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The nurse's shoes squeaked against the linoleum the whole way down the hall.
“This is our residential wing.” She swiped a badge against the panel by the door and it clicked open onto a corridor lined with identical doors. “You’ll be rooming with Neil. We use a compatibility model to pair patients and it’s had really good outcomes.” She walked backward half a step to watch his face, gave it up, and turned forward again.
At the last door, she knocked once and opened it. “Hi, Neil.”
A boy sat on the windowsill with his knees against his chest, speaking quietly to the glass.
“Neil.”
He looked over his shoulder. “The laundry chute is too narrow.”
“I know.” She stepped farther into the room. “This is Andrew. He’ll be your roommate.”
The boy turned. Andrew knew the face before he registered the rest of him. It had been on TV six months ago, bloodied beneath a headline that stayed there for weeks.
“Nathaniel Wesninski,” Andrew said.
Neil crossed the room before the nurse could react. His hand came up toward Andrew’s mouth, fingers spread as though he meant to tear the name out of him. The nurse caught him against the chest and drove him back, the force of it knocked a curl loose from her bun.
“Neil. Look at me.”
He kept his eyes on Andrew.
“He isn’t going to say it again.”
Andrew had made no such promise.
“This is Neil Josten,” the nurse said. “That is the only name we know.”
Neil stayed braced against her hand, shoulders tense and fingers curled.
Then he smiled. “He’ll cut you up too,” he said.
Andrew looked at the burns climbing one side of Neil’s face and disappearing beneath his collar. His right leg ended below the knee in a black prosthesis.
“Not if I cut him first.”
Neil’s smile dropped.
The nurse released him and smoothed the front of her scrubs. “That is enough.” She pushed the loose curl behind her ear. “Dinner is in forty minutes. The code of conduct is on the nightstand. I do not want to come back in here.”
The door shut behind her.
Andrew crossed to the empty bed and dropped his bag onto it.
Neil moved out of his way and climbed onto his own mattress with shoes still on. He drew his knees up and watched Andrew from there.
Andrew opened the closet and started unpacking. When he unzipped a side pocket, Neil went still and tracked the motion until he realized it was a pack of gum. Only then did his shoulders come down and his eyes slide back to Andrew's hands.
Once the bag was empty and shoved under the bed, Andrew crouched by his own shoe and worked a battered box of cigarettes out. He pocketed it and headed for the door.
A few seconds later he heard the scuff of one sneaker and the duller strike of a prosthesis trailing after him.
—
That first night, a nurse brought them each a paper cup.
“Medication.”
Neil took his with both hands, smiling, and thanked her three times, feet swinging off the edge of the bed.
Andrew took his with suspicion and swallowed under supervision. He allowed the nurse to check his mouth once. When she leaned in for a second look he turned his face out of her hand. She didn't push it.
She checked Neil’s with a tongue depressor and a penlight before collecting the cups, and shutting the door with a “Goodnight, boys.”
Neil counted to three under his breath. Then he worked two fingers into his own mouth, came away with two damp pills, and dropped them into his underwear.
“I’m not taking crazy-people pills.” He said it like Andrew had argued the point. “If they knock you out you can’t hear the door.”
Andrew rolled over and dragged the comforter to his chin.
Behind him, Neil made rounds. The window first, then the closet, opened and shut each time it clicked. Then the door to the hall. A long stretch of quiet followed, long enough that Andrew thought it might be finished. Then the window again.
In the dark, he could place Neil without trying to — the click of the prosthesis, the scrape of a fingernail testing a latch. He didn't examine why he bothered keeping track.
The mattress dipped, finally, as Neil climbed in fully dressed, prosthesis still on.
Andrew slept.
—
He woke to Neil standing over him and Andrew's hand closed around his wrist before he was fully conscious.
Neil looked down at it. “You have very fast reflexes. How do you feel about Ping-Pong?”
“And you have poor survival instincts. What are you doing.”
“Grand tour.”
"Rule," Andrew said. "Don't stand over me while I'm asleep. Ever again."
"Okay."
Andrew got up, stepped around him, and went to the bathroom without another word. When he came out, he went straight to the nurses' station instead of back to the room. A woman with a lanyard and a mug that said NURSING IS A WORK OF HEART looked up from her monitor.
"I want a single room."
"Roommate assignments are part of your care plan. Compatibility model's mandatory for the first two weeks." She didn't stop typing.
"I want a different roommate."
"That's not how the two weeks work." She glanced at him, not unkind. "Has he harmed you or done anything to put your life in danger?"
"He's insane."
"We don't use that language here." She said it without heat and went back to typing.
Andrew turned around. Neil was standing directly behind him, close enough that Andrew had to check the impulse to step back.
Neil leaned in, then grinned. “I know a place where you can smoke.” Then, he started for the door. Andrew stared at the ceiling for a second before following.
“You already know the cafeteria.” Neil pointed through a set of double doors. “Food’s bad on Tuesdays. I stopped eating the meatloaf in October.”
“What happened in October.”
“I stopped eating the meatloaf.”
A patient by the television looked up as they passed the lounge area. “Freak,” he said.
Neil stopped, turned his head slowly, and his grin stretched wide enough to pull a scar with it. “Careful,” he said. “I know where you sleep. There’s only forty rooms, Kyle Wiggings.”
The kid looked away and busied his hands with the Rubik's cube on his lap.
“That’s Kyle.” Neil twirled a finger by his temple. “Certified delulu.”
They passed a set of large doors, and Neil kept walking without slowing, eyes forward. Grand tour, indeed.
“Don’t use the second sink in the bathroom,” he said. “The mirror over it lies. They all do, but that one’s the worst.”
“Lies how.”
“Puts things on you that aren’t there.” He said it lightly. “Marks. All over. It’s very committed to the bit.” He tapped the side of his nose like they were sharing a strategy. “I brush my teeth in the dark now. You should too.”
Farther on, a girl sat alone at the end of the common-room table, knees drawn up onto her chair, staring at a spot on the wall. She looked up as they passed and lifted a hand to wave at Neil.
“Lisa’s nice,” Neil said. “But she keeps trying to die.” He was checking the ceiling tiles for something. “Breath wasted on those who don’t want it.”
He kept walking, on to the next door. This one had a strip of blue tape stuck diagonally across the handle.
“Don’t go in the blue-taped doors.”
“Why.”
“They’re bad doors. Took me a month to tape them all.”
“I see.”
“That’s how I got this burn.” Neil shoved his sleeve to the elbow and held his arm out sideways to show him the shiny, puckered patch just below the wrist.
Andrew did not ask why a door would burn a person. Neil was already walking off, one shoe untied. Andrew looked back. There was nothing remarkable about this door, only a plain plate reading DR. PROUST.
—
A few days in, Andrew found he liked courtyard time. A tree in the far corner sagged low enough to blot out the cameras on the eaves.
When, at last, he'd asked Neil to show him where he could smoke, Neil had looked at him like he'd spoken another language. It served Andrew right for expecting anything useful from the loosest screw in an already loose building. So he went out on his own. Neil never went out at all, and Andrew wasn't interested enough to ask why.
One afternoon, watching the doors empty toward the yard, he asked anyway, more out of boredom than anything. “What do you do while everyone’s out there.”
Neil didn't answer. He crossed to the desk, opened the bottom drawer, and tipped it toward Andrew: a fat, disordered stack of paper and a gallon bag of markers, half the caps missing.
By the time his own session with Proust ended that afternoon, Andrew felt wrong inside his skin. Proust had wanted his childhood in detail: names, ages, specific rooms and specific nights. Andrew was most of the way to the courtyard doors before he registered the noise.
Two orderlies had Neil between them, hauling him toward the exit while he threw his weight sideways against their grip. Kyle stood off to the side, delighted, laughing loud enough that a nurse down the hall glanced over.
“It’s doctor’s orders, Neil. Fresh air’s part of the plan—” one managed, breathless.
Neil bit down on the nearest hand. The man swore and let go on reflex, and between the sudden slack and his own momentum Neil hit the floor hard. He scrambled backward on his palms.
"We can sedate you," the orderly said, hand going to his radio. "Is that what you want?"
Neil's hand went to his own leg. He wrenched the prosthesis free at the socket in one motion and held it out in front of him like a weapon.
That was when he saw Andrew.
"Andrew." He didn't lower the leg. "Quick. Pull his hair. I'll bite his ankle."
"I'm not your dog." Andrew didn't move. "Finish what you started."
Before he could process Andrew’s answer, the second orderly got a grip on him from behind mid-blink, and this time Neil didn't fight it all the way down, just let himself be hauled the rest of the distance to the door, prosthesis still clutched in one hand, head turned to keep Andrew in view the whole way out.
Andrew watched and didn't move. He walked past the three of them eventually, out through the propped door, and let it fall shut behind him.
—
A few nights later, the same nurse came around with the same two paper cups.
"Medication."
Neil took his with both hands, thanked her, and swallowed under her watch, tongue out for the penlight after, same as every night.
“Check under his tongue,” Andrew said. “Both sides. He spits them into his underwear once you leave.”
The nurse’s penlight stopped.
Neil went still.
“Open again,” she said.
“I already—”
“Open.”
She found the pills pressed against his gum and removed them with a gloved thumb. Neil did not fight her. He did not look at Andrew. He sat rigid while she wrote something on her clipboard and left.
The door shut.
“You’ll sleep,” Andrew said. “That’s all they do.”
Neil turned toward the wall.
He did not make his rounds that night. He did not test the window or open the closet or count the seconds between footsteps in the corridor. He lay without moving until his breathing changed.
The room was quiet.
For the next three days, Neil spoke only when staff addressed him. He stopped announcing where he was going. He disappeared twice without asking Andrew to follow. When he came back, he offered no explanation.
Andrew had expected medication to make him simpler.
Instead, Neil became quieter and therefore harder to track.
—
Neil came in one evening with his cargo pants sagging. He crouched at his side of the closet and unloaded cans, lining them along the baseboard in a neat row. Andrew watched from his bed without offering to help.
When he reached the last pocket he pulled out a single chocolate pudding cup, foil lid intact, and held it out without looking up from the cans.
Andrew took it, turned it once in his hand. “Why.”
“Emergency provisions.”
It was not what Andrew had asked. Neil didn't seem interested in the difference. He went back to arranging the cans and writing something on each one with a black Sharpie.
—
Andrew left Proust's office hollowed out. He skipped the common room and went looking for somewhere quiet instead.
A nurse came around the corner ahead with a clipboard in hand. “Have you seen Neil?”
“No.”
“If you do, come find me. He’s missing again.” She was already moving past and didn’t sound worried.
Andrew kept walking, and his thoughts went to Neil without his permission — always checking doors and windows, hoarding cans of food and having enough of a mind to remember Andrew had stared at his chocolate pudding for too long.
Something creaked above him. He looked up as a ceiling vent swung open on one hinge and Neil's face appeared in the gap, upside down.
“Hi, Andrew. Hold this.”
A black prosthesis dropped out of the vent. Andrew moved two steps to the left and let it hit the ground. Neil followed a half second later, launching himself straight down and hitting the floor in an uncontrolled crumple.
Neil sat up, found the prosthesis, and began reattaching it.
“The ducts aren’t good enough,” he said.
“They’re looking for you.”
“I know.” Neil tightened the socket. “I keep telling people. Nobody believes me.”
Andrew watched him finish. Whatever conversation they were having, it wasn't the one Andrew thought it was.
“Dinner?” Neil asked.
Andrew turned toward the cafeteria.
Neil followed.
—
Andrew came back from his session to find Neil trying to fold himself into the bottom drawer of the dresser one day.
Hip wedged against the frame, both arms working to fit his shoulders. The prosthesis stuck out at an angle that couldn't have been comfortable.
“I didn’t fit last month,” Neil said, muffled. “I’ve been dieting so I think I can fit now.”
Andrew let the door swing shut and looked at the drawer, then at Neil. “Don’t you think if they were looking for you, the drawers in your own bedroom would be the first place they’d check?”
Neil frowned at that, working it over. He looked at Andrew for a second, then extracted himself, far less gracefully than he'd gone in, and sat back on his heels. His thumb went to his mouth and he bit at the nail.
Andrew sat on the edge of his bed.
“You think I’m crazy?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”
For a moment, Neil said nothing.
“I know you won’t lie to make me feel better,” he said.
Andrew’s eyes narrowed. “You know nothing about me.”
Neil pulled his desk drawer free and brought out the stack of papers Andrew had seen him guarding. He laid them on the floor between them. They were maps — floor by floor, drawn hard in ballpoint pen and marker. The residential wing, every one of its forty rooms numbered in Neil's cramped print. The cafeteria, corridors Andrew had walked and corridors he hadn't. A whole lot of small marks Andrew didn't understand.
“If I tell you what my head is saying,” Neil whispered, “will you tell me if it’s real?”
His voice dropped on the last few words until they were almost a secret.
Andrew looked down at the maps. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “I won’t lie to you, you tell me everything you know about Proust.”
Neil studied him for a long moment. Then he turned the first map around. “Deal.”
He sat down across from Andrew and looked up at him.
“Let me show you where he steals Vicodin from.”
—
Dr. Proust had a faint scar running across his forehead that thinned into his hairline. He talked soft and slow, always dragged his chair a few inches closer partway through, always told Andrew to relax. After one long session, Andrew walked back to the room, dropped onto his bed fully dressed, and lay staring at the ceiling with his shoes on.
He pulled the comforter up. His skin didn't fit right. He'd wait it out, same as always.
The door opened and Neil came in with two ping-pong paddles, one spinning between his fingers.
“Let’s play.”
Andrew turned to face the wall but Neil didn't leave; Andrew could hear him shifting his weight foot to foot. Andrew pulled the comforter over his head. The prosthesis clicked closer, unhurried.
“I stole the good ball.”
“Andrew, you can hit it at my face if you want.”
Andrew didn't move. After a long pause, he heard the click of the prosthesis retreating, and the door easing shut.
—
Neil liked to disappear a lot. One day a nurse came to the common room with her clipboard. “Where’s Josten?” No one answered. Lisa shrugged without looking away from the television. Two orderlies split off, radios crackling, a voice down the hall reading off red hair, prosthesis, patient ID.
Neil walked in a few hours later with a slice of bread folded over on itself like a taco, a cheese string wedged in the middle.
A nurse caught his arm. “Where were you?”
“Here.”
“You were not here.”
Neil took another bite, unbothered. “I was very quiet.”
Andrew didn't know how he'd gotten into a locked kitchen, or where else any of it could have come from. Neil dropped onto the sofa beside him and shoved the thing toward his face.
“Hiding again?” Andrew said.
Neil tore the bread in half and held out the smaller piece. “You ever had a quesadilla?”
—
At his next session a woman with pale, brown hair sat in Proust’s chair.
She welcomed him in and asked him to sit. “Hi, Andrew. My name is Dr. Dobson. You may call me that, or Bee.” Andrew stayed by the door. “Dr. Proust has been found unfit to continue treating patients at Easthaven,” she said.
Andrew looked at the empty chair beside her.
Bee folded her hands loosely in her lap. “If something happened in this room that made you uncomfortable, you can tell me. I’ll support you if you decide you want to report it.”
She waited without filling the silence.
“Everyone already knows about the chemical storage video,” Andrew said at last.
Bee nodded slowly. “Mm-hm. Very strange.” Andrew watched her. “The security office appears to have been unexpectedly breached,” she added.
Neither of them smiled.
Bee reached for the mug on the small table beside her. “Would you like some hot cocoa?”
—
The question came out of nowhere, the way most of Neil's did.
“What are you in for?”
Andrew was on his own bed, back to the wall, working a cigarette he wasn't allowed to light between two fingers. Neil sat cross-legged on his own mattress across the gap, one knee going, up and down, up and down, a small restless engine.
“Beating up some people who deserved it.”
Neil considered this. “Did you win.”
“I’m here, aren’t I.” Neil huffed. Andrew turned the cigarette over once. “What about you?”
He'd known who Neil was since before Easthaven. Nathaniel Wesninski. He'd said the name once, the first day, and watched exactly what it did. He never said it again. But he never pretended not to know, either.
“After your father found you?” Andrew said.
Neil's knee didn't stop so much as seize. “He’s still looking.”
“He found you in Baltimore.” Andrew said. “That’s how you got the scars. That’s how you lost the leg.”
The knee started again, faster, and this time it took the rest of Neil with it — up off the bed in one motion, already turned half toward the door, eyes cutting to the window and back.
“I have to go.” Backing away now, hands loose and ready at his sides. “I have to find somewhere. Before he—” The sentence didn't finish. “I have to hide.”
“Your father’s dead, Neil.”
Neil’s face didn’t change. “He’s not. He’s going to find me if I don’t go hide.”
“Your father already found you, rabbit.” Andrew said it the way he’d say the weather. “He caught up to you in Baltimore. Burned your face and took an axe to your leg. The FBI found him and killed him.”
Neil jerked like the words had struck him, shoulders snapping back, one hand flying to the scars along his jaw as if to check they hadn't just been put there.
“No.” Barely a whisper. Then louder, “No. That’s not — you don’t know that. You don’t know anything.”
“I watched it on the news. Everyone did.”
“Stop it.” He was shaking his head fast, hands pressed over his ears like he could stop the words from entering. “Stop saying that. Stop.”
He then ran out the door, the heavy clunk of his leg against the floor. Neil missed the pizza party and dinner. He missed the movie in the lounge that night, too. Andrew sat through all three without him.
Walking back afterward, he passed the nurses’ station. Two of them were bent over a clipboard, voices low, “—still nothing on the second floor. Code orange since six.”
Code orange. He'd never bothered learning the color system. He didn't have to guess what it meant.
He woke to Neil on his knees on the floor beside his bed. Not standing over him this time. But too close, regardless. His face was inches from Andrew’s, pale eyes wide in the dark, the bridge of his nose nearly touching Andrew’s. Andrew went still before he was fully awake, every muscle locking at once.
Neil did not seem to notice.
“I know he’s dead.” Neil’s breath touched his mouth. His voice caught, but he did not look away. “I saw them do it.” Neil said. “I know what dead looks like.”
Andrew watched him. Neil held his gaze a moment longer, like the sentence had cost him everything he had to give that night.
“I still hear him,” he continued. These words came quieter.
Then he got up, took off the prosthesis, climbed into his own bed, and was asleep within minutes.
Andrew lay awake a long time, staring at the ceiling.
He never saw Neil like that again. Whatever door had opened for those few seconds shut itself by morning, and Neil went back to checking windows and hiding pills and drawing himself with two legs.
—
Neil followed him up the stairwell without asking where they were going, one hand trailing the railing, until Andrew pushed the door open and daylight spilled down over both of them. Neil stopped dead on the last step.
“What’s up there.”
“The roof.”
“I know that.”
“Then why ask.”
Neil didn't move. His hand tightened on the railing, knuckles going pale, eyes fixed on the strip of open sky through the gap in the door. Then, as if he'd made his choice, Neil's hand found his wrist. Andrew's first instinct was to shake him off, but Neil was already pulling them both out into the light.
The roof spread out around them. Below, the courtyard sat empty in the afternoon sun. Neil's grip didn't loosen. His eyes moved fast — roof to fence to the stairwell door behind them, checking every angle a person could come at them from.
Then, slowly, his shoulders came down.
“Oh.” He turned a slow half circle, taking in the whole roof at once. “I can see everything from up here.”
“Correct.”
Neil looked over the low wall again, and for the first time since they'd stepped through the door his breathing evened out.
“Good find, Andrew.”
Andrew pulled his hand free and sat down against a roof vent, the metal warm from the sun. He worked a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, tapped one loose, and lit it cupped against the breeze.
When Neil sat down, he turned, drew his knees up, and faced Andrew head-on, forearms crossed over his knees and his chin propped on top of them, watching.
Andrew smoked and did not look at him.
"Staring," he said, eventually.
Neil didn't stop. "Andrew, break the deal," he said.
"No."
"Proust is gone. There's nothing left to trade."
"I'll think of something."
"I don't want you to." Neil's voice didn't change. "You're leaving in three days."
Andrew's hand stilled around the cigarette. At some point, he had stopped keeping track.
"You can't keep me sane from outside," Neil held his gaze. "I have to be able to tell what's real without you there”.
Andrew flicked ash off the ledge and said nothing, because there was nothing to say to it that wasn't also agreement.
"Andrew."
"I hate you," Andrew said. “Stay looney for all I care. Don’t expect me to come back when they lock you up.”
Andrew looked away then. Neil unfolded himself and got up, prosthesis clicking as he found his balance.
"C'mon," he said. "They're giving out chocolate pudding at dinner."
Andrew ground the cigarette out against the ledge and followed him down.
—
On Andrew's last night at Easthaven, Neil climbed into his bed.
Andrew woke immediately. Neil froze halfway under the comforter. Hair a mess. Prosthesis gone.
“Is this okay?”
Andrew stared at him. Neil waited, lying on the far side of the narrow mattress, facing him, one hand tucked beneath his cheek.
The mattress dipped under Neil's weight. Andrew could feel the heat of him through the blanket.
“Stay on your side,” Andrew said.
Neil nodded and closed his eyes.
Andrew stayed awake longer. Neil didn't move in his sleep. He slept exactly where he'd been told to stay, breathing quietly between them. Andrew watched him until his own eyes closed.
—
Neil was gone in the morning.
The other bed sat empty, the comforter folded into a neat square. Andrew dressed without looking at that side of the room.
Bee walked him out after breakfast. Nicky and Aaron were already waiting near reception — Nicky on his feet the second the door opened, moving like he wanted to hug him and stopping himself half a step short.
“Andrew.”
Aaron stayed behind, gave a single nod. “Hello.”
Andrew nodded back. Good enough.
Bee held a folder against her chest. “We’ll keep our sessions weekly. Leaving Easthaven doesn’t mean the work stops.”
Andrew scanned the reception area once.
“Where’s Neil?”
“We don’t know,” Bee said. “Staff’s been looking since this morning.”
Nicky’s head turned. “Who’s Neil? Did you make a friend?”
Andrew looked around the reception area once more.
“Just my crazy roommate.”
Bee’s voice softened. “You can call him. You can come back and visit whenever you’d like.”
Aaron took his bag, then. When the doors opened onto the parking lot, the day looked bright and ordinary. Nicky talked until they reached the car and Aaron got into the driver’s seat.
Andrew was opening the door when he looked up.
Up on the roof sat Neil, legs hanging off the edge — one flesh, one black metal — face turned up towards the sun. He looked small from down here.
Neil looked down. For a second, across all that distance, their eyes caught.
Andrew lifted one hand and put two fingers to his forehead.
Neil saluted back.
The roof stayed in the window until the car turned out of the lot and took it out of sight.