A Terrible Result

Merry’s steps grew lighter and he began to hum a happy tune as he neared the house he shared with the others. The sun was still high in the sky, the breeze cool with the scent of flowers borne upon it. He had once more served King Theoden and was now looking forward to an afternoon of chess against Pippin in the beautiful garden.

He entered through the garden gate and immediately, something felt wrong. Merry shook himself. It had to be his imagination.

“Too many memories of Pippin running away down this path,” he thought. “I ought to have used the front door.”

But this reasonable thinking did not chase away the odd feeling.

Merry’s smile faded completely when he walked into the kitchen to find Parsow, Gandalf, Legolas and Gimli all seated in silence at the table.

Gimli was not one given to beating about the bush. “Best sit down, Meriadoc. Young Peregrin is in a bad state and ya should just hear it straight out and get it over with.”

Merry stumbled on weak legs to the nearest vacant chair and fell into it.

“Wh-where are S-Sam and F-Frodo?”

“They are in Peregrin’s room with the Lord Elrond,” Parsow quietly answered.

“L-Lord E . . .” Merry swallowed but the lump that was threatening to choke him didn’t budge. “Lord Elrond?”

“We had to call for him as none of my training prepared me for this. I had read . . .” Parsow paused to settle himself and his voice as best he could. “I had read of this but had never witnessed it. I had no real knowledge of what should, what could, be done. We are . . . Pippin is , most fortunate that Lord Elrond is here.”

“This? You’ve read of this? This what? Has he got some new illness? What . . .”

Merry stopped. For the first time he noticed the opened medicinals jars sitting on the table. He stared open mouthed at them.

“Did Sam or I poison him?” The terrified whisper could barely be heard.

“No, Meriadoc. No.” the wizard laid a gentle hand on the hobbit’s shoulder. “You would be better to say Peregrin poisoned himself.”

Merry looked up questioningly.

“We think he switched other things for the medicinals.” Gandalf continued. “At least, it is to be hoped no one else would have done so for, difficult as it is to think of the lad bringing this upon himself, that doesn’t match the horror of thinking someone else would seek to harm him this way.”

“He put something poisonous in the jars instead?”

Merry was obviously confused as well as frightened.

“No,” Parsow said. “No, Merry. He had no need for poison. Do you remember, Aragorn and I told him, when first we started the medications, that he needed to keep taking them? That it was very dangerous for him to suddenly stop taking them?”

Merry nodded. He knew his cousin better most anyone else in all of Middle-earth and now understood what had happened. “But we were always watching. He couldn’t stop taking them so he substituted something else. That way, Sam and I would think he was taking it.” He sighed heavily. “This isn’t the first time he was too clever for his own good.”

No one spoke for a few moments.

“The question that remains is why?” Legolas sighed.

“Which reason would you like first, Legolas?” Merry asked the surprised Elf.

“Which reason?”

“I can think of several.” Merry began to count off on his fingers. “He was tired of feeling sick to his stomach. It’s hard on a hobbit to not be able to enjoy eating. He said he felt like he was on fire with anger. That’s just not Pippin. Not that he never gets angry, but it is short-lived and over with, then he’s happy again. That medicine gave him bad headaches as well, and no one wants to have a headache all the time.”

Merry paused to look around at his friends. “He felt different in ways that weren’t nice. I think he felt like he didn’t belong any longer. He was, well, no longer our friend but our charge. Someone we spent time with because he needed watching, not because we enjoyed being around him anymore. And he was right to a certain extent.”

Merry looked down at his hands, his fingers wrapping and unwrapping around each other.

“I think he was feeling lonely even though he was rarely alone.”

“And if the medicine went away, perhaps all his other ills would go away as well and he would have his friends back.” Gimli’s gruff voice spoke everyone’s thought.

As though to himself, Merry added, “Pip would have himself back.” Then he stood. “I want to go see him. I need to be with him,” he said as he started around the table for the door.

Gandalf caught Merry by the arm. “Perhaps, Merry, you should find out what to expect first.”

Merry looked startled. That he should need any such warning seemed strange enough, but the look on Gandalf’s face and the tone in his voice were unnerving.

“Come,” the wizard said more gently. “I will walk along with you and do my best to prepare you. If need be, we will wait beside his door until you feel you are ready.”

Several minutes later, it was a pale but determined Merry who walked into Pippin’s room ahead of Gandalf. He wasn’t as prepared as he thought.

Sam was busy doing something with the unresponsive form laying on the bed while Frodo and Elrond looked up from their conversation where they stood at the opposite side of the bed.

Merry strode up beside Sam and froze. It looked as though Sam was putting a nappy on . . .

Merry’s guts twisted within him and he nearly got sick. Pippin lay on his side facing the edge of the bed, naked except for where Sam was finishing up pinning the nappy around his hips. His cousin’s sightless eyes were open, as was his mouth. A small towel had been placed upon the pillow beneath Pippin’s face to sop up his drool and an oil cloth was beneath his hips. Every few seconds, his hands or his whole body would feebly twitch. He would grunt or moan and his eyes would move sluggishly about in their sockets.

“No,” Merry whispered, then louder, “No!”

He backed away. Away from the soiled nappy that lay in a basin on the floor. Away from the dirty cloths and soapy water that had been used to clean his cousin’s own filth off of him. Away from the pale, twitching, drooling parody of Pippin.

Merry backed into a small table against the wall, then fell onto his rump with a thud. He pushed with his feet, still trying to get further away. His eyes were wide with horror and all the color had drained from his face. Finally, unable to move back any more, he brought his hands to his face and wept.

With a nod, Frodo left Elrond.

“Sam, stay here!” he said firmly to his friend. “Stay with Pippin.”

Gandalf had already moved to Merry’s side and was picking him up. Frodo went with them through the connecting door and into Merry’s room, closing it firmly behind him.

Gandalf set Merry down in one of the comfy chairs by the hearth, he sat in the other chair while Frodo pulled a foot stool over to Merry’s chair to be closer to his cousin. Merry had not stopped weeping.

“Th-th-that’s-s n-not P-Pip . . . in,” Merry stuttered and gasped. He moved his hands from his eyes to look at the cousin who had been his older brother during his early childhood and his dearest friend until Pippin had grown enough to be a companion.

“I-it i-isn’t . . . Pip.”

Frodo said nothing, he pulled Merry into his shoulder and let him cry himself out. He wondered why Gandalf stayed, but said nothing, keeping his attention on Merry.

Gandalf was whispering. Singing words of comfort. Reciting phrases of strength. He knew the Darkness still haunted these two as it haunted all of them. He was determined that, at least for now, It would leave them alone.

“It will be easier next time . . .” Frodo finally began, but Merry cut him off.

“No!” he said more sharply than he meant. “No, Frodo. I can’t. I-I simply can not. No.” Panic shone in Merry’s blue eyes, making them look even darker than usual.

Frodo was stunned. He had believed nothing would ever keep Merry away from an ailing Pippin. Merry had been around Pippin many times when the lad would be ill with lung fever or bad colds.

Yet . . .

Pictures of Pippin sick at those times and the Pippin who lay on the bed in the next room came to Frodo’s mind. This was different. Yes. It was horribly, pathetically different.

Merry drew in a long, shaky breath. “I can’t explain. Frodo, I . . . I don’t have the words. Maybe . . . later. Yes, maybe later I’ll be able to . . . but I can’t. I can’t look at him now. Can’t be around him now.” Merry trembled from head to foot. “No.”

“We won’t force you, Merry. Calm yourself. We won’t force you.” Frodo thought a few moments. “Shall I send Lord Elrond in? If you’ve questions . . . if there are things you don’t understand, I’m sure he can explain them. He’s spoken to the rest of us but you were on duty.”

Merry’s heart wrenched. Yes, he was on duty while his dearest friend in the world turned into something worse than an infant. It scared him. It horrified him. It tore his heart to shreds with pity. And, though he tried with everything within himself to push it away, the question kept attacking his sanity - what if Pippin never comes back?

Outwardly, Merry nodded his head in answer to his older cousin’s question, inwardly he was feeling horribly lost. Frodo and Gandalf went into the next room. Merry was too lost in his own misery to notice it was ten minutes before Elrond came in and sat in the chair Gandalf had been sitting in. The Elf lord waited until he felt the hobbit was ready.

“You have never had to deal with such a thing.” Elrond quietly stated.

Merry shook his head.

“Have you ever seen another in like condition? Not necessarily a loved one, Meriadoc, but anyone?”

Merry nodded. “I used to nose about the Hall.” He looked up at Elrond. “Brandy Hall, where I live in Buckland, it’s rather like your house with many families and individuals living there.”

Elrond nodded his understanding.

“There was a tunnel, that no one ever seemed to talk about living in, but I would see people coming and going from it. I . . . I guess it’s rather like the Houses of Healing but different, and maybe they have something like it here, but I’ve not seen it. There were . . .” Merry dropped his gaze to the empty hearth as his voice faded to a faint whisper. It was obviously a hard memory to discuss.

“There were very sick hobbits there. I thought some of them were dead at the time as they didn’t move much or anything. I got more and more frightened. I wanted to leave but mistakenly wandered into another room. There was a hobbitess changing a full grown hobbit. It stank in the room and he was . . .”

It took Merry a few moments to continue. Elrond knew he was seeing it all again in his mind.

“She sat him up a bit afterwards. His head hung oddly to one side and his eyes looked wrong and the spit just ran down the side of his face but he didn’t care. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. She talked to him and he would grunt, if he responded at all. She fed him and it all ran down his chin. And I threw up and she turned around. I had to feel around for the door then I ran and ran and ran.”

There was another long pause. Eventually, Merry turned his crying eyes to the Elf lord.

“I was afraid. I felt so sorry for him. He . . . it all scared me and made me ache inside. It was all just wrong. It . . . he needed fixing but no one was fixing him. I-I learned much later that not everything can be fixed.”

Merry’s look stabbed Elrond’s heart. His next words drove the blade in deeper.

“Can Pippin be fixed?”

Elrond weighed his words carefully. “I think so, yes. But I do not know for certain, Meriadoc. He might remain as he is or death may claim him, but . . .” Elrond paused to raise his hand, stopping Merry’s words before they could tumble out of his mouth. “But I do not believe that will be your cousin’s fate, young hobbit.”

He looked Merry over, gently touching his spirit with his own. The lad was near to breaking. The hobbits had all been through so much and until Theoden would be laid to rest, that part of Meriadoc’s pain had no resolution. Yet the little one, as seemed to be in the nature of his kind, had strength left for this burden.

“I do not know how long Peregrin will remain as you observed him, but I do truly believe he will return to us. I have dealt with this before. This and other illnesses and ailments that result in similar situations. Elves do not suffer illness it is true, but we do suffer injury and the falling sickness can be brought about from physical injuries to the brain. You must trust me, Meriadoc. I can still sense your cousin’s essence. He is nearer than it seems. Because of this, I am confident he will return to us from this condition he brought upon himself.”

“What is this ‘condition he brought upon himself’, Lord Elrond?” Merry’s voice was more than weary. He was barely holding himself together. “We were all told that it would be dangerous for him to stop taking any of the medications Parsow or Strider gave him. They said it could cause his blank spells to get worse or his fits to become dangerous, but he didn’t say how. I didn’t know, I don’t think any of us thought it would do . . . what it’s done.”

“He is having a series of his blank spells that are so close together it is as though it is one long spell. If you think about it you can see it. His eyes are empty. His hands grasp and twitch. He speaks, but it is only mumbling.”

Merry was nodding, he could see it.

“The spells have shut his mind down and his body is having no time to recover. The worse of his spells would leave him weary, would they not?”

“Yes.”

“And so they still are. But, with little or no time between them, they are exhausting him, so his body has joined his mind. His body has shut itself down as well. It is a blessing that it is the blank spells that have taken him over.”

“Blessing!” Merry said as loudly as his emotion choked throat would allow. “Blessing?”

“Imagine, if you are able to endure it, what would be happening if it were the falling fits that possessed him?”

Merry froze. The image did indeed come into his mind, infinitely more horrible than what he had seen in the bedroom next door. Elrond saw the truth come to the hobbit.

“That would have killed him, Meriadoc.”
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A/N: I am editing/betaing this myself, I apologize if the grammar is poor or if spellcheck misses things :-)

A/N: What has happened to Pippin is called a Status Epilepticus. This means that in between the seizures there is little to no real resting period, the person is having continual seizures. One reason people can fall into this condition is by abruptly stopping their medication.

In the available literature, one finds mostly information about the grand mal status, which is life threatening, so we didn’t want to use that. However status epilepticus can also happen for every other form of epilepsy, so even though complex partial status might be more rare, Golden wanted to use it and I agreed.

We could not find a lot about that kind of status, so we put the few things we did find together with how we logically imagined it. We did find that this type often produces “a long-lasting stupor, staring and unresponsiveness” which is how we had thought it would be, and so those are Pippin’s symptoms.

Golden wanted to explore how people deal with someonein such a severe state. I am a person who has great difficulty dealing with people in states similar to this. It has led to many interesting discussions. We will do our best to handle this respectfully and to not drag it out unnecessarily. And I’ll add here - Frodo, Sam and the others are Golden, I’m Merry.