Page 86 of Unbound
I climbed into their rental car without another word. Watched the Montana landscape pass outside the window—mountains, wilderness, isolation. Beautiful and terrible.
This was where I'd break again. Maybe where I'd die this time.
The drive to Restoration Ridge took three hours. Three hours of silence except for my mother's occasional sniffles and my father's Christian radio station. The mountains grew larger, the roads smaller. Fewer cars, fewer signs of civilization.
Finally, the familiar gates came into view. High fences topped with razor wire. Guard towers. The kind of place designed to keep people in, not out.
Same building, same grounds, same feeling of dread settling over me like a burial shroud.
The intake process was even more humiliating this time. I was an adult now, knew exactly what was coming. The staff recognized me.
"Welcome back, Jesse. We'll fix you right this time, don't you worry."
They stripped me of everything. Phone, clothes, the small silver ring Adrian had given me last week after the day in court. I watched them catalog my belongings like evidence in a trial. Which, I supposed, they were.
The medical exam was invasive, dehumanizing. Designed to break down your sense of self before the real treatment even began. I dissociated, went somewhere else in my mind while strange hands prodded and violated.
They assigned me to a wing for "repeat offenders"—worse than the general population. Harder treatment, less hope of release.
My room was cell-like. Bed bolted to the floor, toilet in the corner, crucifix nailed to the wall. Small window showing nothing but sky and mountains. Door that locked from the outside.
I sat on the thin mattress as darkness fell, preparing for what was coming. Terror so complete I couldn't even cry. Just sat in the dark, holding onto the memory of Adrian's smile and the feel of his lips on mine like a lifeline.
Tomorrow the real breaking would begin.
Five AM wake-up call came with harsh fluorescent lights and shouting. No gentleness here. No accommodation for adjustment.
Group prayer first. Confessing sins publicly before the day began.
"State your name and why you're here," the counsellor commanded.
"Jesse Miller," I said when my turn came. "I'm here because I kissed another man. I'm sick and I need to be healed."
The words tasted like poison.
Breakfast was minimal—stand while eating, no conversation allowed. Then the real treatment began.
Electroshock aversion therapy. Images of men on a screen, electrodes attached to my temples and my groin. Same as before, but they'd "improved" the technology with the addition of the electrodes on my groin. The pain was more precise, more effective at scrambling thoughts.
I tried to go somewhere else in my mind, but the shocks kept dragging me back. Forcing me to associate images of love with agony.
Anthony Whelan, I reminded myself as voltage coursed through my skull. You're doing this for Anthony Whelan.
The routine established itself quickly. Wake at five, group prayer, breakfast standing up, electroshock therapy, ice baths for "impure thoughts" they decided you were having, group sessions designed to tear each other down, sleep deprivation disguised as extended prayer time.
I tried to comply, tried to be good. Learned quickly that compliance didn't help. They'd break you either way. Submission just made it easier for them.
Other men in the program: some trying desperately to please, some already broken beyond repair, one still defiant after three years. Max T. whispered to me during a brief moment when the staff weren't watching.
"Don't let them see you break. That's when they win."
But I was already breaking. Could feel myself fracturing along familiar lines.
By the second week, I'd stopped eating properly. Food was as much punishment as sustenance—earned through compliance, withheld for imagined infractions. My weight dropped. Energy faded.
The worst part wasn't the physical torture. It was the isolation. No word from the outside world. No way to know if Adrian was fighting for me, if the legal battle continued, if Anthony Whelan was safe.
No way to know if any of it mattered.
