Chapter 12
Chapter twelve
Liam
The first thing I noticed about Harley Street Psychiatric Care wasn’t the tasteful artwork on the walls or the soft lighting designed to be calming rather than clinical.
It was not the expensive leather furniture in the common areas or the fact that my room has an actual window with a view of a small garden instead of a brick wall.
It was the price list I glimpsed on a clipboard when Dr. Hassan thought I wasn’t looking. Three thousand pounds per week. Minimum.
Even now, my stomach drops just thinking about it.
I’ve been here four days, which means Nicky has already spent more money on my mental breakdown than most people make in months.
Money he earned doing things I can’t let myself think about too clearly.
Blood money transformed into soft sheets and private rooms and therapy sessions with doctors who have posh accents and kind eyes.
I should be grateful. I am grateful. This place is nothing like the NHS ward I was expecting. No overcrowded rooms or overworked staff or the smell of industrial disinfectant that takes you straight back to the worst parts of prison. Here, everything is designed to be gentle, healing, and peaceful.
But it’s still an institution. And institutions have rules, and locks, and people in uniforms who make decisions about your life without asking what you think.
The staff are lovely, genuinely warm and professional in a way that feels authentic rather than forced.
Emma, my primary nurse, has curly red hair and freckles and speaks to me like I’m a person rather than a diagnosis.
Dr. Chen, my psychiatrist, is patient and thorough, never rushing our sessions, always checking that I understand what he’s saying before moving on.
But their shoes still thud against the polished floors in that particular institutional rhythm that makes my skin crawl.
Their keys still jangle from their belts, that metallic sound that means locked doors and controlled movements and the absence of choice.
When they do their rounds at night, I can see the fluorescent lights in the corridor bleeding under my door, harsh and unforgiving despite all the soft lamps and warm colors in the rooms themselves.
It’s like someone has taken a prison and wrapped it in expensive wallpaper, hoping no one will notice the bars underneath.
By the third day, the walls started closing in.
It began with small things and continued to build and build.
Now, I can’t stand any of it. The way the door to my room clicks when it shuts, even though it doesn’t lock because I’m not deemed dangerous.
The way meal times are scheduled and announced over the intercom system, robbing you of the simple choice of when to eat.
The way there are cameras in the corners of the common areas, discreet but unmistakably present.
Rationally, I know that this isn’t prison. I can walk out any time I want. I can refuse treatment, demand to be discharged, tell them all to fuck off and take my chances on the outside. But knowing something intellectually and feeling it in your bones are different things entirely.
Prison teaches you that institutions exist to control you.
That the people in uniforms, no matter how kind they seem, ultimately have power over you in ways that can destroy you.
That safety is an illusion, and the moment you start believing in it is the moment you become vulnerable to having it ripped away.
So when Emma asks how I’m feeling during morning medication rounds, I say fine.
When Dr. Chen wants to explore my “adjustment difficulties” in our daily sessions, I give him textbook answers about progress and coping strategies.
When the art therapist suggests I express my emotions through painting, I create bland, inoffensive landscapes that reveal nothing.
I’m being the good patient. Compliant. Cooperative. Exactly what they want to see.
But inside, I’m suffocating.
Not that I’m going to tell Nicky that. I can’t worry him, not after everything he has done for me. Especially not now that I’ve embraced everything that he means to me. You don’t worry the ones you love.
No, I’m going to suck it up and be brave for the next hour. I can do this.
So here I am, walking down the main corridor toward the visitors’ room, trying to focus on seeing Nicky rather than the institutional familiarity of the journey. Scheduled visits at set times, walking in single file past locked doors, the careful supervision disguised as helpful guidance.
I never had visitors in prison. I was never in the line. But I saw it every day, and now I’m acting that memory out.
There’s another patient ahead of me, a man in his fifties with wild gray hair and stained clothes who’s been muttering to himself since I arrived. He’s mostly harmless, the staff assure everyone, just confused and medicated and prone to inappropriate comments.
As I pass him in the corridor, he looks up from whatever he’s been examining in his hands, and his eyes fix on my face.
“Pretty,” he says, loud enough for everyone to hear. His voice is slurred from medication but unmistakably leering. “Pretty boys don’t last long, do they? Someone always wants a piece.”
The words hit me like a physical blow, knocking the air from my lungs.
The corridor tilts sideways, and suddenly I’m not in an expensive private hospital anymore.
I’m back in Brixton, walking to the showers with my head down and my shoulders hunched, trying to be invisible while knowing it’s already too late.
Pretty boy gonna get his cherry popped tonight.
Look at that sweet little arse. Bet it’s tight.
Fresh meat always screams the prettiest.
I’m running before I realize I’ve moved, my feet pounding against the polished floor as I flee down the corridor.
Staff members call after me, their voices concerned but distant, like they’re shouting from underwater.
I burst through the doors of the visitors’ room and there’s Nicky, sitting at a small table with a confused expression that immediately shifts to alarm when he sees me.
I don’t think. Can’t think. Can only act on pure instinct and desperate need.
I throw myself at him, my arms wrapping around his neck so tightly I’m probably choking him. He’s solid and warm and real, and he smells like home. He smells like safety and protection and everything the institutional walls can’t provide.
“Take me home,” I beg against his neck, the words muffled but urgent. “Please, Nicky. Take me home. I can’t stay here. I can’t do this.”
His arms come up around me immediately, holding me just as tightly as I’m holding him. One hand cradles the back of my head while the other rubs slow circles between my shoulder blades.
I feel better immediately. And not just in my mind, my body feels it too. My heart slows its frantic rhythm. My lungs breathe easier. All of me knows I’m safe with Nicky.
“Okay,” he whispers, and his voice is shaking. “Okay, we’ll go home. Right now. I’ll sign whatever papers they need.”
“Really?” I pull back just enough to look at his face, searching for any sign that he’s just saying what I want to hear.
“Really. Fuck this place. If it’s making you worse instead of better, we’re done.”
There are staff members hovering nearby now, drawn by the commotion. I can see Dr. Chen approaching with that careful, professional expression that means he’s about to explain why leaving would be a mistake, why I need to stay for my own good, why running away from treatment isn’t the answer.
But Nicky stands up, keeping one arm firmly around my shoulders, and faces them with a look I recognize.
It’s the same expression he used to wear when bigger kids tried to pick on me in primary school, or when teachers suggested I wasn’t trying hard enough.
Protective and immovable and absolutely done with other people’s bullshit.
I always loved it. Even back then when I didn’t need it. Even when I could fight my own battles, I adored that Nicky had my back. Now he is my lifeline. My buoy in a stormy sea. My savior.
“We need to discuss this,” Dr. Chen says gently. “Liam has made significant progress in just a few days. Leaving now, when he’s in crisis, could set back his recovery considerably.”
“He’s not in crisis because of his mental health,” Nicky replies evenly. “He’s in crisis because this place feels like prison to him, and he’s spent the last five years of his life in actual prison. You can’t treat trauma by recreating the traumatic environment.”
I’m stunned again. This time in a good way. All I did was cling to Nicky and beg to go home. How can he peer into my soul and see exactly why I need to get out of here?
“We understand that institutional settings can be challenging…”
“With respect, Doctor, you don’t understand shit.” Nicky’s voice hasn’t risen, but there’s steel underneath it now. “You see a patient having difficulties adjusting to treatment. I see someone I care about being slowly destroyed by a place that’s supposed to help him.”
I press closer to Nicky’s side, drawing strength from his certainty. This is why I need him. Not because he can fix me, but because he sees me as a person rather than a collection of symptoms. Because he listens to what I’m actually saying instead of what the textbooks tell him I should be saying.
“There are outpatient options,” Dr. Chen continues. “Therapy sessions, support groups, medication management. We can arrange a comprehensive care plan that doesn’t require residential treatment.”
“Good,” Nicky says shortly. “Set it up. Whatever he needs, but from home. From a place where he feels safe.”
It takes two hours to complete the discharge process.
Two hours of forms and consultations and careful explanations about the importance of continuing treatment.
Two hours of watching Nicky handle every detail with the kind of quiet competence that comes from having money and authority and knowing how to use it.
I sit in the visitors’ room and try not to think about how much this has all cost him.
Try not to calculate the waste. Four days at three thousand pounds per week, plus whatever fees are involved in early discharge, plus the outpatient treatment they’re arranging.
Tens of thousands of pounds that could have bought him a better car or a holiday or anything other than my spectacular inability to cope with getting help.
But when I try to apologize, he cuts me off.
“Don’t,” he says firmly. “Just don’t. This isn’t your fault, and it’s not about the money. It’s about what works for you, and this clearly doesn’t work.”
By the time we walk out of Harley Street Psychiatric Care, the sun is setting and London is settling into its evening rhythm. The street feels impossibly wide after days of narrow corridors, and the noise of traffic and pedestrians is almost overwhelming.
But it’s real. It’s messy and unpredictable and completely uncontrolled, and for the first time in days, I can breathe properly.
Nicky opens the passenger door of his car and waits while I settle myself in the familiar leather seat. The interior smells like his cologne and coffee and the particular scent of expensive materials that I’m slowly learning to associate with safety.
“You okay?” he asks as he starts the engine.
I think about the question seriously. Am I okay?
No, probably not. I still can’t handle crowds or sudden noises or being touched without warning.
I still wake up screaming most nights and spend my days trying to convince myself that the walls aren’t closing in.
I still see threats in every shadow and prison guards in every person wearing a uniform.
But I’m free. I’m sitting in a car that’s taking me home to a place where I can choose when to eat and what to watch on television and whether to leave my door open or closed. Where no one will call me pretty with that particular inflection that means you’re prey.
“I’m better than I was two hours ago,” I tell him honestly.
He nods, understanding exactly what I mean. “That’s enough for now.”
As we drive through the London streets toward home, I think about the staff at the hospital, how genuinely concerned they seemed about my wellbeing. How Dr. Chen really did want to help, and Emma really did care whether I was comfortable.
But caring and understanding aren’t the same thing. They saw someone with PTSD who needed professional treatment in a controlled environment. Nicky saw someone who’d been caged for five years and was being slowly destroyed by another cage, even if this one had better food and softer lighting.
Maybe that’s what love is, in the end. Not fixing someone or healing them or making their problems disappear. But seeing them clearly enough to know what they actually need, even when it’s not what the experts recommend.
I lean my head against the window and watch London blur past, and for the first time in days, I feel like maybe I’m going to survive this after all.
Even if surviving means accepting that some kinds of help hurt more than they heal.
Even if it means trusting that the person who loves you might understand you better than the professionals who trained for years to treat people like you.
Even if it means going home to figure out healing on your own terms, in your own time, in your own way.
The apartment building comes into view, and I feel my shoulders relax for the first time in four days.
Home. Whatever that means now, whatever we can make it mean together.
It’s enough.