Buck had always felt different, growing up. He had never had the tools or the words to explain it, but it felt like his brain was wired differently to his parents: but as he’d gotten older, he’d decided that was a good thing. And there was a lot of reasons that explained why Buck felt different - the bisexuality, for one. He - he couldn’t have ADHD. Buck would have known before now if he did.
When Doctor Copeland advises Buck get an ADHD assessment, it brings about a journey of acceptance Buck hadn’t expected.
“I’d like to send you for an assessment for ADHD.”
The world felt like it had slowed to a stop as Buck blinked owlishly at Doctor Copeland, her words not quite sinking in. After a year of a break, and a few fairly significant life changes - including the gold wedding band that sat on his left ring finger, and a sort of medium level mental breakdown - Buck had decided to take up regular therapy again, Eddie encouraging him to go back to see Doctor Copeland once a month.
(“We take care of our physical bodies,” Eddie gestured vaguely, an understandable convert to therapy given the ways it had changed his life in the years since the shooting, his husband more confident and comfortable in himself, more ready to talk about his own feelings, a different man to the one Buck had first clashed with all those years ago now. “Why don’t we take care of our minds? We - we wait, until we’re in the middle of a crisis to take care of our minds, when what we really should be doing is going to therapy while things are good! Like - maintenance therapy.”)
“You - you what?” Buck knew he sounded stupid. He sort of didn’t know what else to say.
“I’d like to send you for an assessment for ADHD,” Doctor Copeland repeated. “Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” she clarified, as if Buck didn’t know what ADHD stood for. He’d heard the acronym thrown his way enough, over the years - usually in a joking way, someone fondly pointing out that Buck had a tendency to be full of energy.
That’s what he’d always assumed it was. Buck was just - one of those people who was full of energy. He had spent a lot of time convincing himself there was nothing wrong with that: that he could be an energetic, talkative person and not have to dull that down for anyone’s sake.
“Uh,” Buck shifted in his seat. “Why?”
Doctor Copeland pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, a habit Buck knew from years of seeing his therapist - it usually signalled that she was about to tell something Buck fundamental or life-changing. He didn’t always like it. “ADHD presents differently in adults than it does in children,” she explained. “Distractibility, a lack of organisation, poor time management, frustration, mood swings - often, in adults, Buck, ADHD presents with depression-like symptoms.”
Buck shifted uncomfortably.
He - he’d started seeing Doctor Copeland again because he’d been worried he was depressed. Buck knew what depression looked like. He’d seen it in Maddie, after Jee was born, and he saw it in Eddie. Depression was an inescapable symptom of the PTSD that his husband would carry for the rest of his life, and every morning, Buck watched Eddie take anti-depressants after his breakfast and grimace at the metallic taste: but he also saw the way the medication had given Eddie back a quality of life he could have only dreamed of before he’d been willing to go with Frank and try medication. It had taken a few goes, before they’d found something that worked, but Eddie was - well, thriving.
In the months since their wedding, Buck had felt as though he was scrambling not to fall down an increasingly slippery slope. It was supposed to be the happiest time of his life - newly married, in the honeymoon phase - and yet Buck sometimes woke at four in the morning on the verge of tears and something was wrong and he’d (in that sort of typical hypochondriac way he tended to) sort of self diagnosed with depression.
Doctor Copeland was saying something different.
“You don’t have to say yes immediately,” Doctor Copeland reassured. “But I’d like you to consider it, Buck. Often, people think ADHD can only be diagnosed in childhood: but I have had many adult patients over the years who have gotten their diagnosis in their twenties, thirties, forties, and it’s changed their life. It’s an avenue I’d like to explore with you, if you agree.”
“I - I don’t…” Buck trailed off, chewing on the side of his mouth.
“Sit with it,” Doctor Copeland encouraged. “When you’ve decided, you can ring my office and let me know. But research it, Buck - and talk about it with your husband,” she offered him an encouraging smile. “Either way, I’ll see you in a month.”
Buck had always felt different, growing up. He had never had the tools or the words to explain it, but it felt like his brain was wired differently to his parents: but as he’d gotten older, he’d decided that was a good thing. Why would he want to be wired the same way as two people who seemed as though they’d never experienced an actual human emotion in his life?
And there was a lot of reasons that explained why Buck felt different - the bisexuality, for one. All the articles he’d read when he was seventeen and wondering if every boy found other boys - and girls - attractive had said that people who were in the LGBT community tended to feel different, growing up, that they knew there was something different about themselves, that they had a sense of being outside of social norms.
He - he couldn’t have ADHD.
Buck would have known before now if he did.
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