support group one: no one left behind

[hearnospeakno]

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.

Comments

[hearnospeakno]

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.

[scaleshavefallen]

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.

[hearnospeakno]

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.