You're Cruel For This But Imagine

you're cruel for this but imagine

seward: dr. helsing you MUST hear about my new patient he keeps telling me the strangest delusions he's having about men who drink human blood!

van helsing, sweating bullets: i'll be there in 5 minutes

Jonathan Harker and the ‘Brain Fever’

Because I can’t just let it be a nice update, I want to put the situation of Jonathan’s ‘brain fever’ under a magnifying glass. Then turn it into a period-accurate knife and twist it.

Because while I don’t doubt Jonathan might have gotten sick/addled during his nonstop Get the Hell Out of Transylvania Marathon, I think it’s important to mention that Sister Agatha brings up the horrors he was apparently raving about in what we’ll assume was his early time at the hospital. He was absolutely ranting and rambling about what had happened to him, what threat there was in Castle Dracula, the other now en route to England.

A tidbit that ties into the fact that he got off the train and went straight to a hospital and not, say, onto another lap towards the shore, a boat, and Mina, which was undoubtedly the only thing on Jonathan’s mind. Why is he there instead?

At a guess, he was not allowed an option. The same people who sold him the ‘Please Get Far Away from Us, Crazy Englishman’ ticket likely sent word ahead that, hey, there’s a crazy sick dude on this train, you might want to get somebody on that. That or he was clocked the moment he got off the train. Maybe he collapsed. Maybe it was just his behavior. Either way, Jonathan being Jonathan, you know this man would have dragged himself half-dead onto a boat home if he could.

But no. He was ‘helped’ to the hospital’s care—his physical needs and diagnosis of brain fever likely being the only buffer between him and a permanent stay in the sanitorium.

“He’s speaking madness, but it is a temporary symptom! Poor man. We must make him well!”

And Jonathan had to catch onto that quick and play into it. If he hadn’t? Kind as his new keepers are, benevolent as they are, once his physical maladies subsided, there would be a very real threat of them helping him into a padded room.

Assuming he didn’t miraculously overcome his ‘fever’ and shut right up about all that monster talk. Instead, let’s talk about how much better he’s doing. Let’s talk about his boss, who he simply must report back to. Let’s talk about Mina, his fiancée who he means to marry soon. Let’s send letters out to them to get confirmation that he is, in fact, missed, that these people exist and can vouch for him* (*bring him home to England). He will be a good patient. He was terribly sick, but he is on the mend. He is good. All is well.

(Please don’t lock me in my room again, Count.)

(Please let me go home.)

In a grimmer universe, I imagine Jonathan does get sent back to England, if not in the way he’d hoped.

And Mina visits him whenever she can in Seward’s asylum.