Chapter 10
Chapter ten
Liam
Iwake up to the smell of disinfectant and the steady beep of machines that aren’t quite familiar but close enough to make my stomach clench. Hospital. I’m in a hospital, lying on a narrow bed with scratchy sheets and a pillow that smells like industrial bleach.
For a moment, I can’t remember how I got here.
The last clear memory I have is of standing in Primark, holding a bag of clothes, feeling almost normal for the first time in forever.
Then there’s nothing but fragments. Flashing lights, shouting voices, the taste of blood in my mouth, and underneath it all, the crushing weight of hands on my shoulders dragging me back to places I thought I’d left behind.
“You’re awake.”
I turn my head, too quickly, because the world tilts sideways and pain shoots through my skull, and see a woman in scrubs sitting in the chair beside my bed. She’s maybe forty, with kind eyes and the sort of tired patience that comes from dealing with broken people all day every day.
“I’m Dr. Hassan,” she says gently. “You’re in St. Mary’s Hospital. Do you remember what happened?”
I try to speak but my throat feels like I’ve been screaming for hours.
Maybe I have. The memory comes back in flashes, the security guard’s hand on my shoulder, the weight of his body pressing me down, the way the world had tilted sideways and become a cell, became Brixton, became every nightmare I’ve carried for five years.
“I hit someone,” I whisper finally, the words scraping my throat raw.
“You had a panic attack,” Dr. Hassan corrects gently. “A severe one. You struck out because you felt threatened. It’s a normal trauma response.”
Normal. The word sits wrong in my mouth, tastes like lies. Nothing about me is normal anymore.
“Where’s Nicky?” I ask, because suddenly I’m terrified he’s gone, that he’s finally seen too much and decided I’m not worth the trouble.
“Your friend is in the waiting room. He’s been here all night, he wouldn’t leave even when visiting hours ended. He’s very worried about you.”
All night. I look toward the window and see pale morning light filtering through the blinds. How long was I out? How long did I lose this time? Did my mind shut down or was it aided by sedatives?
Not that it matters. It is not an important question. It’s not what I should be asking.
“The man I hit… is he pressing charges?”
Dr. Hassan’s expression softens even further. “The security guard is fine. He’s not pursuing any action. He... well, once he understood your situation, he felt quite bad about the whole thing.”
My situation. Such a clinical way to describe being fundamentally broken. So very pathetic that a security guard doesn’t want to press charges.
“I need to ask you some questions, Liam. Is that alright?”
I nod, though the movement makes my head throb.
There’s a bandage at the back of my head where I must have hit the wall, and when I lift my hand to touch it, I notice the hospital bracelet around my wrist. My name, date of birth, and some codes that probably translate to “psychiatric risk” or “flight hazard” or “handle with extreme caution.”
“Have you been experiencing panic attacks regularly since your release?”
“Sometimes.” The lie comes automatically, protective.
If I tell her the truth, that I can barely function most days, that leaving the apartment feels like stepping into enemy territory, that sometimes I wake up screaming and don’t know where I am…
If I say any of that, she’ll want to keep me here.
Or worse, send me somewhere else. Somewhere with locked doors and men in uniforms who think they know what’s best for me.
She writes something on her clipboard, and I wonder if she can tell I’m lying. Probably. People in her profession are trained to spot the gaps between what patients say and what they mean.
“What about flashbacks? Intrusive memories?”
This time I just nod. There’s no point lying about that, she would have seen the evidence yesterday, watched me relive five years of horror in the space of a heartbeat.
“Sleep disturbances?”
Another nod.
“Hypervigilance? Feeling like you’re always watching for threats?”
“Yes.”
“Avoidance behaviors? Staying away from places or situations that might trigger memories?”
I think about the spare key sitting unused on my bedside table, about all the times Nicky has suggested going out and I’ve found excuses to stay home. “Yes.”
She writes more notes, and I can see her building a picture of me in neat clinical terms. PTSD, severe. Adjustment disorder. Depression, probably. A whole catalog of broken parts that used to be a person.
“Liam, I want you to know that what you’re experiencing is treatable. With the right support, therapy and medication, you can get better.”
Can I? Or is this just something she says to everyone who ends up on her ward, the professional equivalent of “it’ll be fine” when everyone knows it won’t be?
“I’d like to keep you here for observation for another day or two. The head injury isn’t serious, but I’m concerned about your mental state. You dissociated for several hours yesterday, and that’s not something we can just send you home with.”
“I want to go home.” The words come out sharper than I intended, edged with panic. I can’t stay here. Can’t be trapped in another institution with people making decisions about my life without consulting me.
“I understand that. And this isn’t a sectioning, you’re not being held against your will. But I would strongly recommend staying voluntarily so we can assess your needs properly and get you connected with the right services.”
Voluntarily. The word is supposed to be reassuring, but I know how thin the line is between voluntary and involuntary in places like this. How quickly “recommendation” can become “requirement” if you don’t comply.
“Can I see Nicky?”
“Of course. I’ll get him now.”
She leaves, and I’m alone with the beeping machines and the smell of industrial cleaning products that takes me right back to prison. Everything in hospitals is designed to be sterile, impersonal, safe. But safe for whom? For the patients, or for the staff who have to deal with us?
When the door opens again, it’s Nicky who comes through it, looking like he’s aged ten years overnight. His hair is disheveled, his clothes wrinkled, and there are dark circles under his eyes that speak of a sleepless night in uncomfortable waiting room chairs.
But it’s his expression that cuts through me like a blade.
The careful way he looks at me, like I’m something fragile that might shatter if he breathes too hard.
The fear in his eyes, not fear of me, but fear for me.
The way he hovers by the door like he’s not sure he’s welcome, not sure if I blame him for what happened.
“Hey,” he says softly.
“Hey.”
He moves closer, pulls the chair Dr. Hassan was sitting in up to the bedside. “How are you feeling?”
“Like an idiot.”
“Liam…”
“I ruined everything,” I say, the words tumbling out before I can stop them. “We were having a good day. We were being normal. And I fucked it all up.”
“You didn’t fuck anything up. You had a panic attack. It wasn’t your fault.”
But I can see it in his eyes. The knowledge of how broken I really am. I don’t know if it was something I said or something I did, but he knows. The truth. All of it.
Shame wants to eat me up, but strangely I’m not too dismayed. It was a lousy, hopeless secret that was never going to stay mine. It is obvious and cliched and the source of endless jokes about dropping the soap in the prison shower.
I was eighteen. Too cocky for my own good. Good-looking, not that appearance means jack shit. But put all that together with the state of me, and it is the world’s easiest puzzle.
I’m glad Nicky knows, and now it is something I’m never ever going to have to put into words. But I’m sad at the pain it has caused him.
Yesterday, he could maybe pretend I was getting better, that with time and patience I’d heal enough to be the person he remembers.
Now he knows the truth. The full truth. I’m not getting better.
I’m not healing. I’m just learning to hide it better until something triggers me and I fall apart completely.
“The doctor wants me to stay for a few days,” I tell him.
Something flickers across his face. Relief, maybe? “That might be good. They can help you here.”
“You think I should stay.”
“I think...” He runs a hand through his messy hair, and I can see him weighing his words carefully. “I think I’m in over my head. I want to help you, but I don’t know how. I don’t know what you need.”
The honesty hurts more than any lie could. Because he’s right, he is in over his head, and so am I. We’ve been pretending that friendship is enough, that wanting to be better is the same as actually getting better. But yesterday proved how na?ve that is.
“I’m scared,” I admit, the words barely above a whisper.
“Of staying here?”
“Of everything. Of being here, of going home, of trying to be normal when I don’t even remember what normal feels like anymore. I’m scared of what I see in your eyes when you look at me.”
He leans forward, and for a moment I think he’s going to reach for my hand. But he stops himself, and the space between us feels like an ocean.
“What do you see?” he asks quietly.
“Pity. Fear. The way you used to look at wounded animals when we were kids. Like you wanted to help but didn’t know how, like you were afraid of making things worse.”
His face crumples slightly. “That’s not…”
“It is, though. Isn’t it? You look at me and you see how broken I am, how far gone.”
“I look at you and I see someone who’s been through hell and is still fighting. Someone who’s braver than he knows.”
“Brave?” I almost laugh, but it comes out more like a sob. “I can’t go shopping without having a breakdown. I can’t handle a stranger touching my shoulder without losing my mind completely. That’s not brave, Nicky. That’s pathetic.”
“That’s trauma.” His voice is fierce now, passionate in a way I haven’t heard since we were teenagers arguing about football or music or which pub had the cheapest pints. “That’s what five years in prison does to a person. It doesn’t make you pathetic. It makes you a survivor.”
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe him so badly it physically hurts. But I can see the truth in the careful way he holds himself, in the distance he maintains between us, in the way he talks to me like I’m something fragile that might break.
Maybe I am.
“The doctor says it’s treatable,” I tell him. “The PTSD, the panic attacks, all of it. Says that with therapy and maybe medication, I can get better.”
“That’s good. That’s hopeful.”
“Is it? Or is it just something they tell everyone to make them feel better about being fundamentally fucked up?”
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “But don’t you think it’s worth trying to find out?”
The question hangs between us like a bridge I’m not sure I’m brave enough to cross. Because trying means admitting how bad things really are. It means facing the depth of damage that’s been done, cataloging all the ways I’m broken, working through memories I’ve been trying to bury.
It means accepting help from people who wear uniforms and carry keys and have the power to lock me up if they decide I’m too dangerous or too sick to be free.
But the alternative is staying like this forever. Suspended between the life I lost and the life I’ll never be able to build. Watching Nicky look at me with that careful fear-pity mixture until he eventually gives up and walks away.
“Will you visit?” I ask. “If I stay, will you come see me?”
“Every day,” he promises immediately. “As much as they’ll let me.”
“Even if I’m here for weeks? Months?”
“However long it takes.”
I study his face, looking for the lie, the moment when his certainty will crack and show me the truth underneath. But all I see is exhaustion and worry and something that might be love, if I’m brave enough to believe in it.
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’ll stay.”
Dr. Hassan returns a few minutes later with papers to sign and explanations of what comes next. Assessments, therapy sessions, medication reviews. A whole program designed to take apart the broken pieces of who I am and try to put them back together in some semblance of working order.
As she talks, I watch Nicky watching me, and I see the exact moment when he realizes this is really happening. That I’m really this broken, really this far from the person he remembers. I see him start to understand what he’s signed up for by choosing to stick by someone like me.
And I see him choose to stay anyway.
It’s not enough to fix me. Nothing is ever going to be that simple. But for the first time since I woke up in this hospital bed, I feel something that isn’t fear or shame or crushing despair.
I feel like maybe, possibly, there’s a chance I might survive this after all.
Even if surviving means admitting how broken I really am.
Even if it means letting strangers see inside my head and catalog all the ways prison changed me.
Even if it means accepting that the boy Nicky fell in love with is gone, and hoping he might be able to love whoever emerges from the wreckage in his place.
Because… Nicky did love me. And I think I loved him. And curling up in my bunk at night, dreaming about what might have happened between us if I hadn’t been snatched away, was the one thing that held together what little sanity I have left.
I take a deep breath and slowly let it out.
The morning sun streams through the hospital window, and for the first time in years, I don’t automatically assume it’s going to be a bad day.
It might be. Probably will be, if I’m being honest.
But maybe that’s okay.
Maybe learning to survive the bad days is the first step toward having good ones again.