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Rain fell in a steady rhythm in time with the nervous thumping of Chad’s heart. The crossing signal changed to an image of a pedestrian walking, and he crossed the street with a small group of others. They were all headed to the same place, and he wondered who these strangers were visiting. What had happened in their lives, to their loved ones, to warrant them coming here of all places?
May was one of the rainiest months of the year in New York, but he still hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella when he left the apartment. He held his hoodie tighter around his head, but it could only do so much without the strings. He had no clue if the no drawstrings rule was for patients only, but better safe than sorry.
God, what was he doing?
If any of the others knew that this is what he did after therapy, they would freak. Rightfully so. He hated keeping secrets from them, but…
The thought of Tara’s face crumpling in betrayal, of Mindy’s heartbreak showing in her eyes even though she’d try to mask it under anger, was too much for Chad to bear. He couldn’t tell them.
A dull ache had started up in his leg while on the subway ride here. Ever since he was attacked at Amber's party, it always ached a little when it was humid outside. But the feeling was more prominent the closer he got to the building. Every time he came here a voice in the back of his head would whisper to turn around. Go home. You know better.
The voice sounded suspiciously like Wes, like Liv, like Annika.
There was a rectangular sign directing visitors to the entrance in big, bold lettering. Manhattan Psychiatric Center. ALL visitors must sign-in at the front desk.
Once he was inside, an immediate burst of cool A/C air kissed his skin, shocking his system. The fog of anxiety vanished, and adrenaline pumped through his veins. All of his senses went into hyperdrive. He was keenly aware of the humming light fixtures, the clacking of keys behind the front desk, the weary-looking security officer by the door shifting from foot to foot, and the lemony scent of freshly mopped linoleum flooring.
He exchanged pleasant greetings with the front desk receptionist, slid his ID over the counter for her to verify, then signed his name on the log-in sheet attached to the clipboard. A dozen names were on the page already. They all had different time-in / time-out logs, different handwriting, some even different pen colors. It was normal for people to visit. So why did he feel like he was the only one committing a crime?
When the receptionist handed him back his ID, muscle memory took over as he deposited his wallet and phone in the little bucket at the security checkpoint and slid it across the table. He didn’t need to be instructed to bend his arms at the elbow in front of him as he passed through the security scanner, he already knew. Like it or not, this routine was a familiar one.
The elevator ride up to the sixth floor was excruciating. Three other people rode up with him: a middle-aged woman holding hands with a young boy, and a lone teenager who was tapping their foot along to the beat of whatever song played in their airpods. Chad stared straight ahead, watching the numbers on the screen by the doors tick up as the elevator ascended.
One. Two. Three.
There was still time to turn back, Chad thought. He could ride the elevator up and then right back down again, take the subway back to the apartment and hug the first person he sees and never let go.
Four. Five.
But just like every time, when the elevator door opened on the sixth floor, he stepped out. He turned left down the hallway and went through a set of double doors, so familiar with this path that he didn’t even need to read the signs anymore. As he entered the visitor’s center, the atmosphere transformed. Pale, impersonal walls and fluorescent lighting were switched out for cream-colored wallpaper and natural sunlight. Gray sunshine shone from the tall windows, too far out of reach to climb through but not too high that patients couldn’t see the view outside.
There were a dozen round tables scattered about the space. Several were occupied with patients and their loved ones. Some people were playing cards, others were doing crafts, and some were at ease simply talking and being in each other’s company. It was a relatively happy affair, given the circumstances.
Chad chose an empty table in the corner and sat. It shouldn’t be a long wait, he’ll be expecting Chad today. The staff probably notified him when Chad arrived, but even if not, they both knew the routine by now. Still, anxiety thrummed through Chad. While he waited, both of his legs bounced away under the table as he studied his hands a little too intensely. What if he didn’t show up? What if for some reason, today he decided that he didn’t want to see Chad anymore? And if he did, would that really be so bad?
A minute went by before someone pulled out the chair across from him. When they took a seat, Chad finally raised his gaze from his hands to make eye contact with the other person. Up until this point, he could still deny this was happening at all. It’s like if Chad didn’t actually look at him, it wouldn’t be true. But there was no denying it now.
Ethan Landry, or Kirsch, or Bailey, whatever his fucking name was , stared back at him from across the table.
His hair was different from the last time Chad visited, it was shorter along the sides and in the back his dark curls cut off mid-neck. Like always, he had intentionally chosen to sit in the chair furthest from Chad, creating as much space between them as possible. The breathing tube in his neck was gone, it had been for several months now, but the scar from the surgery was still there. It stood out pink and raised and precise against the pale column of his throat. Tara had really done a number on Ethan. Not that he didn't deserve every second of it, after what he did.
Chad never saw him in the Ghost Face outfit, he’d been unconscious and bleeding out on the ground in the theater lobby. But the way Tara had described Ethan from that night still gave him chills when he thought about it. The unhinged, downright gleeful smile on his face as he taunted her with a knife while she dangled from the railing, the rage that made his usually soft doe eyes bloodshot and wide as discs. None of that was present now. He looked the same as he always did. Maybe a little sad.
If Chad ignored the scar, ignored the standard gray sweats and t-shirt combination that all the other patients wore, then he could pretend this was just another day. That he was just having lunch or something with his roommate. But he couldn’t pretend. Not with his own scars littering his chest under his sweatshirt, and the memory of all the people that were dead because of Ethan. All the people that were dead instead of Chad.
(They said that lightning never struck the same person twice. Chad was living proof of that being a load of bullshit.)
Eight months ago, Ethan and his family had tried to murder Chad and his friends. Six months ago, Ethan went to court for his crimes. He was the only surviving member of this particular round of Ghost Faces. Actually, he was the only surviving Ghost Face period . What a title that must be to carry.
All of them had testified against Ethan in court. Tara and Sam vividly described how he attacked them in the theater, their faces haunted but eyes dry. Mindy, though, had barely kept it together when she talked about Annika. It was surreal for Chad to see Ethan in the courtroom on the defendant's side, his right arm in a sling and cuffs around his ankles. Even though he was over six feet tall, he’d somehow looked so small in the orange jumpsuit. But he was far from innocent.
The jury had ruled that Ethan was Not Guilty by reason of insanity. During the trial a psychiatrist announced on the stand that she'd diagnosed him with Borderline Personality Disorder. Symptoms included antisocial and compulsive behavior, hostility, and impulsivity. Ethan’s lawyers argued that he grew up in a single parent household after his mother died of cancer, and endured years of mental and physical abuse from his father. Pair that with an unstable, psychotic older brother who was seen as the golden child, and you get a pretty fucked up mental state.
Records showed that Ethan had never received treatment for his mental illness, and the problem was only compounded when his brother died. It was like a boiling point for Ethan. He’d seen no other option than to follow along with his family, because he had no figures in his life encouraging him otherwise. He’d been manipulated, they said.
“This is such bullshit! He knows what he did!” Mindy had shot out of her seat when the courts made their final ruling in Ethan’s case back in January. The audience was in uproar when it was announced, from all of them and the general public. The rumor about Sam was mostly squashed after it came out that Detective Bailey and his kids all shared a propensity for murder.
Even though Ethan got sentenced to a minimum of ten years in a psychiatric facility, the people were not satisfied. They were out for blood. Rumors went around that Ethan was going to mysteriously die on his way to the hospital, or that he was going to undergo more surgery and complications would kill him. But none of that ever happened. He was admitted to Manhattan Psychiatric Center soon after the trial, and the world kept turning. The hype of the case came and went. People were buried, physical wounds healed, but nobody directly affected were ever the same.
“You cut your hair,” Chad broke the silence between them. It was always awkward trying to get a conversation going. He couldn’t start off with “how are you” or even “hey.” This wasn't some normal catching up with a friend.
Ethan picked up the small whiteboard and marker he carried around with him and began to write. When he was done, he slid it a few inches towards Chad.
got tired of it getting in the way. they don’t allow hair ties in here.
In the four months that Chad had been visiting Ethan, he hadn’t said a word. He’d been stabbed in the mouth, after all, and laryngeal surgery took a while to recover from. After Chad's first time visiting he’d stayed up for hours researching the surgery. Apparently, patients could learn to speak again through a variety of methods depending on the severity of trauma done to the larynx. Through therapy and a number of tools, speech could be recovered in a matter of weeks to months. But if Ethan was taking any steps to be able to speak again, Chad had no idea about it.
If anything, it might be better if he never heard Ethan’s voice again. Maybe his silence was the bubble that protected this precarious relationship they had. If that bubble were to pop, then the reality of what he was doing would set in. What was he doing, anyway?
He was visiting a murderer. He was sitting across from the guy that had killed one of his close friends, who participated in the torment and attempted-murders of his sister, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s sister. He knew that. Every time he entered the building, every time he got on the train that went in the opposite direction of his apartment, he knew what he was doing. The real question was why.
He was bedridden for weeks after what Ethan and Quinn did to him. His spleen had to be removed, and so had parts of his liver. The doctors said that the only reason he was still alive was because the stab wound to his heart had been the length of a hair-strand too shallow to kill him. He had been impossibly lucky. Others hadn't been.
Sam told him that Ethan said it had “felt good” to kill Chad. Ethan enjoyed stabbing him. They weren’t friends. So why was Chad visiting him? Was it because some part of him deep down, a part of him that kept him up at night sick with guilt that he of all people survived, felt bad for Ethan?
"Ethan was Richie’s first victim," He remembered Ethan and Richie’s old babysitter saying on the witness stand during the trial. "The last time I sat for them when their dad was out of town, I woke up in the middle of the night to Ethan's screams. Richie took him out to the backyard and tried burying him alive. Ethan was six years old."
Ethan took back the whiteboard and erased the words with the corner of his t-shirt. He began to write something else, then showed it to Chad. one of the staff is teaching me sign language.
“That’s cool. I took ASL for a year in eleventh grade. I only remember a little. Like— ‘my name is C-H-A-D.’” His hands were awkward and stilted as he tried signing it while he spoke, putting his forefinger and thumb together and the other three fingers extended for the letter ‘d.’
Carefully, like someone trying to approach a wild animal without spooking it, Ethan reached over and adjusted Chad’s fingers. He moved Chad’s three fingers to touch his thumb, then lifted his forefinger instead, so his hand looked like a lowercase ‘d’. A shiver shuddered its way up Chad’s spine when their hands made contact. When he leaned back into his own space, Chad couldn’t quite snuff his disappointment.
“Thanks,” he said. Ethan nodded, and the barest hint of what might have been a smile months ago crossed his lips.
When was the last time Chad saw him smile? Why did he even care? Chad owed Ethan nothing. Not a modicum of respect or pity or friendship. He shouldn’t want to see Ethan’s face ever again, much less want to see him smile . He cleared his throat awkwardly.
“So. What do you do all day?”
lots of therapy. group, one-on-one, physical. last week in group we tried crafts with popsicle sticks and another patient tried to shank me with one.
Ethan pulled down the collar of his shirt. There was a yellowish-green bruise in the soft part between his shoulder and his chest. Whoever had tried to stab him was probably aiming for his heart. Chad frowned pensively.
“That’s not okay.”
Ethan shrugged noncommittally and fixed his shirt. Chad caught a glimpse of a handful of jagged scars covering the rest of his right shoulder. He knew those were from Sam. Even now, eight months after it happened, Ethan still hadn’t regained full mobility of his right arm.
i had it coming , he wrote.
Chad considered this. The knife wounds definitely. But he shouldn't be worried about being attacked here.
This time when he tried to pull back the whiteboard, Chad stopped him by placing a hand on his wrist. Ethan looked up at him with wide, confused eyes.
"No, Ethan. You didn't. You don’t need to repent for what you did by letting the other patients hurt you."
Ethan pulled away and looked down at his lap. He made a gesture with his hands, sliding his fingers past each other back and forth. Chad remembered that sign from class. Doesn't matter , Ethan said.
With a sigh, Chad sat back and crossed his arms. "Listen I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that what you did wasn't fucked up." Ethan flinched at his words but didn't interrupt. He didn't look up from his lap. "You hurt a lot of people, me included. That isn’t gonna be something people just get over.
"But you're doing your time. You're getting the help you need and that's all you can do. Doing whatever this is… acting like some martyr, it helps no one."
Surprisingly, Chad felt that he meant the words. He was far from forgiving Ethan for all that he'd done. But he didn't want to see Ethan suffer more than he had already. It wouldn't bring back anybody they'd lost, or reverse any of their wounds. Plus, at one point Chad cared about Ethan as much as the others. He didn't know whether or not any of their friendship had been real for Ethan, but it was for him.
Ethan didn't argue, but his expression was troubled. His brows were furrowed, his mouth was a downturned line. Chad studied his throat as he swallowed uneasily, watching the way his scar stood out in time with the bobbing of his Adam's apple.
“I won’t be stopping by at the end of the month by the way. Something came up.” Chad hesitated, unsure if he should explain why. He ended up not having to, because Ethan slid over the whiteboard moments later.
annika’s birthday.
They’d planned a memorial service in honor of Annika at Central Park. It was going to be an all day event, and Chad wanted to spend it with what was left of his family. Seeing her name in Ethan’s handwriting sent a bolt of resentment through him. He felt it both towards Ethan and himself. Mindy took Ethan’s trial ruling the hardest because of what he did to Annika. She still woke up screaming some nights for her dead lover, reliving her gruesome end over and over in her sleep. It never failed to wake all of them up, if any of them were sleeping at all, that is.
After everything was said and done, Chad, Mindy, Sam, and Tara all got an apartment together on the opposite end of campus from the place Ghost Face ( Ethan ) attacked them. Being too near was just too much for them to bear. Any of those things alone should have been enough to convince Chad to never step foot in this hospital. But it wasn’t, and that in itself showed Chad’s weakness.
“Do you actually feel bad about it at all? Or are you just guilty because you lived?” The accusatory tone in his voice shocked both of them, but Chad didn’t stand down.
They both tended to avoid talking about specifics, a mutual understanding between them that it was no use. At the end of the day, they already had their own reasons for the decisions they made, just like they both had their own opinions for why the other made those decisions. Ethan held the whiteboard tightly in his hands for several terse breaths, not making any move to write. A muscle ticked in his jaw, and his eyes darted to the exit.
For a beat, Chad was convinced he was going to bolt, and that would be the end of this. He wasn’t going to stop Ethan if that was what he wanted to do. But then Ethan put his marker to the board and began writing quickly. He erased his words multiple times before finally turning the board around.
i wanted my dad to look at me the same way he did richie. but he never did. i was always less.
He wiped the words away and started writing again in quick succession. By now, a blue-black stain had formed at the bottom of his t-shirt from erasing so much.
on the train with mindy i realized i would never be enough, but it was too late.
“So why didn’t you stay at the hospital with her? Why did you go to finish the job?”
A strangled sigh of frustration fell from Ethan’s lips. His frown deepened and he let the whiteboard fall to the table. He looked upwards in thought, trying to find the right words but seemingly coming up empty. With a shrug, he spread his fingers out before his chest and pushed his hands towards each other but didn’t bring them together, like two magnets repelling each other. Afraid .
The answer didn’t make Chad feel any better. But he couldn’t really fault Ethan for it, either. What would have happened if he’d tried to turn a new leaf mid-murder spree? Surely his sister and father would have turned on him just as easily as they did everyone else. The odds of them sparing his life were slim to none, and Ethan must have known that.
“Maybe this is the price you have to pay for being a coward. You don’t get to die and escape the consequences. Instead, you have to live.” The words are like acid on his tongue, and they seem to sting Ethan just as much.
A glistening sheen took over his eyes, but no tears fell. Chad was grateful for that. He didn’t know what he would do if Ethan cried in front of him. Was he supposed to comfort his friend-turned-murderer for his own heinous actions? He didn’t think either of them would be comfortable with that.
A loud vibrating shook the table and they both jumped. The tension broken, Chad turned over his cell phone to check his notifications. Several texts came through at once from Mindy.
Where r u?
Therapy done yet ?
On ur way home?
Shit. He'd overstayed during this visit. He was so caught up in scrutinizing Ethan that the passage of time hadn't even registered, and now his sister was getting worried. Quickly he sent back a message then stood up from the table.
Held up at the subway. Omw now.
"Mindy's wondering where I am. Time for me to head out." Ethan nodded in understanding. He knew that he had no say in how long Chad visited for or if they would even continue. Even though Chad had never missed a visit in all four months, he always said the same thing before he left. "I don't know if I'll be back."
At this point, the words were just as much a part of their routine as everything else was. The visit would feel incomplete without it. They both knew it probably wasn't true, because even though Ethan could refuse visitors at any time, he always waited for Chad. And even though he was the source of so much pain and grief, something about Ethan kept drawing Chad back in.
It was a parasitic cycle with no foreseeable end, and they were both perfectly fine with that.
Ethan didn't get up to see him out. They didn't hug or make any move to comfort one another. That was something people did with their loved ones, and Ethan and Chad weren’t close like that. Not anymore. Maybe they never were.
(The memories Chad had of his arm thrown around Ethan's shoulders, of Ethan's warmth seeping through his clothes as he leaned into Chad and laughed until tears streamed down his face, begged to differ.)
With a heavier heart than he'd come in with, Chad left the visitor’s center. His feet felt like weights were tied around his ankles on his way down the hall. Cream-colored walls turned back to hospital white, and the sound of tenuous joy faded the further he distanced himself from it. He never turned back to look at Ethan. He never said goodbye, and Ethan never said he was sorry.
In the end, they didn't have to. Deep down, beneath all the spilled blood and dried tears, they both already knew.