Chapter 17
JESSE
WEEK THREE
On the fifteenth day, they called me to something new. "Intensive correction session," the guard announced, like he was offering afternoon tea.
Different room this time. Smaller. No windows. Three staff members instead of the usual one, and equipment I hadn't seen before. More electrodes, bigger machines. The voltage meter went higher than anything they'd used on me yet.
"You're not progressing fast enough, Miller." Dr. Hendricks adjusted dials with clinical precision. "Time to escalate treatment."
I tried to tell myself Anthony Whelan was worth this. Tried to hold onto that truth as they strapped me down tighter than before. Electrodes on my temples, my chest, my wrists. More intimate places I won't name.
The session lasted four hours.
I lost consciousness twice. Each time they brought me back with smelling salts and ice water, then continued. Like I was a machine that had overheated and just needed cooling down.
When I finally woke up properly, I was in the medical wing. Restrained to a bed with leather cuffs, IV dripping something into my arm. A doctor was checking my pulse, frowning at his watch.
"Heart rate is concerning," he told someone outside my line of sight. "We may need to adjust protocol."
But they didn't adjust. The next day, they intensified.
That's when I understood. They didn't care if I survived this place. Maybe that was the point. Maybe breaking completely was the only way out - one way or another.
WEEK FOUR
I barely recognized myself in the bathroom mirror when they allowed me those precious seconds to see it. Eyes hollow, face gaunt, hands that wouldn't stop trembling. My cheekbones jutted out like knife edges.
Couldn't remember what day it was. Tuesday? Saturday? Time had become meaningless, marked only by the rhythm of abuse.
Worse: I couldn't remember Adrian's face clearly anymore. The details were fuzzing out like an old photograph left in sunlight. His smile, the exact shade of his eyes, the way his voice dropped when he said my name - all of it sliding away.
This terrified me more than the electroshock.
Maybe they were right. Maybe I'd imagined everything. Maybe Adrian never existed. Maybe the kiss was a delusion, a symptom of my sickness.
"I'm grateful for this chance to be fixed," I heard myself saying during confession sessions. The words came automatically now, muscle memory.
But did I mean them? I couldn't tell anymore. Couldn't distinguish between what I believed and what I'd been programmed to say.
Was that the same thing?
WEEK FIVE
I found myself staring at the ceiling fixture in my room. Same thoughts as my childhood bedroom, but sharper now. More urgent.
They'd confiscated my belt, but there were other ways. Window glass if I could break it. The toilet had hard edges. My own hands, if I had the courage.
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."
"He could die."
"Then his parents will be informed of the risks they're taking by insisting on continued treatment."
I was barely conscious, floating on whatever they'd given me for the pain, but I heard every word. Understood finally: they would kill me if my parents allowed it.
And my parents would allow it.
Better dead than gay. They'd always believed that. Trained me to believe it too.
They hadn't sent me here to fix me. They'd sent me here to eliminate the problem. If I couldn't be cured, I could be erased.
The truth was almost a relief. At least now I knew.
WEEK EIGHT
I woke in the medical wing to the sound of monitors beeping steadily. IV in my arm, heart monitor showing waves I couldn't interpret.
Max was somehow sitting in the chair beside my bed.
“He’s coming for you," he said quietly.
"Who?" My voice was barely a whisper.
“Him. Adrian. There's a legal case. Federal court."
I couldn't process this. Words without meaning.
"How do you know?" I asked, squinting at him. The edges of his form seemed blurry, like looking through water.
Max smiled sadly. "Because you know. Deep down, you know Adrian’s fighting like hell to get you out."
"I don't understand."
"You will, soon.” He stood, and I noticed for the first time that he cast no shadow in the harsh medical lighting. "Hold on just a little longer, Jesse. They're almost here."
When I blinked, the chair was empty. Had been empty the whole time.
No Max. No friend whispering reassurance. Just me and my broken mind, doing whatever it could to keep me breathing until rescue arrived.
I started crying then, silent tears that wouldn't stop. Even my hallucinations were abandoning me now.
The director appeared an hour later with a lawyer, both furious. Federal court order in hand: Jesse Miller to be released immediately into protective custody.
Medical evaluation had shown evidence of torture. The facility was under federal investigation. My parents were being charged with child endangerment.
The director was forced to comply or face federal charges himself.
They gave me my clothes. Everything hung loose now, my body carved away by weeks of minimal food and maximum stress. My hands shook too much to button my shirt.
A nurse helped, her eyes sad. "I'm sorry. We tried to stop it, they wouldn't listen."
"You didn't try hard enough."
She flinched but didn't argue.
They took me to the lobby, paperwork signed with signatures I could barely manage. My hands wouldn't stop trembling.
The door opened to Montana sunlight. I shielded my eyes, hadn't seen this much light in weeks. Everything was too bright, too loud, too much.
And there, on the steps, was Adrian.
His face crumpled when he saw me. This wasn't the Jesse who'd run from his parents' house eight weeks ago. This was someone hollowed out, broken, barely recognizable.
I took one step forward and collapsed.
Adrian caught me, and I was so light now, so fragile. Bird bones and sharp angles where muscle used to be.
"I've got you," he said, but I could see in his eyes that he wasn't sure there was anything left to have. My eyes felt vacant even to myself, like no one was home behind them anymore.
Behind him, Rebecca was crying. While beside him, Professor Okonkwo looked grim and official in his suit.
"We need to get him to a hospital," Okonkwo said. "Now."
As they lifted me into the car, I whispered something. Adrian leaned close to hear.
"Max said you were real." The words came out broken, barely breath. "I didn't believe him, you were too good to be true. I wanted to die. But he was right—you came for me, like you promised.”
Adrian's tears fell on my face as they drove away from Restoration Ridge, hoping they weren't too late to save what was left of me.
I closed my eyes and tried to remember what hope felt like. Tried to remember if Adrian's hands had always been this warm, or if I was just cold all the way through now.
The last thing I saw before unconsciousness took me was the mountains disappearing in the rearview mirror. Eight weeks of hell shrinking to a dot behind us.