all_inclusive | support group one: no one left behind

When: Friday 6:00 p.m.
Where: Attic Observatory
What: Community Support Group

As Nick promised on his open advertisements, there are chairs and coffee in the Attic Observatory. There's even a table laden with what food products Nick and co could round up.

The process of setting up for a group meeting felt enough like Boulder that Nick took a short break to lean, palms first, against a wall. It was a short, easily displaced moment, and he has no intention of lingering on it.

This is about everyone, one way or another. For all the people stuck here, and everyone new, and all those in-between. Nick left the purpose of the group intentionally vague. In the future, he assumes it'll have to be narrowed down and split up for the sake of different needs, but for this first coming together of the displaced in any non-official capacity he wants it to be open for everyone. It wouldn't be right, otherwise.

So all newcomers will find Nick by the attic observatory door, nursing a cup of black coffee next to a clearly printed sign:

Hi, I'm Nick. Welcome to the first Nexus Hotel Support Group. Whatever your problem, we'll listen. Help yourself to coffee and food.

Underneath the words, Nick has drawn and crossed out a mouth and ear, leaving an arrow pointed at himself. His pad of paper and pen are obvious on his lap.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I consider my attendance here a favor to Nick, who has gone out of his way to help me acclimate to this place and who has been nothing but kind to me, a man who by all rights likely appears to actually be losing his mind. I am here under duress, but even I have enough manners to keep my mouth shut and my misgivings mostly to myself.

I take a cup of coffee and sit down. I don't drink from the cup, just feel its warmth between my hands. It's another way to feel alive, to remind myself that this is real. Everything else is surreal, down to the fact that the only clothes I've been able to procure are a pair of pajamas. While a step up from the clothing I arrived in, they're covered in illustrations of monkeys eating bananas. Not exactly my preferred style.

I don't intend to speak; I don't trust my own words, first off, and I'd much rather observe everyone else's contributions. Everyone here seems so friendly, though, so it's only a matter of time until someone tries to engage me in conversation.

Nick makes the first move, after waiting at the door to greet a few more people and let Will get acclimated. He approaches Will with the look of a man biting the inside of his cheek to keep from inappropriate laughter, but the amused sympathy in his eyes is obvious--it's the humor of the displaced.

We need to get you new clothes. Nick settles down next to Will and passes him the note, raking his eyes over the cheerfully patterned pajamas. Unless you dig monkeys. How've you been?

He's glad to see Will here. After himself and Larry, he thinks Will is one of the people who needs this thing the most, even if Nick himself isn't sure what he's doing. They never tried something like this in Boulder, not formally. But Nick remembers all the quiet little groups that would form in the library or the park, clustered in people's houses. People need each other. It's a piece of knowledge he came into late in life.

I am secretly pleased with myself that I can manage to hold the cup of coffee without worrying that the tremble in my hands is going to spill it everywhere. It's progress, and I suppose I have to see the positive in something, given how dire the rest of the situation is.

"I've been better," I say after reading Nick's note and turning to face him. "I've also been worse, much worse," I add after considering things. All told, I think being framed for murders and incarcerated is much higher on some sort of scale of awful than just being stuck in a mysterious hotel and/or an extended delusion.

I smile wryly and cast a glance down to my clothing. "The monkeys, I could do without, but they don't sell much other than pajamas here, and I can't seem to leave." That's something that makes this place more fascinating, that some of us appear to be stuck here while others can come and go at will, and it's a fatal flaw in my grand plan to prove my innocence back home.

Yeah. That's our problem. I might have to ask someone to shop for us. Nick tugs at his own wrinkled clothes, the same he greeted Will in the first time. He doesn't actually mind wearing the same thing for days or weeks on end--he can wash it whenever he wants here, which is nice--but it's not ideal, either.

He sips his coffee and squints down at the cup, then decides to be honest, pinning it between his knees and writing: I was hoping I'd see you. No offense. Even if you've had worse.

He does refrain from asking what that worse is, exactly, because he thinks that's sort of missing the point of an open discussion.

The guy was wearing monkey pajamas, though by Martha's guess from his body language, he would have preferred something else, rather than turning up in public in sleepwear. (This was a look you saw quite a bit of in the hospital.) The monkeys were cute, though, adorable, and she knew far better than to judge people on what they were wearing.

She was a little short on talking points, admittedly, besides 'nice pajamas', so she tried something else. "The doughnuts are pretty good," she said, which was not her most eloquent idea, but whatever. "At least twelve-step meeting quality."

"Hm." I look down at the coffee in my hands, then over in the woman's direction. I try hard, so hard, to not look too close, to not determine what makes her tick before she shares it. But still. Not afraid to start conversation, but good enough to not start it out with something truthful and pointed, like you look like you've been run over by a truck. An acquired skill.

"As long as I'm not going to have to stand before everyone and admit my wrongs," I say, words punctuated with a bitter laugh.

My reaction isn't appropriate, but it's too late to take it back. I sincerely hope everyone here just blames me on the stress of being here, rather than anything else more sinister.

Martha was used to people looking at her like they were trying not to be too curious. It was sort of part and parcel with the kind of travel she'd been up to, not all that long ago, and she'd had far worse leveled at her. (Particularly, to be honest, in the places and times where the locals didn't either anticipate seeing a human or were humans backwards enough that a black woman with a medical degree was like a goddamn unicorn. Those particular memories still stung.)

This man's expression wasn't like that, though, and Martha smiled a little more, noting in response, "If that's what we're doing here then I'm going to be running for the door. We'd be here all night." His laugh was just a little too bitter. Clearly there were layers under the monkey pajamas, and she was not quite able to talk herself out of her own curiosity.

"Oh, good," I say, feeling actually, honestly relieved that the first new person I've met at this meeting isn't automatically expecting me to want to share my feelings. "I was a little worried that this was going to turn into group therapy, so we can talk about how being at the Nexus makes us feel." It's a little hard to keep my disdain for the process out of my voice. For someone as steeped in the psychoanalytic process as I have wound up being, I hate every second of it -- and now, with better reason than most, thanks to my recent experiences. "I don't want to talk about my feelings; I just want to find out where I can get pants that aren't covered in monkeys."

"If I'm being honest with you, that doesn't strike me as Nick's sort of thing," said Martha. "Not to mention that, being English, I don't really do the talking about my feelings with strangers bit. Ever." She grinned wryly at Monkey Pajama Man to indicate that it was indeed a self-deprecating joke. Odd, though, that he was so against the feelings bit; Americans tended to splodge theirs all over the place, in her experience.

"But unfortunately, I can't really provide you with intel regarding your--" she nearly echoed pants, felt her cheeks heat, and instead gestured towards the clothing in question. "The only reason I've got anything is because I'd been on my way home from Oxford Circus."

support group one: no one left behind

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