Chapter Text
Three bodies, mutilated post-mortem, lobotomies pro-mortem, all caucasian female, cancer patients.
Clouds, heavy rain, and wind.
He tried to account for everything around him as a desperate grasp on grounding himself, but Will could feel himself slipping. He knew he lost time, so he had started to pick a pattern of what he felt before he did to try and control where he was when he lost time. But it didn’t help when he was in the middle of looking over a crime scene when Jack over his shoulder.
Zeller looked up from one of the bodies, looking between Will and Jack and talking about something that Will couldn’t hear, or maybe just wasn’t focusing hard enough to listen, over the sound of the rain and harsh wind. He kept his attention on the bodies that were being bagged up to be taken out of the weather.
Trying to come off as focusing on the bodies obviously didn’t work. Jack gave him a small nudge in the shoulder and called his name, but Will didn’t hear it. The bodies weren’t where his eyes were looking anymore. They were in a car now and being carried to the FBI facility. Will was just staring at what was left of the crime scene, which wasn’t much.
“Will, we’re going in now.”
Will blinked and suddenly he felt warm. He blinked a few more times and shook his head as he looked around. He could feel cold wood underneath him, his bed was to his right, his window to his far right. There was scratching at his door, followed by the whimpering and barking from his dogs.
He lost time again. Approximately 6 to 8 hours were lost to travel. The crime scene was in Rockport Massachusetts, and his home was in Wolf Trap Virginia. He drove there and he assumes he drove back. Will instinctively goes to rub at his face, but immediately his arms are filled with pain and he lets out a sharp gasp. His arms drop to his sides and he’s suddenly aware of how sticky the floor is around him.
Will looks down to see if it was just water, but it's too dark in the room, and the puddle he’s sitting in is far too dark. His senses are slowly coming back to him, and much to his dismay as pain starts to build in his wrists and shoulders and the wretched smell of copper invades his nose. The conclusion isn’t hard to get to now. He is sitting in a puddle of blood. Will grimaces from the pain and tries to at least sit up a bit, looking down at his arms. From the gauges in his arms, he can assume the blood is his. At least he won’t have to worry about killing someone while he was traveling back home while disassociating.
But the fact doesn’t soothe him. The pain is catching up, along with the blood loss and he starts to feel woozy. Luckily he hasn’t lost too much blood for him to not stand up after the panic sets in. Will knows he needs to dress the wounds at the very least. He has some bandages and other medical stuff somewhere in the house that he brought with him on fishing trips in case something happened to his dogs or him. Will racks his brain for a moment to try and remember where he left it, then attempts once again to stand up.
He’s lost a lot of blood by now, and by standing up, the already-low-amount of blood in his head is rushed out, and he would’ve fainted if he hadn’t leaned against his bed before it got too bad. After regaining his bearings, Will stumbles to the door and walks down the hall. His dogs quiet down, but are clearly concerned about his wellbeing. He has to raise his arms up out of their reach so they don’t start licking the wounds.
After making it to his desk, he sat down and opened the drawer he remembered to have the bandages. As he unwrapped them, Buster attempted to jump on his lap. With a quick ‘TSK’, all the dogs were sitting and just watching.
Now that they were taken care of, Will could focus on the cuts more closely. The desk he was sitting at had a window in front of it, which lit the room pretty well and gave him a good view of what he’d done to himself. Most of the damage was on his left wrist, where there were probably hundreds of small scratches, dozens of dermis cuts, and a few hypodermis cuts. On his other arm, there were less cuts in general, but there were about three hypodermis cuts and a much, much larger one. Most likely fascia or muscle.
After examining the cuts for a moment, Will got to work with wrapping them up, using tape to try and close some of the deeper cuts before he wrapped them. Staring wasn’t going to help in this situation. There wasn’t much he could do in this situation, actually. It wasn’t like he could go to the hospital and get stitches. They’d stick him in white padded room and Jack would be notified. He’d be taken off the case, lose his job and dogs, forced into a ward, and locked away.
Even after using two rolls of bandages, blood was still starting to soak through. He couldn’t go to the hospital, but Will did need stitches.
He went through his options as he leaned back, giving himself a second to just breathe.
If he went to the hospital, there was a ninety five percent chance Jack would kick him off the case and he’d lose a lot of privileges.
Will could stitch himself up, but he’d need to disinfect everything, and he wasn’t a surgeon and his medical stitching training hadn’t been practiced in… many years. So there was a risk of infection, and with this deep of cuts, that could be fatal.
He could wing it with just bandages, but there was still the giant risk of infection.
Will rubbed his cheek into his shoulder, feeling sticky and gross from blood and sweat. His mind was racing and his dogs were starting to whine again as they picked up on his agitation. Who did he have to go to? Alana? Alana would just tell Jack. Beverely Katz, Jimmy Price, and Brian Zeller weren’t his friends, and again, they’d go to Jack. Everyone that Will knew that could help was connected to Jack in some way. Hannibal was a good option, he had been a surgeon. Though he was associated with Jack too, but… Will was technically his patient. Hannibal couldn’t tell Jack, and probably wouldn’t anyways. The guy was a strange psychiatrist, but Will wasn’t going to complain, especially now that Hannibal was his only option.
Without thinking, he got up, grabbed the keys to his car, and left the house. The drive to Hannibal’s home in Baltimore Maryland was about an hour, and hopefully shorter since it was midnight and no one would be on the road. Even then, there was a high chance he’d bleed out before then. The bandages were already feeling soggy.
He started the car, quickly setting enroute to Hannibal’s home. The car ride is quiet and gives room to think. Eventually his panic melts away enough for Will to realize he should probably call Hannibal. It's late, and the doctor is probably asleep. It’d be rude to not warn him beforehand. Will looks away from the road for a moment to look for his phone, almost worrying that he didn’t bring it with him before he could see it on the front passenger seat. Letting out a sigh of relief, he reached over and dialed Hannibal’s number, looking back at the road as it rang.