Page 88 of Unbound
Max noticed my distance during the brief moments we could whisper to each other.
"Don't do it," he said quietly during group prayer. "Whatever you're thinking, don't."
I glanced around, but none of the staff reacted to his voice. They never seemed to notice Max, actually. Maybe he was just that good at staying invisible.
"Why not?" My voice sounded hollow even to me. "What's the point?"
"Because someone's fighting for you out there. I can feel it."
I almost laughed. Almost. "And if you die, they win forever."
"They've already won."
That night, I stood at my window looking at the moon. Third floor. Long drop to concrete below. The window didn't open, but glass could break. I'd seen it done before.
I pressed my hands against the cold surface, calculating angles and force. How much would it hurt? Less than this, probably.
I looked for Max, hoping he'd talk me down first, but he wasn't in my cell. Of course he wasn't—they kept us separate. Didn't they?
"Step away from the window, Miller."
The staff member's voice was bored, like this happened all the time. Which it probably did.
They moved me to suicide watch. Twenty-four hour observation, someone always staring. Not for my safety - so I couldn't escape through death. They needed me alive to break me properly.
This realization was somehow worse than everything else.
WEEK SIX
Suicide watch meant no privacy, even to use the toilet. My dignity, what remained of it, completely stripped away.
I couldn't sleep, couldn't think, couldn't escape into my own mind anymore. Electroshock sessions increased to twice daily.
"You're proving resistant to treatment," Dr. Hendricks informed me, like I was a bacteria that wouldn't respond to antibiotics.
I wanted to scream: because it doesn't work. You can't shock away who someone is. Can't torture identity out of existence.
But I was too tired to scream. Too broken to fight. Just endured, existing without living.
I thought about Adrian less now. It hurt too much, and I wasn't sure he'd been real anyway. Thought about death more. It seemed peaceful, final. A solution to an unsolvable problem.
During group session, Max slipped me a piece of paper. A single word written in careful letters:
SOON.
The paper dissolved in my sweating palm before I could read it again. Or had I imagined it? Everything felt unreal now.
I didn't understand. Didn't have energy to ask.
WEEK SEVEN
I collapsed during morning prayer on day forty-three. Heartbeat irregular, chest tight, the world spinning sideways as I hit the floor.
They rushed me to the medical wing. The doctor - not Dr. Hendricks, someone else, someone new - checked my pulse and blood pressure with growing alarm.
"We need to stop treatment immediately," he told the director. "His heart can't take any more electroshock therapy. The rhythm is completely erratic."
Director refused. "We have parental consent for the full program."
