plastic baggie too; is the hospital supposed to mask that in the name of HIPPA too?
Yeah, pretty much. I work on a locked inpatient mental health ward. No last names are visible anywhere; all computer monitors must be in the office where no visitors can see them. The medical field takes HIPPA VERY seriously nowadays. And the old time charts hanging at the end of the bed? Not something you see very much anymore. There ARE computer monitors in exam rooms, ERs, etc, but they go to locked screensaver mode very quickly. And chances are good that the IV drip bags will have the patient’s ID number, but NOT their name.
I can’t speak for everywhere in the US, but every IV I saw in the last dozen years of my mom’s life when she spent quite a bit of time in and out of hospitals and related facilities* between ’97 and ’09 had two barcodes (presumably one identifying what it was and another identifying who it was supposed to be hooked to) and otherwise had no identifying info on it. The same was true for every other med I saw administered. Charts and the like, even for many primary care physicians, have been entirely digital since around ’05. Hell, I haven’t even seen a written prescription when I’ve been sick in near a decade as that’s entirely digital now too.
*Off topic note here, my experience with that and adding up what the costs would have been sans insurance, ie several million dollars of which we ended up paying around the cost of a new car, is what lead to my own particular views on the need for health care industry reform and insurance industry reform (especially the later, as they are a major driver for the costs and often the exact same people and companies earn their living from all of medical PLI, consumer medical insurance and life insurance coverage).
Wouldn’t this monitor be facing the door, so that anyone walking past the room would be able to read it if the door was open? It seems like this monitor is placed to be easily read by everyone except Ruth herself.
Narrator: While Joyce and Robin move on (we’ll return to them later) Kyle faces his chosen enemy.
Xavier: We are not so different, we both work under as master who is far from perfect.
Kyle: I wouldn’t call her my master, boss is more appropriate here.
Xavier: My master fails to consider perspective, he tends to think everyone will blindly follow him.
Kyle: Than why are you helping him?
Xavier: I do not truly know, perhaps some stupid loyalty ingrained into me from birth, to the man who raised me as a son. But I wish to warn you, Reginald plans to kill himself as soon as your friends enter his room. The appearance that Americans have murdered the King’s son will start a war between our two countries.
Kyle: I have to warn them.
Xavier: To do that you will have to go through me, and that will be impossible.
Kyle: Can’t I just text them?
Xavier: This floor has been redesigned to not allow for the use of any cellular data or products. I estimate you have roughly two minutes seconds until Joyce and Robin reach the door of my Duke.
Kyle: (checks his phone) damn your right.
Narrator: Xavier rushes forward and punches a right hook at the side of Kyle’s head. Kyle ducks and uses an uppercut, hitting the underside of Xavier’s chin. They both jump back and Xavier cracks his neck.
Xavier: Hmmm, it seems we are both disivantaged in this fight, you’re too fast for me to hit and your hits won’t harm me.
Kyle: All your doing is trying to distract me, I don’t have to fight you.
Xavier: Heh.
Narrator: Kyle runs at Xavier as fast as he can, Xavier studies his movements to see where he will go.
Xavier: (thinking) this hallway is narrow, and I am big, but he could go either to my left, my right, through my legs or above me somehow. All I have to do is block him, after that even if he somehow defeats me, he will have no time to stop his allies.
Narrator: Kyle runs at him full force.
Xavier: Here he comes…
Narrator: Kyle jumps up and punches Xavier in the face as hard as he can, causing him to fall over.
Xavier: (lifts his head slightly) H..how..
Kyle: I had a lot of pent up rage from working for an idiot all these years. Thanks for the information.
But it helps to imagine that when they’re actually examining her, the screen flips to a Star-Trek type vital-systems display. One of the lines is; “Life force”.
“Well I don’t know, Jim. My usual prescription is a shot of good ol’ Kentucky bourbon. But this patient can’t process that medicine in any beneficial way…”
I feel a bit fucked up…I first read it as “you will be able to live tommorow” then saw her face of disappointment. Maybe I shouldn’t stay up til 3 in the morning to read awesome comics
Speaking as someone who has been through something a little like this, I can understand the look on Ruth’s face in the last panel. For the last few days she has been removed from all personal responsibility because someone else was making her decisions for her. Now that she is being told she may be able to leave and by inference start assuming some of her old life again, there is a certain amount of hesitancy and uncertainty on her part. As Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day”, but she was looking on it as an opportunity to start to make things better; for Ruth, it’s more a case of “what new troubles will tomorrow bring?”
And considering why Ruth was admitted in the first place (alcohol abuse, just in case you forgot), I suspect that the only place she is going is from the hospital room to a treatment center — possibly in another part of the same hospital — for the 30-day inpatient program. First you need to dry out and become stable and rational again; then they try to get you to stop your self-destructive behavior.
As far as I know she didn’t go in for alcohol abuse. She went in because she was severely depressed and a suicide risk. I don’t think they found any alcohol on her.
She was in a catatonic state when she was committed. I don’t know if it was ever clear wether alcohol was involved involved or not.
I do hope she is released to another treatment program but is that a realistic hope given the US system of medical cost and insurances?
I don’t think she’d been drinking. She’d been on the wagon to avoid the blackmail and had shown all her usual detoxing signs. Nor were there the empty bottles that are the usual indications of her drinking enough to pass out.
I think it was just suicidal depression. I don’t think alcohol stays in the blood long enough to detect last week’s binge. OTOH, she may have told them about the drinking.
Detox can take from a week to then days. It’s Tuesday and her detox would have begun on Friday. While it’s true that a blood test wouldn’t show it (though a urine test would – again, possible if they were worried she took something) she’d probably still have detox symptoms.
Now, hold on. Semesters usually start in late August or early September. Are you meaning to tell me that two months max have gone by since the start of this Freaking comic?
“It looks like you can leave tomorrow!” — I don’t think that anyone or anything has ever communicated to Ruth news as terrifying as this! She’s going to have to leave! She’s going to have to face the outside world again!
This hospital has a psych ward with people who care, private rooms, the ability for visitors to see the patient without a billion hoops, new technology, and an environment that isn’t heavily religious if at all… I didn’t even realize all those things were a possibility all at once! The last place I went to two years ago (depression got bad after a bunch of crap happened while off antidepressants, so I was very close to taking my own life) was so Christian centric that it was maddening and me not knowing I could leave after 72 was stuck there for 2 weeks. I eventually pretended to be Christian so I could get out and a few weeks later tattooed an atheist symbol on my leg. I’m all for religion, but it’s not for me much less having my treatment centered around it and have tiny luxuries taken away when I don’t go to church. If I ever have to go in one of those places again, I hope it’s like this.
Ha. When I was in the hospital they were allergic to communicating with the patients. The doctors (who were very overworked, to be fair) would talk to you for about fifteen minutes a day. They wouldn’t say anything about when you could go home, except ‘not today’, and in one case ‘maybe, I need to talk to your social worker’ only for her to tell me later he’d left without doing so. In addition to that, they didn’t listen to me when I had an (apparently very common!) bad reaction to the medication they put me on, and my psychiatrist had to tell me what was going on, to discontinue it right away, and put it down as a medicine I can’t take. (I tried to talk about my symptoms during the 15s a day the doctor had to meet, and he said they only thing that would concern him is if I had a rash. Now, three separate medical professionals I saw after that even, two of the doctors, confirmed that a rash is possible, but far from the only possible or well known serious reaction to that medicine.)
It was a very stressful environment to try to recover in. Strange places make me anxious. Strange people make me anxious. Feeling trapped makes me anxious. Having all my things taken makes me anxious. Receiving almost no communication makes me anxious. The only people who were comforting were the orderlies, since the orderlies actually saw us frequently, they were understanding and reassuring. For the most part they were wonderful, patient, and understanding of the fear I experienced.
On top of that, I have a medication that I am supposed to take daily that the hospital straight up forgot to give me for three days, and I had to ask the nurses what was up for anyone to even remember.
My psychiatrist has sense said I ended up in the worst local facility, so I guess the lesson is hopefully the others in the area are substantially better?
Oh, and if anyone is worried about me, please rest assured that despite the dire warnings from the president of the united states, Sweden is in fact perfectly fine and at the moment rather baffled as to what he might have been talking about.
(In fact, the most important national news this weekend has to do with 87 year old singer-songwriter Owe Törnqvist going to the semifinal of Melodifestivalen. Google him, he’s awesome).
Ah, the nervousness of something finally helping with the maelstrom in your head ending and worrying this will mean all the bad will come back.
But Ruth will be okay, it seems like the programs are the only things keeping you holding on, but a good program leaves you with a hell of a lot of coping strategies to face the darkness with and more importantly the reminder that you are not broken and the disease is not actually stronger than you. And most importantly of all, knowing that there’s a place she can go if it all becomes too intense again.
Things are still going to be tough, she’s still going to struggle with depression and she’s got a whole mess of fallout to clean up, but she’s going in with more effective help than she’s ever had in her life. And I think she’ll be able to deal with it better than she has so far.
Also, I’m wondering what went down with Billie and her therapist. Wasn’t she supposed to see someone during this day? Or will that be tomorrow?
Also *appropriate gesture of support* for all those who’ve been through in-patient. I’m glad you are all still here and your suicide attempts were not completed. You are all valued and loved and you matter even if the world and your brain try and convince you otherwise.
So if it’s october, will the cast be celebrating Halloween?
(I’m inclined to think Joyce isn’t allowed but I once had a really christian neighbor who dressed up as the virgin mary and handed out bible verses and crap lollypops instead of going trick or treating so I suppose some fundamentalists do celebrate it)
It probably depends on the flavor of fundamentalism she was in. For example, my grandma isn’t a fundie, she’s just your typical Southern Christian. But she hated Halloween, called it “the Devil’s birthday” and always acted disappointed if I told her I celebrated it. Even if I was just a little kid trick or treating. I eventually learned to lie to her because otherwise I’d get a long lecture about how evil Halloween was.
That´s pretty much a rude, blank-less (“stale”) way to notice a patient that´s in for leave. Ayup. Go up to the floor, f***s. Tell that in person, to the face.
P.D.
Never been a fan of how technological “head-ups” are wriggling into the common scenery of our lives, more so with the abundance of “visual noise” we have already. Gives a certain, un-definite feeling of uneasiness. Un-healthy, perhaps, in some places. But that´s just my opinion.
It is entirely possible that they did tell her to her face earlier in the day. But it is night now, and the screen is probably just a reminder so she doesn’t forget and so that she knows which day it is (I lose track of days easily because of my sleeping schedule).
OTOH, in addition to what Sam said, I’d rather just know as soon as possible, even if it’s a “rude” way, rather than waiting until the doctor has a chance to talk to me – which in my fairly limited experience could be hours.
In this case though, since Ruth’s likely been on a 72 hour emergency hold, this has probably been scheduled from early on. Unless something drastic happened, the release wouldn’t have changed.
Hospitals in different regions can be quite different. Where I live the hospitals don’t have visiting hours. So long as you aren’t disturbing the patients. Does that mean you can sit by a friends bed side while they sleep through the night. Yes, in the case of family and long term hospital stays they may even set up a cot.
So it always confuses me in fiction when someone has to leave because visiting hours are over.
The question remains whether Ruth feels ready to leave the Hospital and where she’ll go when she does. I know she has no desire to go back home, that place is toxic, and is partially responsible for creating the Ruthless Ruth we all know and love and led to this mess in the first place.
Will she go back to College? I’m not sure if she can What about her and Billie? Where”s that gonna go? Ifshee does go back how are the others going to react? She won’t be R.A. anymore,that’s a given, and if she’s able to, will she want to go back?
As of this moment, she’s still RA and she still has her room. Unless she’s been fired and kicked out off-panel, she can head right back to the dorm. I expect there’s a talk with Chloe (and higher ups?) in near future.
The R.M. (I forget her name for the moment) showed up at the Hospital afew comics back and made it clear she was no longer R.A., but there was no indication that she’d been kicked out of the College unless that was done off-panel
But if you have experienced something similar to Ruth won’t you actually have sympathy for what she is feeling? Is what you are feeling… disdain for how she is handling it? Or pissed off that Ruth a bully? I’m not sure your meaning came through so well through the interwebs.
See, now I want to argue that she wasn’t really a bully. Everything she did was for their own good, and she never actually pulled out anyone’s thighs or hit anyone outside of Billie, but that was consensual sex.
Also not forgetting about letting everyone know that the higher ups think shes great so no point in complaining to them about her because they won’t be believed
Not I appreciate you have a different point of view and that’s cool but to me Ruth is a bully
Got a reply to you (its waiting moderation) with links to the comics where Ruth threatens violence, commits acts of violence, breaks into Billies room and steals her uniform and then starts to destroy it and then committing sexual assault on Billie (it was unwanted at the time)
I feel like that was closer to her and Billie’s idea of seduction than bullying. I’m sure Ruth would have noticed if it were making Billie say, Sarah/Radiah levels of uncomfortable and stopped. They are both self-sabotaging people who *do* know how to read tone.
But I’m not trying to invalidate your feelings. If it made you uncomfortable it made you uncomfortable. I’m just saying that from my perspective, it seemed like that was just the type of people they are, and that’s how they communicate. Ruth and Billie are direct and physical people. They value aggressively clear communication, and although it looks like physical assault, they seem to be just chatting. Aggressively chatting.
I also feel obligated to add that if you were bullied, it’s not your fault for being physically and mentally weak, it’s the fault of assholes for being insecure assholes. You being weak probably had nothing to do with it.
Ruth was attracted to Billie but went about pursuing her in completely the wrong way, Ruth undermined Billie, made Billie feel worthless, made her feel weak and used force on her to get her way, when Ruth kissed Billie it was with Ruths forearm up against Billies chest and there is no way anyone could think that’s what Billie wanted, at that time
Make someone feel insecure so they feel grateful that you’re even bothering to pay them attention, like a treat ’em mean keep ’em keen kind of thing
That’s kind of you to say so and I appreciate it but its true that being weak physically (went to an all boys high school) made me a target but being weak emotionally and mentally is what made the bullying continue, that’s only for me of course
I’m not suggesting in the slightest that anyone else is weak for being bullied
Yeah, I’m a lot more sympathetic to Ruth than chris73 is, but there’s no way that early interaction was cool – breaking into Billie’s room to steal and cut up her stuff?
Billie was pretty screwed up by that early on, easily to Sarah/Raidah level or beyond. And Ruth wasn’t stopping.
Once they formed the SLSP and started fake fighting to keep other people in the dark, that was a turn on for both of them, but the early stuff was not flirting for Billie. Apparently for Ruth.
Not to be a contrarian, but I would argue that hoping she gets better is actually showing a non-zero amount of sympathy, or at the very least, compassion.
You don’t have to like her or want her to get the second chance she’s hoping for to feel empathy for her as a human being. Hoping she won’t suffer further is an understandable limit to your sympathies.
In any case, I’m glad that attempt wasn’t successful. Nobody deserves to be driven to that.
For those who are confused as to how much time has actually passed by, here http://walkypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Dumbing_of_Age_Timeline is what the wiki has been able to figure out of the timeline. (Willis can you confirm some of those dates?)
Yeah. She’s super cute with Joyce-sized eyes. Before she was just kinda… Billie’s depressed secret girlfriend. Now she’s more of a character in my mind. Well played Willis.
Hi, Willis! I just binge-read your webcomic in a few days and Ruth’s story has kinda convinced me that I need to talk about my depression with friends and stop trying to hide it. And maybe get more help than I’m already getting. So… yay?
Anyways, this is a wonderful story. Thanks for being awesome.
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What a rude screen! Talking about her behind her back!
That’s not it, it’s making that annoying buzzing sound and it’s keeping her up all night.
Haha, nice x3
Absolute best place to put that screen. I love needing to roll back my eyes 120 degrees and activate my X-Ray vision to read something.
I think it’s a script for the doctors
“Good evening, Ruth. Today is TUESDAY, OCTOBER-“
“-17th. Looks like you’ll be able to leave tomorrow!”
I assume there’s another screen on the other side.
“I love you, [RUTH LESSICK]!” – Dr. Lucy Liu-bot
“Good evening, [PATIENT NAME HERE], you are the pride of [PATIENT HOMETOWN HERE].”
Then there’s the awful blue glow keeping you awake when you want to sleep.
Nope, unless Word Of God says otherwise, that’s probably just a colored whiteboard that the nurse used white markers to write on. My mom had something similar in her room during her hospital stay, although it wasn’t behind her head. If you look at the first panel, the shadows are all caused by the light coming in the window, not from the whiteboard.
Word of God has commented otherwise on the comment chain below.
Man… difficult issues…. I wish we could go back to the light-hearted Superhero subplo- OHWAIT.
Is that an actual thing they do?
Not in any hospital I’ve been to. Which is like 7.
I’ve been to at least 10 and never seen that.
I think it’s becoming a thing. I know I’ve seen writing on marker boards that basically says that, so I’m sure there’s places that have flatscreens.
We could always try asking willis. Hey willis, are those screens a thing in Indiana hospitals?
I’ve been to two hospitals; the first time, I was too young to remember anything, and it wasn’t me in trouble the second time. What I did see is basically the same as what AgentKeen is saying, and that was at one of the more distinguished hospitals in the country. I suppose it depends on the hospital and the quality of their services, but I haven’t seen anything like that flatscreen before. Still, I’m definitely naïve and young, so I’ll trust Willis’s call on what is a relatively minor detail anyhow.
I dunno about Indiana hospitals, but this screen is directly copied from an Ohio hospital from one of our more recent stays. I had to cheat the screen to be way less space-efficient in real life to keep some of the details out of view.
Do they actually have stuff like that in hospital rooms?
I guess that should be screens. Of course they have Ruths in hospital rooms.
Multiple Ruths?! Sweet lord, is the hospital still standing?
The hospital is. The patients aren’t. You need femurs for that.
The surgeons must be swimming in cash… and/or blood.
At least you don’t really need your femurs to live when there’s an emergency room thirty seconds away.
Omst of them aren’t up to much due to being truck magnets
I’ve only seen white boards, never anything that high tech.
Some. I’ve never seen one over your bed like that though. Mine was like a little tablet that doubled as a tv remote and nurse pager.
Didn’t you “PASSENGERS”? How else would you remember your name after waking up from Cryo-sleep??
“Welcome back to Citadel Station. We hope your somnolent healing stage went well. T-t-today is the 6th day of November, year 2072. You are currently in the Healing Suites located on the first level.”
Well, the last time I was in the hospital, in December, they had a whiteboard with that kind of stuff written on it. But it was on the other side of the room, so I could actually see it from bed.
Seriously though! Clearly I was in a low-end mental hospital. No screens except a tube tv in the tiny “common area.” Hell we didn’t even have real mirrors, just foggy plastic shit so that you couldn’t break it and cut yourself. No way they would give personal screens. And definitely no hospital beds. I’ve never heard of any place like this :/ I kinda woulda liked a futuristic set up like this.
The mental facility I was in, Homewood in Guelph, Ontario, had hospital beds. No screens though.
Same here, in small and big cities, never seen anything as nice as Ruth’s room. (Not to say it doesn’t exist, of course, just never seen it myself.)
You should see the place I work in (a combo hospital/mental health hospital). The mental health side is designed for long term stays, made to look as little like an institution as possible. The clinical side is pretty nice too…for a hospital. We have screens like that in the ER and OR but for keeping track of patients so doctor’s and nurses know where the patients are at any given time. We have screens at the bedside too, on arms, but for patient TV’s and internet. Was supposed to also be for docs and nurses to use but that didn’t pan out. This is in Canada mind you but don’t get any ideas that the hospitals here are flush with money…they most definitely are not. This one just happens to be a newer hospital and so had the money to invest at build time.
You know how it when you’ve been in so long you might not make it on the outside.
Just like prison!
…wait, that is not a good comparison.
If you’ve been self-destructing spectacularly and the hospital broke that free-fall, it may only take a day or two to reach that point.
Yeah, it’s the fear that all the bad will come back when you’re outside the hospital doors, forgetting that the coping strategies they gave you aren’t actually going away.
Well, that and the fact that a few days worth of hospital can’t impart nearly enough coping skills for the life awaiting you outside. That’s what ongoing therapy is for.
Hooray, now Ruth can go and… um… get fired?
And also be a week behind in her classes?
Plus three more weeks because she’s been whatever about her classes?
Plus have to face all the people in that wing even if she’s not fired?
Plus she face all these stressors while being really depresses in a less-ridiculously-safe environment, which reinforces all her depressed habits! Hooray.
Well at least it looks like they only have her on one med once a day.
It says her medication are – I’m guessing an ‘s’ was cut off and that we’re not seeing the full list.
Everything you’ve ever wanted floats above…
It’s bolted to the wall, actually.
Oh wow, you’re not Doctor_Who?
Why would I be?
It’s just that I never seem to find any posts by you here, and figured you would be someone who commented frequently.
I used to be!
I keep trying to get back into the rhythm of it.
I think it’s about the same rhythm as Twelve Bullets on the Deadpool soundtrack.
Close up, it looks like a blue T, reminding her of how terrible her team is. That’s the takeaway of what she’s reacting to, right?
The sign’s telling her to make like her team and leaf.
Lost 6-3 today too.
I lost track of how many days Ruth has been there. Clearly she’s improved, but has she really improved enough that it’s ok for her to leave already?
She’s likely considered ‘not at immediate risk of harm’ anymore so out she goes.
She was taken to the hospital Sunday afternoon/evening, so Wednesday would be 3 days out – aka when a 72 hour involuntary hold would expire. So she could be leaving then, barring any decisions by the doctors to get an openended voluntary* extension.
*Speaking from personal experience, the definition of voluntary allows for a substantial amount of coercion.
They can also keep you longer if they believe you’re at immediate risk of harm for yourself or others.
Immediate harm being up to their discretion of course. Bah.
And the threat of that additional longer hold can be used to coerce consent to a ‘voluntary’ admission. :/
I had a different experience. The hospital became a safe space to explore issues and to get away from the world. An oasis in life. Going home was the hard part. I’m guessing that’s the anxiety Ruth is feeling.
You aren’t alone in that one, and it’s a fully sensible reaction.
That’s what I took from it too. In the hospital, Ruth doesn’t have to worry about anything but sorting out her issues. Back in tbe dorms, she’ll have to worry about classes, eating, not drinking, and everyone else’s judgement again and she’s not sure if she’s ready for that. Maybe this will encourage her to get professional counceling; self-medication and internalizing everything only caused a misery feedback loop.
The hospital is generally a terrible experience. But depending what’s going on in the world outside (or inside your head), it can be a safe place to regroup.
That said, my shrink asked me yesterday if I should go there, and I said hell no. I try to save it for the biggest emergencies. And even with that philosophy, I’ve been there at least 10 times. Sorry for rambling. Been a weird few days.
what the fuck is that
They call it Ruth. Learn to fear it.
Funniest comment tree ever.
She’s gnawing her own lip because she hasn’t had anyone to eat for days.
Except for the rest of the support group of course, but that’s hardly breakfast.
And all of the pudding they’ve been supplying her, but they ran out two days ago.
I must admit, this conveys a lot of emotion – fear, frustration, and concern – without a single word. It reminds me of how I felt after my impromptu trip to see my grandmother, when I felt reality about to hit me.
Also, this is clearly October 20XX. 😛
We sure it’s not 21XX? Between medical advances extending Willis’s possible lifespan and how slow this comic is progressing…
It’s 20X6, of course.
Yep, the comic has gone so slowly that 100 years of medical advances have passed since Ruth entered the hospital. It all equates to one big, blue, beeping screen over her head. Which is the only thing left working, thanks to the apocalypse and all that.
Alternatively – “Good evening, Ruth. Today is YOUR DOOM.” To be honest, though, that could be either funny and tragic, considering her state of mind.
Oof.
Uh. how modern.
Last July, I was hospitalized for three days following an aborted attempt on my own life, followed immediately by an attempt to cut all ties with my family and render myself homeless.
I’m glad to see Ruth getting help, and that she has friendly doctors and group therapy, and that she’s allowed visitors. I’m thrilled to see that she’s been made aware of when she’s allowed to leave. And I can only assume that whatever medications are listed are correct based on the available data, but I feel confident in that assumption, because this place seems to have been good for Ruth so far.
All the same, none of this lined up with my own experiences. Which isn’t to say it had to. (Or even that it’d make sense to–Ruth was, to put it mildly, far more passive about this than I was.) Just that, while I am incredibly glad Ruth’s getting help–I don’t know if I could’ve handled it if her condition deteriorated these past six months–I also can’t help but be a little jealous, and feel a little strange about what I’m seeing.
I also can’t decide whether having a giant screen displaying my medical data would’ve made me more or less depressed over the course of those three days. I suppose it would’ve been better than the screen I had in my room, which was consistently blank, a cruel reminder of all the TV I could be watching if I hadn’t tried to kill myself.
I hope you’re doing a lot better than you were. Judging by the million places my sister’s been, inpatient psychiatric care has a large range of quality.
I’m glad you’re still here, and I hope you’re in a better place now. *hugs*
That jealousy? I totally understand.
But the best thing you can do for yourself is to not ruminate on it. Rumination kills. I mean it.
It is normal to feel that way. I don’t think that anyone who has been there didn’t feel a little strange about her story. It hits me in weird ways too.
Also, don’t kick your own ass for what happened. You were in a bad place and needed help. Maybe you needed meds or different meds. Maybe you needed therapy. Maybe you were going to therapy but lying to them. Whatever the case, you are doing better now.
My OD would have succeeded if not for dumb luck of a friend finding out. That time I was lying to my therapist about how bad I was and not telling anybody that the med that made me less depressed (cymbolta I think is how it’s spelled) also somehow made me extremely suicidal. Between going off one med cold turkey, going on a new one, and the side effects of the stuff that did absorb before I got taken to the ER, I was out of my freaking mind for a while, made no sense, and lost all my friends but 2 (who I am still friends with) with most of them saying I lied about the whole thing (some of my family too). My dad and boyfriend at the time told me if I ever got stupid again they would throw me in a nut house from then on and wash their hands of me which years later after going off my antidepressant because my (now ex) boyfriend wanted kids (turned out to be a lie) led to a very close call where I was barely able to stop myself and call for help. I wouldn’t have gotten that bad if they hadn’t have said what they said, but I did get that bad. Got out that time to my home I had paid the down payment on taken by my ex and me in no head space to fight him. My savings got drained. I lost almost everything. Had to move back in with my dad. I could sit here all day and call myself stupid for what I did, but the point is that I wasn’t in my right mind either of the times these things happened and for a bit afterward. I wasn’t myself. And now I’m okay. After over a year and a half living with my dad I saved up enough to get a nice little apartment and some second hand furniture. The area is nice and my landlord was my friend in grade school and she’s cool with me growing a vegetable garden on my lawn. I talk to the friend who saved my life nearly every day and her husband thinks of me as his sister in law. I got to therapy, take an antidepressant, get outside, and take my dogs on nature walks. I might have acted like a dumbass a couple times, but so do people who get blackout drunk. You just have to accept that you did something you aren’t proud of while in an altered state of mind, move forward, and try to minimize the risk of it ever happening again.
A day late, but in case you come back and check, that was a metric ton of work you did, thank you for sharing, and congratulations on your rad progress. Best of luck for continued recovery 🙂
Laying in the after glow, I only want to learn what you know,
But now you’re leaving…
How many hearts must you break? How many calls must I make?
But now you’re leaving…
In this world, all that I choose has come unbearable
But love is in your touch–Ooh, it’s killing me so much
Only When You Leave/I need to love you
And when the action has all gone
I’m just a little fool enough to need you
Fool enough too long
Only When You Leave, you’ll leave in danger
Oh, I’ll make sure that you pay
So give a little passion to a stranger
And take this soul away–Spandau Ballet
“oh, great, that’s… just what I want.”
Ugh. That feeling where you can’t wait to get out and be able to do things like take a shower without supervision, but you know the reality you’ve been neglecting for so long is waiting to punch you in the face the moment you leave.
And that feeling once you realize you’ve somehow pushed through the anticipated punch and that it indeed does get better.
Nice, obscuring the date.
The whole strip feels really sci-fi-ish.
We actually do know the date (from extrapolation from WoG as to when certain chapters are set). It’s October 5th.
Roughly speaking, yeah. Somewhere around there.
That said, it might not be that exact date, as that would – if this were ‘our world’ – limit the date to a handful of years.
It can’t be the 5th, because the year is ‘now’, meaning it’s either Oct 2016 or Oct 2017, and neither of them was the 5th of October was/will be Tuesday. The last Tuesday Oct 5 was 2010, and the next is 2021. (Then 2027, 2032, 2038, and 2049…then nothing until past 2050.)
The way I view it, the setting is always “now”, but the dates do not necessarily line up to the days those dates correspond to in whatever the current year is, though it has the corresponding contemporary cultural phenomena. It’s not as if the exact year isn’t somewhat inherently ambiguous as well – does the in-comic year correspond to the current academic or calendar year?
I dunno, that argument seems pretty week.
You’re overcomplicating it. It’s Tuesday, October 5, 2016 (or Tuesday, October 5, 2017, if you prefer, but I generally round to the nearest). The fact that neither October 5, 2016, nor October 5, 2017 are tuesdays in the real world is irrelevant to the matter.
No, it isn’t irrelevant, and neither is the fact he quite obviously does not give actual specific dates.
Well we know it can’t be 2053 because there were no Tuesdays in that October.
Well, you’ve convinced me.
In the year 2525 …
Needs the Star Trek infirmary beep and the holo-doctor.
If hospitals are this nice, I’ll go for my chronic heavy-onset depression.
She’ll be able to leave tomorrow… but is she be ready to leave?
Surely they’re screening for that.
What an ominous thing to have hanging over her head…
Literally.
Wow, that screen would be a major HIPPA violation! AND the Sword of Damocles!
That screen is really nothing more than a high-tech version of the old-time charts we used to see hanging off the foot of a hospital bed. How is that a HIPPA violation? Just because a visitor could see certain information (such as what meds she is on?) Hell, if she was on an IV drip a visitor could see the label on the plastic baggie too; is the hospital supposed to mask that in the name of HIPPA too?
Yeah, pretty much. I work on a locked inpatient mental health ward. No last names are visible anywhere; all computer monitors must be in the office where no visitors can see them. The medical field takes HIPPA VERY seriously nowadays. And the old time charts hanging at the end of the bed? Not something you see very much anymore. There ARE computer monitors in exam rooms, ERs, etc, but they go to locked screensaver mode very quickly. And chances are good that the IV drip bags will have the patient’s ID number, but NOT their name.
I can’t speak for everywhere in the US, but every IV I saw in the last dozen years of my mom’s life when she spent quite a bit of time in and out of hospitals and related facilities* between ’97 and ’09 had two barcodes (presumably one identifying what it was and another identifying who it was supposed to be hooked to) and otherwise had no identifying info on it. The same was true for every other med I saw administered. Charts and the like, even for many primary care physicians, have been entirely digital since around ’05. Hell, I haven’t even seen a written prescription when I’ve been sick in near a decade as that’s entirely digital now too.
*Off topic note here, my experience with that and adding up what the costs would have been sans insurance, ie several million dollars of which we ended up paying around the cost of a new car, is what lead to my own particular views on the need for health care industry reform and insurance industry reform (especially the later, as they are a major driver for the costs and often the exact same people and companies earn their living from all of medical PLI, consumer medical insurance and life insurance coverage).
Ruth is sad because she can’t read her TV screen from that angle
Wouldn’t this monitor be facing the door, so that anyone walking past the room would be able to read it if the door was open? It seems like this monitor is placed to be easily read by everyone except Ruth herself.
Or maybe the placed the Ruth there to protect the nice new flatscreen.
She barely survived in here. Now she has to go out there again. 🙁
Noir Dumbing of Age
Narrator: While Joyce and Robin move on (we’ll return to them later) Kyle faces his chosen enemy.
Xavier: We are not so different, we both work under as master who is far from perfect.
Kyle: I wouldn’t call her my master, boss is more appropriate here.
Xavier: My master fails to consider perspective, he tends to think everyone will blindly follow him.
Kyle: Than why are you helping him?
Xavier: I do not truly know, perhaps some stupid loyalty ingrained into me from birth, to the man who raised me as a son. But I wish to warn you, Reginald plans to kill himself as soon as your friends enter his room. The appearance that Americans have murdered the King’s son will start a war between our two countries.
Kyle: I have to warn them.
Xavier: To do that you will have to go through me, and that will be impossible.
Kyle: Can’t I just text them?
Xavier: This floor has been redesigned to not allow for the use of any cellular data or products. I estimate you have roughly two minutes seconds until Joyce and Robin reach the door of my Duke.
Kyle: (checks his phone) damn your right.
Narrator: Xavier rushes forward and punches a right hook at the side of Kyle’s head. Kyle ducks and uses an uppercut, hitting the underside of Xavier’s chin. They both jump back and Xavier cracks his neck.
Xavier: Hmmm, it seems we are both disivantaged in this fight, you’re too fast for me to hit and your hits won’t harm me.
Kyle: All your doing is trying to distract me, I don’t have to fight you.
Xavier: Heh.
Narrator: Kyle runs at Xavier as fast as he can, Xavier studies his movements to see where he will go.
Xavier: (thinking) this hallway is narrow, and I am big, but he could go either to my left, my right, through my legs or above me somehow. All I have to do is block him, after that even if he somehow defeats me, he will have no time to stop his allies.
Narrator: Kyle runs at him full force.
Xavier: Here he comes…
Narrator: Kyle jumps up and punches Xavier in the face as hard as he can, causing him to fall over.
Xavier: (lifts his head slightly) H..how..
Kyle: I had a lot of pent up rage from working for an idiot all these years. Thanks for the information.
Kyle: (thinking) one minute.
This strip fills me with foreboding.
But it helps to imagine that when they’re actually examining her, the screen flips to a Star-Trek type vital-systems display. One of the lines is; “Life force”.
I’m picturing this.
Nonono. It’s “Life warp”. “Life force” is star-wars style.
Is there perhaps room for a femur tracker.
Just in case she… yaknow… acquires more than the standard number.
bomp… bomp… bomp… bomp…
“Well I don’t know, Jim. My usual prescription is a shot of good ol’ Kentucky bourbon. But this patient can’t process that medicine in any beneficial way…”
Something like this?
I’m still stunned by how her eyes are so wide and opened all the way.
I feel a bit fucked up…I first read it as “you will be able to live tommorow” then saw her face of disappointment. Maybe I shouldn’t stay up til 3 in the morning to read awesome comics
These feels, they make all the sense and are relatable.
Speaking as someone who has been through something a little like this, I can understand the look on Ruth’s face in the last panel. For the last few days she has been removed from all personal responsibility because someone else was making her decisions for her. Now that she is being told she may be able to leave and by inference start assuming some of her old life again, there is a certain amount of hesitancy and uncertainty on her part. As Scarlett O’Hara said, “Tomorrow is another day”, but she was looking on it as an opportunity to start to make things better; for Ruth, it’s more a case of “what new troubles will tomorrow bring?”
And considering why Ruth was admitted in the first place (alcohol abuse, just in case you forgot), I suspect that the only place she is going is from the hospital room to a treatment center — possibly in another part of the same hospital — for the 30-day inpatient program. First you need to dry out and become stable and rational again; then they try to get you to stop your self-destructive behavior.
As far as I know she didn’t go in for alcohol abuse. She went in because she was severely depressed and a suicide risk. I don’t think they found any alcohol on her.
She was in a catatonic state when she was committed. I don’t know if it was ever clear wether alcohol was involved involved or not.
I do hope she is released to another treatment program but is that a realistic hope given the US system of medical cost and insurances?
A blood test would confirm she’s had a lot of alcohol – and they probably ran one to make sure she didn’t take anything.
I don’t think she’d been drinking. She’d been on the wagon to avoid the blackmail and had shown all her usual detoxing signs. Nor were there the empty bottles that are the usual indications of her drinking enough to pass out.
I think it was just suicidal depression. I don’t think alcohol stays in the blood long enough to detect last week’s binge. OTOH, she may have told them about the drinking.
Detox can take from a week to then days. It’s Tuesday and her detox would have begun on Friday. While it’s true that a blood test wouldn’t show it (though a urine test would – again, possible if they were worried she took something) she’d probably still have detox symptoms.
TEN days dammit.
Now, hold on. Semesters usually start in late August or early September. Are you meaning to tell me that two months max have gone by since the start of this Freaking comic?
Yes.
Uh huh.
Yes. Each book takes about a year IRL and covers a week of comic time.
Soon it will be always winter, but it never gets till Christmas.
Verily.
Yep. It’s Tuesday of Week 6, the 38th day since Move-In Day.
“It looks like you can leave tomorrow!” — I don’t think that anyone or anything has ever communicated to Ruth news as terrifying as this! She’s going to have to leave! She’s going to have to face the outside world again!
This hospital has a psych ward with people who care, private rooms, the ability for visitors to see the patient without a billion hoops, new technology, and an environment that isn’t heavily religious if at all… I didn’t even realize all those things were a possibility all at once! The last place I went to two years ago (depression got bad after a bunch of crap happened while off antidepressants, so I was very close to taking my own life) was so Christian centric that it was maddening and me not knowing I could leave after 72 was stuck there for 2 weeks. I eventually pretended to be Christian so I could get out and a few weeks later tattooed an atheist symbol on my leg. I’m all for religion, but it’s not for me much less having my treatment centered around it and have tiny luxuries taken away when I don’t go to church. If I ever have to go in one of those places again, I hope it’s like this.
All it needs is the Star Trek beep thing and the future will almost be here!
(That’s if Trump, May or Putin doesn’t blow it up first.)
Sorry, that comment wasn’t meant to be there.
Before the UK sells off the NHS, nearly all hospitals here are non-religious with a nice supply of modern tech.
The downside is that the Government is starving them of funds and the mortality rate is rising.
but does she feel shes ready to leave?
Seeing her without her glasses makes her look more vulnerable. (In addition to all the things we know about her in the hospital, i.e. no shoelaces.)
Yep. Been there.
Ha. When I was in the hospital they were allergic to communicating with the patients. The doctors (who were very overworked, to be fair) would talk to you for about fifteen minutes a day. They wouldn’t say anything about when you could go home, except ‘not today’, and in one case ‘maybe, I need to talk to your social worker’ only for her to tell me later he’d left without doing so. In addition to that, they didn’t listen to me when I had an (apparently very common!) bad reaction to the medication they put me on, and my psychiatrist had to tell me what was going on, to discontinue it right away, and put it down as a medicine I can’t take. (I tried to talk about my symptoms during the 15s a day the doctor had to meet, and he said they only thing that would concern him is if I had a rash. Now, three separate medical professionals I saw after that even, two of the doctors, confirmed that a rash is possible, but far from the only possible or well known serious reaction to that medicine.)
It was a very stressful environment to try to recover in. Strange places make me anxious. Strange people make me anxious. Feeling trapped makes me anxious. Having all my things taken makes me anxious. Receiving almost no communication makes me anxious. The only people who were comforting were the orderlies, since the orderlies actually saw us frequently, they were understanding and reassuring. For the most part they were wonderful, patient, and understanding of the fear I experienced.
On top of that, I have a medication that I am supposed to take daily that the hospital straight up forgot to give me for three days, and I had to ask the nurses what was up for anyone to even remember.
My psychiatrist has sense said I ended up in the worst local facility, so I guess the lesson is hopefully the others in the area are substantially better?
Oh, and if anyone is worried about me, please rest assured that despite the dire warnings from the president of the united states, Sweden is in fact perfectly fine and at the moment rather baffled as to what he might have been talking about.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/19/world/europe/last-night-in-sweden-trumps-remark-baffles-a-nation.html
(In fact, the most important national news this weekend has to do with 87 year old singer-songwriter Owe Törnqvist going to the semifinal of Melodifestivalen. Google him, he’s awesome).
Oh no, Owe almost didn’t make it into the semifinals? No wonder Trump was so worried. That is clearly a national disaster!
I know, right. Will no one think of the OOOOOOWE????
Ah, the nervousness of something finally helping with the maelstrom in your head ending and worrying this will mean all the bad will come back.
But Ruth will be okay, it seems like the programs are the only things keeping you holding on, but a good program leaves you with a hell of a lot of coping strategies to face the darkness with and more importantly the reminder that you are not broken and the disease is not actually stronger than you. And most importantly of all, knowing that there’s a place she can go if it all becomes too intense again.
Things are still going to be tough, she’s still going to struggle with depression and she’s got a whole mess of fallout to clean up, but she’s going in with more effective help than she’s ever had in her life. And I think she’ll be able to deal with it better than she has so far.
Also, I’m wondering what went down with Billie and her therapist. Wasn’t she supposed to see someone during this day? Or will that be tomorrow?
Billie never gave us a date, only that it’s sometime this week and every week for the foreseeable future.
Also *appropriate gesture of support* for all those who’ve been through in-patient. I’m glad you are all still here and your suicide attempts were not completed. You are all valued and loved and you matter even if the world and your brain try and convince you otherwise.
Knowing there are folks like you out there makes holding on that much easier.
I’ve been through what Ruth has been through at that age.
So if it’s october, will the cast be celebrating Halloween?
(I’m inclined to think Joyce isn’t allowed but I once had a really christian neighbor who dressed up as the virgin mary and handed out bible verses and crap lollypops instead of going trick or treating so I suppose some fundamentalists do celebrate it)
It probably depends on the flavor of fundamentalism she was in. For example, my grandma isn’t a fundie, she’s just your typical Southern Christian. But she hated Halloween, called it “the Devil’s birthday” and always acted disappointed if I told her I celebrated it. Even if I was just a little kid trick or treating. I eventually learned to lie to her because otherwise I’d get a long lecture about how evil Halloween was.
On this timescale, we still have months if not years before we get to see what adorkable costumes Dina and Becky will have :/
That´s pretty much a rude, blank-less (“stale”) way to notice a patient that´s in for leave. Ayup. Go up to the floor, f***s. Tell that in person, to the face.
P.D.
Never been a fan of how technological “head-ups” are wriggling into the common scenery of our lives, more so with the abundance of “visual noise” we have already. Gives a certain, un-definite feeling of uneasiness. Un-healthy, perhaps, in some places. But that´s just my opinion.
It is entirely possible that they did tell her to her face earlier in the day. But it is night now, and the screen is probably just a reminder so she doesn’t forget and so that she knows which day it is (I lose track of days easily because of my sleeping schedule).
OTOH, in addition to what Sam said, I’d rather just know as soon as possible, even if it’s a “rude” way, rather than waiting until the doctor has a chance to talk to me – which in my fairly limited experience could be hours.
In this case though, since Ruth’s likely been on a 72 hour emergency hold, this has probably been scheduled from early on. Unless something drastic happened, the release wouldn’t have changed.
Hospitals in different regions can be quite different. Where I live the hospitals don’t have visiting hours. So long as you aren’t disturbing the patients. Does that mean you can sit by a friends bed side while they sleep through the night. Yes, in the case of family and long term hospital stays they may even set up a cot.
So it always confuses me in fiction when someone has to leave because visiting hours are over.
This varies from hospital to hospital but also between the wards. The Behavioral wards tend to have pretty strict visiting rules.
Greetings, Citizen Ruth-R-LSS-2! You have been selected as a Troubleshooter volunteer!
Clone number is a nice touch.
It’d be Walk-R-TON-3, I guess.
Yeah, Ruth-R-LSS-1 acted with integrity and without regrets. Pretty much guaranteed clone replacement no matter what the circumstances.
The question remains whether Ruth feels ready to leave the Hospital and where she’ll go when she does. I know she has no desire to go back home, that place is toxic, and is partially responsible for creating the Ruthless Ruth we all know and love and led to this mess in the first place.
Will she go back to College? I’m not sure if she can What about her and Billie? Where”s that gonna go? Ifshee does go back how are the others going to react? She won’t be R.A. anymore,that’s a given, and if she’s able to, will she want to go back?
As of this moment, she’s still RA and she still has her room. Unless she’s been fired and kicked out off-panel, she can head right back to the dorm. I expect there’s a talk with Chloe (and higher ups?) in near future.
The R.M. (I forget her name for the moment) showed up at the Hospital afew comics back and made it clear she was no longer R.A., but there was no indication that she’d been kicked out of the College unless that was done off-panel
Actually, Chloe explicitly stated that no decision had been made
As someone that was bullied in high school to the point of attempted suicide (I was weak both physically and mentally) I have zero sympathy for Ruth
Having said that I hope she gets better and that if/when she comes back she isn’t the RA
But if you have experienced something similar to Ruth won’t you actually have sympathy for what she is feeling? Is what you are feeling… disdain for how she is handling it? Or pissed off that Ruth a bully? I’m not sure your meaning came through so well through the interwebs.
Sorry about that, I was bullied so I have no sympathy for Ruth since she was a bully
I want Ruth to get better but I don’t want her back in the RA position
See, now I want to argue that she wasn’t really a bully. Everything she did was for their own good, and she never actually pulled out anyone’s thighs or hit anyone outside of Billie, but that was consensual sex.
She threatened physical violence: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/agreements/
and then goaded Billie into a fight she knew she’d win to back her claims:
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/punch/
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/01-move-in-day/pun/
There are numerous instances of her making negative references to Billies weight
She broke into Billies room at will and destroyed her personal property
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/03-men-are-from-beck-women-are-from-clark/chaperone/
More violence: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/04-the-bechdel-test/dragon/
Not sure what you call this but its not good: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2012/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/will/
This: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/stability/
leading to sexual assault: http://www.dumbingofage.com/2013/comic/book-3/01-if-the-shoes-split/recalculating/
Also not forgetting about letting everyone know that the higher ups think shes great so no point in complaining to them about her because they won’t be believed
Not I appreciate you have a different point of view and that’s cool but to me Ruth is a bully
Got a reply to you (its waiting moderation) with links to the comics where Ruth threatens violence, commits acts of violence, breaks into Billies room and steals her uniform and then starts to destroy it and then committing sexual assault on Billie (it was unwanted at the time)
I feel like that was closer to her and Billie’s idea of seduction than bullying. I’m sure Ruth would have noticed if it were making Billie say, Sarah/Radiah levels of uncomfortable and stopped. They are both self-sabotaging people who *do* know how to read tone.
But I’m not trying to invalidate your feelings. If it made you uncomfortable it made you uncomfortable. I’m just saying that from my perspective, it seemed like that was just the type of people they are, and that’s how they communicate. Ruth and Billie are direct and physical people. They value aggressively clear communication, and although it looks like physical assault, they seem to be just chatting. Aggressively chatting.
I also feel obligated to add that if you were bullied, it’s not your fault for being physically and mentally weak, it’s the fault of assholes for being insecure assholes. You being weak probably had nothing to do with it.
Ruth was attracted to Billie but went about pursuing her in completely the wrong way, Ruth undermined Billie, made Billie feel worthless, made her feel weak and used force on her to get her way, when Ruth kissed Billie it was with Ruths forearm up against Billies chest and there is no way anyone could think that’s what Billie wanted, at that time
Make someone feel insecure so they feel grateful that you’re even bothering to pay them attention, like a treat ’em mean keep ’em keen kind of thing
That’s kind of you to say so and I appreciate it but its true that being weak physically (went to an all boys high school) made me a target but being weak emotionally and mentally is what made the bullying continue, that’s only for me of course
I’m not suggesting in the slightest that anyone else is weak for being bullied
Yeah, I’m a lot more sympathetic to Ruth than chris73 is, but there’s no way that early interaction was cool – breaking into Billie’s room to steal and cut up her stuff?
Billie was pretty screwed up by that early on, easily to Sarah/Raidah level or beyond. And Ruth wasn’t stopping.
Once they formed the SLSP and started fake fighting to keep other people in the dark, that was a turn on for both of them, but the early stuff was not flirting for Billie. Apparently for Ruth.
Not to be a contrarian, but I would argue that hoping she gets better is actually showing a non-zero amount of sympathy, or at the very least, compassion.
You don’t have to like her or want her to get the second chance she’s hoping for to feel empathy for her as a human being. Hoping she won’t suffer further is an understandable limit to your sympathies.
In any case, I’m glad that attempt wasn’t successful. Nobody deserves to be driven to that.
That’s something I don’t mind being proven wrong on so its all good
Yep, that’s how the cycle of abuse goes sometimes.
For those who are confused as to how much time has actually passed by, here http://walkypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Dumbing_of_Age_Timeline is what the wiki has been able to figure out of the timeline. (Willis can you confirm some of those dates?)
This http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/healthcenter/ is the first strip where she is in the health center, which is on Sunday according to the wiki’s timeline. She’s been there 3 days.
Billie says she will get “talked at” http://www.dumbingofage.com/2016/comic/book-6/04-it-all-returns/stock/) once a week. So she hasn’t gone to therapy yet and is becoming increasingly violent.
Sorry I don’t know how to properly format the links! Get well soon Ruth!
Has it really taken 7 years for us to progress less than two months in this comic?
Yes! check out what the wiki http://walkypedia.wikia.com/wiki/Dumbing_of_Age_Timeline has been able to figure out of the timeline so far.
welcome to webcomics 😛
Well-done. I’ve gone from hating her to wanting to give her a hug.
Yeah. She’s super cute with Joyce-sized eyes. Before she was just kinda… Billie’s depressed secret girlfriend. Now she’s more of a character in my mind. Well played Willis.
I know that feel Ruth
Same
So tomorrow in the Dumbiverse will equate to 6 months to a year in real time
Hi, Willis! I just binge-read your webcomic in a few days and Ruth’s story has kinda convinced me that I need to talk about my depression with friends and stop trying to hide it. And maybe get more help than I’m already getting. So… yay?
Anyways, this is a wonderful story. Thanks for being awesome.
“Comic Sans?! I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die…”