...the fuck?

[impy]

So. You might or might not recall that three years ago I found out that one of my coworkers died a couple of days after they didn't show up for their shift. It was almost impressive how out of the loop I was on the news to the degree I didn't think I could've been more more out of the loop while still knowing he'd died.


So imagine my surprise when his replacement asks me, out of the blue, if I ever talked to E. I said yes, cautiously, since it's not like E and I chatted a lot, but we'd chat about as much as T and I do now. T said something else and somehow we got onto how out of the loop I was on E's death, and how I didn't even really find out until someone else mentioned it at the end of one of my shifts and what a shock it was.
T: Oh, the fact that he died or that he committed suicide?

I swear to god, there was an actual record scratch in my brain at that. The world tilted sideways and everything ceased to properly calculate for awhile.
me: W-what? He what? Suicide?

T either nods or says yes, he didn't know until this year about the suicide part and I pointed out that well, he found out before I did since I was just learning it right then and there.


It took an exceptional amount of self control not to demand more answers right then and there, but he was on his way to his break and also some part of my badly malfunctioning brain realized that if he thought I already knew* about E's suicide, him asking about E to begin with was kind of a warning sign maybe.


It took awhile for that part to fully kick in, btw, because basically I felt like someone had thrown me back to the morning I found out E died, only worse. Part of me wishes I'd actually asked A if I could just go sit down and process shit but ha, joke's on me, I don't process a goddamn thing when I should. Also, T was in the breakroom and I'm not having a mental breakdown on someone else's break. Plus it's good I waited because I gather he dropped and broke a bottle of hot sauce and tried to clean it up but he missed a few pieces... including on the chair I normally sit on for my break. Not fun.

Soooooo... I spiraled for awhile until I told myself I could ask him more about it after my shift ended, if there wasn't anyone in pharmacy. There wasn't and I didn't learn a lot more. I think I'd picked up that the cops couldn't break down the door without permission (the fuck) so they had to wait for his brother to drive up from FL and he opened the door to find E on the couch. Couch was new info, as was his brother being the one to find him. But I'm still not really sure when/if it was ever confirmed a suicide or if that's just the assumption going around. At the time we all thought maybe he'd (ironically) mixed meds he shouldn't have, especially since he had just been pretty sick with the flu or some other ick not too long before his death.


I probably could have asked how anyone knew it was suicide (because it's entirely possible that it's a definite thing) but I figured I had about one more big question before someone else came up or T decided that was enough sharing, so I asked why he brought E up to begin with.

And it's because T's depressed. :/ He and the other overnight pharmacist were dating and T says he did something to fuck it up and now things are bad. Which was the first time either pharmacist confirmed they were dating to me but I already knew because A and Z both let it slip, multiple times, and also no one shows up to their job that much on their time off unless they're visiting someone important. I also knew that there'd been trouble in paradise a couple of times (one was decidedly dumb and involved the dog having an accident and the other involved T spending the night at his female best friend's place. Which could be bad but could also be nothing, depending) but I thought they'd moved beyond the incidents I knew about, so I wonder if there was something else at play or if I'm just playing catch up a little slower than I realized. In any case, I tried to let him know people care about him. And I also offered him my friendship special, wherein I offer to break someone's kneecaps for you if you need it. This was prior to realizing the person I was potentially offering to break was T or the other pharmacist. Oops.

So now I'm worried about T and still definitely off-kilter concerning E's death. The fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Have I just been the only one out of the loop for a good chunk of this time, or is it a case of people just assuming shit and now the assumptions have become 'fact'?