Chapter 18 #2
Sam coordinated with other Restoration Ridge survivors who were coming forward to testify. Each story they shared was a fresh horror—ice baths, electroshock, psychological torture disguised as therapy. Jesse wasn't alone in what he'd endured, which somehow made it both better and worse.
Andrew worked with Professor Okonkwo on the legal strategy. Jesse's parents were facing federal charges for conspiracy, extortion, and civil rights violations. The facility itself was under investigation by multiple agencies. There would be justice, eventually.
Elijah just sat with me in silence, which was the best support he could offer.
He'd bring coffee and books I couldn't concentrate on, crossword puzzles that remained blank.
Sometimes he'd talk about random things—movies, campus gossip, anything to fill the oppressive quiet.
But mostly he just sat, solid and present, reminding me I wasn't alone in this vigil.
Diana handled all the logistics that kept our lives functioning—hotel rooms for everyone, the rental car, coordinating with our professors about missed classes, managing the small army of people who wanted to help.
She'd appointed herself our operations manager, making sure we could focus on Jesse without worrying about mundane details.
Rebecca became part of our family seamlessly.
She'd lost everything too—her family, her church, her entire support system—but she never complained.
Instead, she threw herself into helping however she could.
She brought Jesse's favourite books from home, photos from before everything went wrong, small tokens of the life he'd had to abandon.
"He'll want these when he wakes up," she'd say, arranging items on his bedside table like talismans. "Reminders that he had a life before. That he can have one again."
We all waited for Jesse to come back to us. If he could.
The uncertainty was the worst part. Not knowing if the Jesse who'd argued passionately for love and dignity would survive what they'd done to him. Not knowing if the person who'd kissed me with such desperate honesty would remember why it had mattered.
Not knowing if I'd lost him before I'd even really had him.
I was at his bedside when his eyes fluttered open for the first time on the third day. The doctors had reduced the sedation low enough that morning, and I'd been waiting, hoping, praying for any sign that Jesse was still in there somewhere.
"Jesse? Can you hear me?"
His eyes opened slowly, blinking against the harsh hospital lights. For a moment, hope bloomed in my chest—he was awake, he was conscious, maybe he'd be okay.
But his eyes were unfocused, looking through me like I wasn't there. Like I was a ghost, or he was. The blue I'd fallen in love with was clouded, distant, seeing something I couldn't see.
"Jesse, it's me. It's Adrian. You're safe now."
Nothing. No recognition, no response. He stared at the ceiling, breathing shallow and quick, like he was trying to disappear into the mattress.
"This is normal," the doctor said quietly from behind me. "The sedation, combined with the trauma—it takes time for the mind to surface. Give him time."
But even as she spoke, I could see Jesse's breathing getting faster. His hands, so thin now they looked like bird bones, began to twitch against the sheets.
Then I noticed them—the restraints around his wrists. Soft fabric, not chains, but restraints nonetheless. My stomach dropped.
"Why is he—?"
"Safety precaution," the doctor explained. "Patients with severe trauma can sometimes hurt themselves when they first wake up, not knowing where they are."
Jesse's eyes suddenly snapped into focus, wild and terrified. He looked around the room like he was seeing it for the first time, taking in the machines, the IV, the clinical white walls. His breathing turned rapid, panicked.
"No," he whispered, so quiet I almost missed it. "No, no, no..."
Then he saw the restraints.
The change was immediate and devastating. Jesse's whole body went rigid, every muscle tensing as the reality hit him. He wasn't free. He was still trapped, still held down, still helpless.
"No more, please, no more—" The words came out broken, desperate, a plea that tore through my chest like a blade.
His heart monitor erupted in alarms as his pulse spiked. He began thrashing against the restraints, not trying to escape but lost in pure panic, reliving whatever they'd done to him in that place.
"Jesse, you're safe. You're in a hospital." I reached for him instinctively, then stopped myself—what if my touch made it worse? "You're not there anymore. You're safe."
But he couldn't hear me. In his mind, he was still strapped to whatever table they'd used, still feeling electricity coursing through his body, still trapped in their version of salvation. The sounds coming from his throat weren't quite words—just raw, animal terror.
"Please, I'll be good, I'll be good, just stop—"
Those words destroyed me. The idea that Jesse thought he deserved this, that he'd internalized their message that his pain was somehow justified, was unbearable.
"Sir, you need to step back," a nurse said, gently but firmly moving me away from the bed.
"He needs to know he's safe—"
"He's not in reality right now. He's trapped in memory. Anything we do might feel like part of the trauma."
I watched, helpless, as the medical team surrounded him. More alarms joined the first as his blood pressure spiked dangerously high. Jesse was fighting so hard against the restraints that he was hurting himself, leaving red marks on his already damaged wrists.
"Get me 2mg of lorazepam," the doctor ordered.
"No!" The word burst out of me before I could stop it. "Don't sedate him again. Please, he's been unconscious for days—"
"Mr. Costas, his heart rate is at 180. If we don't calm him down, he could have a cardiac event. This is not a choice."
I watched them push the medication into his IV, watched the fight slowly drain out of his body like air from a punctured balloon. His desperate pleas faded to whispers, his thrashing slowed to tremors.
But just as his eyes began to close, as the drugs pulled him back under, he turned his head slightly toward me. For one brief, devastating moment, his gaze found mine—clearer than it had been since he'd woken up, present and aware and utterly broken.
"Adrian, you're real," he whispered, the word barely audible but unmistakably my name. "Please... save me."
Then his eyes drifted shut, and he was gone again.
The words hit me like a physical blow. He'd recognized me. In that moment of terror and confusion, when he couldn't tell past from present, when he thought he was still trapped in that hellish place—he'd called for me. Asked me to save him.
When I was the reason he needed saving in the first place.
"Is he... will he be okay?" My voice came out hoarse.
"Physically, yes. His heart rate is stabilizing.
But Mr. Costas..." The doctor turned to me, her expression grave.
"This is what severe psychological trauma looks like.
What he experienced—extended electroshock therapy, sensory deprivation, psychological torture—it rewires the brain's response to stress.
He may not be able to distinguish between past and present for some time. "
I sank into the chair beside his bed, my legs suddenly unable to hold me. "So every time he wakes up, he'll think he's still there?"
"Possibly. For a while. The mind is trying to protect itself, but trauma this severe... it's going to take time. A lot of time."
After she left, I sat in the silence, staring at Jesse's too-still face. The restraints were still there, a cruel necessity that made me want to tear the whole room apart.
This was what they'd done to him. This was what my pursuit had cost.
I thought about that first night in the bar, when I'd seen him turn to leave the bathroom looking terrified and I'd blocked his path. How I'd smirked, thinking it was funny that one of the protesters had been forced to use our space. How I'd taken it as an opportunity, a challenge, a game.
I thought about every time I'd cornered him on campus, enjoyed watching him stutter and flush, mistaken his confusion for attraction instead of recognizing it as the beginning of his world falling apart.
I thought about how proud I'd momentarily felt when he'd finally kissed me, like I'd won some kind of prize. Never considering what it would cost him.
The Jesse who'd kissed me had been whole. Struggling, yes, but whole. The person lying in this bed was broken in ways I couldn't even comprehend, might never be able to comprehend.
"I'm so sorry," I whispered to his unconscious form. "I'm so fucking sorry, Jesse. I did this to you. I lit the match that burned your world down, and I thought it was romantic. I thought I was saving you."
But I hadn't saved him. I'd destroyed him.
The worst part was knowing that somewhere in his chemically quieted mind, he was still trapped in that place.
Still feeling their hands on him, their electricity in his body, their voices telling him he was sick, broken, evil.
And he might wake up there again and again, unable to escape even in sleep.
I reached out carefully, barely touching his hand where it lay beside the restraint. His skin was warm but lifeless, no response to my touch.
"I'll be here," I promised him, even though he couldn't hear me. "However long it takes, however many times you wake up scared, I'll be here. I'll keep telling you you're safe until you can believe it again."
If you ever can, I thought but didn't say. If there's enough left of you to believe anything again.
The machines beeped steadily, marking time in a room where time had stopped meaning anything. Outside, the sun was setting, painting the walls orange and red.
Somewhere out there, people were going about their normal lives, complaining about homework and jobs and traffic. And here, the person I loved was trapped in a hell I'd helped create, fighting a war in his own mind that I couldn't reach.
I settled back in the chair, prepared for another long night of waiting. Waiting for Jesse to come back to me, if he ever could. Waiting to see if the person I'd fallen in love with had survived what my love had cost him.
The guilt sat in my chest like a stone, heavy and sharp and permanent. This was my burden now, the weight of knowing that every moment of Jesse's suffering was connected to my choice to pursue him. To turn his life into my entertainment.
I deserved to carry it. But Jesse didn't deserve to suffer for it.
And that was the hell I'd built for both of us.