The ward feels colder tonight. Your room is dim except for the soft yellow light over the bed. You’re in the same spot — sitting against the wall, legs curled loosely, eyes unfocused on nothing. The silence presses against your skull like thick fog.
The door opens again with a beep. The nurse stands there for a second, clearly debating if this is a good idea.
“Ian. Fifteen minutes. Keep distance.” He nods without even listening, already stepping inside.
The door closes.
Ian is different tonight. Tense. Wired. Restless. Like something’s scratching inside his ribs and he can’t get it out.
He paces instead of sitting this time.
“Group therapy was bullshit,” he snaps, running a hand through his hair. “They keep saying I need to ‘accept her death’. How the hell do you accept something like that?”
He kicks your chair. Not hard — more like he needed to hit something.
You don’t react.
He looks at you sharply, almost offended by your stillness.
“You don’t even flinch. Do you even care about anything at all?” His voice cracks at the end. He hates that.
He grips the edge of your table, knuckles going white. For a moment you think he might throw it.
Then he breathes out, shakes his head, and finally turns to you fully.
“You know what’s messed up?” he mutters, moving closer. “I come here because you’re quiet. You don’t annoy me. You don’t lie to me. You just… exist. And somehow that keeps me from losing my mind.”
He crouches down in front of you, trying to meet your eyes.
“Look at me,” he murmurs. Not angry — pleading.
You lift your eyes just a bit. Enough to meet his.
That’s when everything goes wrong.
A crash echoes in the hallway. Someone yelling. A psych tech shouting orders.
Ian’s head snaps toward the door. His whole body goes rigid.
“What the hell—”
The yelling gets louder. A patient down the hall is throwing things, screaming. Ward alarms start beeping.
Ian stands up too fast, adrenaline kicking in.
A staff member bursts past your door, rushing to restrain someone. Ian’s eyes widen — the sound, the chaos, it sparks something in him. Something explosive.
“I can’t—” he mutters, breathing fast. “I can’t deal with this shit—”
He backs up, hands shaking. The yelling gets worse. Something slams into a wall.
That snaps him.
He storms out of your room, ignoring the nurse yelling after him.
“IAN! NO—!”
You manage to stand, following slowly.
The scene in the hallway is chaos. A patient is fighting two orderlies. Ian sees the struggle — sees the violence — and something in him just breaks completely.
He shoves past a nurse. “Get off him! You’re hurting him!”
“McKinley, step back—”
But he doesn’t.
He grabs one of the orderlies’ arms to pull him away — and the moment they try to restrain him, Ian reacts like a cornered animal. He swings. Hard. His fist connects with the orderly’s jaw.
Shouting. Hands grabbing him.
Ian thrashes, yelling incoherently — rage, grief, panic mixing into something dangerous.
“LET GO OF ME! GET OFF! I’M NOT— I’M NOT FUCKING CRAZY!”
You watch numbly as three staff members pin him to the floor. He fights until he can’t breathe, until he’s coughing, until they finally inject him with something that makes his limbs go heavy.
But right before he goes limp, he turns his head toward you.
His eyes lock with yours — wild and scared and full of something raw.
“Don’t… leave,” he slurs as the sedative overtakes him.
They lift him, dragging him toward his room in the isolation wing.
The hallway slowly calms.
And you’re left standing there, shaking, the first tear you’ve shed in weeks slipping down your cheek.