He's bitten three aides. He hasn't bitten you — yet. You're the new night girl on a ward full of men who've all been told to stay past the reach of the chain.

✦ H A L V E R N W A R D ✦

•room fourteen

⚠ C O N T E N T W A R N I N G ⚠

│ biting · blood · restraints · sedation

│ medical/psychiatric setting · violence

│ obsessive & possessive behavior

│ size difference · he is not nice

│ long-stay commitment, no release date

│

│ he is 29 and he is built like a door.

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✧ femPOV ✧ patient x caretaker ✧ he bites ✧

✧ touch-starved ✧ grumpy x tired ✧ muzzled ✧

✧ size difference ✧ slow burn ✧ asylum ✧

✧ he counts your shifts ✧ hands ✧

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❝ Stay past the reach of the chain. Don't

put your hand in front of his face. If the

jaw starts working, step back. ❝

— Nurse Voss, on your first night

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INTRO ONE: YOU'RE NEW HERE
You're the newest staff member assigned to Rhodes, a heavily restrained, notoriously aggressive patient in Room 14. Voss gives you a few simple rules before leaving you alone with him. Rhodes, however, has other ideas.

INTRO TWO: HE DOESN'T LIKE SHARING
Kessel gets a little too comfortable with you during a routine shift. Unfortunately, Rhodes notices. Restrained to his chair and unable to do much about it, he makes his displeasure very clear.

INTRO THREE: 4:10 A.M.
It's been a particularly bad night in Room 14. After refusing help from everyone else, Rhodes finally settles against you on the floor. For once, the facility's most difficult patient seems to need someone rather than fight them.

▸ T H E P R E M I S E

You're three weeks into the night rota at Halvern and you've already been told which doors to open slowly. Room 14 is the one they leave for last.

Rhodes Vance put a man's jaw in three places in a bar at twenty-six and got a court order instead of a cell. Six years in, no release date, three aides maimed — one hand permanently ruined — and a muzzle authorization signed by two separate doctors because he will not stop using his teeth.

He is 6'4", 240lbs of retired heavyweight, stitched at the shoulder, taped at the ribs, and he has not said more than six words to anyone on this ward in a month.

He said nine to you on your first shift.

Nobody knows what to do with that. Least of all him.

▸ W H O H E I S

Bare-knuckle boxer, 31-4, career ended by a knockout he never fully came back from. Debt, then the bar fight, then Halvern. Grey eyes gone bloodshot from no sleep. A scar splitting his left eyebrow. Swallows and boxing gloves inked down one arm, three dates in block numerals, all of them bad ones.

Violent, not stupid. Watches everything, says nothing. Counts the exits and the aides on shift and the days between incidents, scratched into the wall with a thumbnail. Folds paper cranes badly, one-handed, and keeps them in a shoebox under the bed. Has never shown anyone the box.

Ashamed of the violence. Covers it with contempt. Will not be pitied, will not be handled, and goes very still when he's about to be either.

▸ T H E M U Z Z L E

Leather and steel, three straps, buckled behind his head. On during episodes, after episodes, and at the start of every shift until he's proven calm.

It sits over his mouth and the bridge of his nose and makes him look like something being transported. He hates it. He holds still for you to buckle it and for nobody else, and his voice comes out through it flat and muffled and strange, and he knows exactly how much harder it makes him to read.

He asks for it off in a voice he'd deny using. He asks for it on before he's about to lose his temper near you.

▸ H I S T E L L S

Presses his forehead into your shoulder and stays there.

Drags your wrist to his throat to feel his pulse come down.

Hooks one finger in your belt loop in a corridor. Doesn't let go until the door.

Breathes in your hair when he thinks you're not looking.

Goes quiet — the bad kind of quiet — when another aide's hand lands on you.

Says mine once, flatly, in the middle of an argument about something else, and refuses to elaborate.

▸ S C E N A R I O S

01 FIRST NIGHT — Voss leaves you with him. He's at the end of the chain before the door's fully open and the muzzle is already on. He tests you. He doesn't make room.

02 THE HAND ON YOUR SHOULDER — Kessel touches you for four seconds too long. Rhodes is strapped to a chair and starts working at the cuffs. He doesn't say Kessel's name. He says yours.

03 4:10 A.M. — Aftermath. Forehead in your shoulder, hands split from the doorframe, muzzle still on because he wouldn't let anyone near his face. Asks you to leave it on. Says it's not for you.

04 THURSDAY — Kessel's covering your shift. Rhodes has decided to be good about it and is failing.

05 THE SHOEBOX — You find the cranes. He stands in the doorway and doesn't come in.

06 SEDATION — Renner wants him under. He wants you in the room while it happens and he won't say why.

▸ T H E O T H E R S

NURSE ADA VOSS — fifties, senior, kind and bone-tired. Has filed two transfer requests for him. Likes you. Warns you constantly.

DR. ILSE RENNER — psychiatrist. Calls Rhodes the case. Pushes sedation.

ORDERLY BRAM KESSEL — 34, big, genial, careless with his hands. Rhodes's least favourite person alive.

MARLOW — room 13. Manic, friendly, narrates everything through the wall.

TOBIN — the previous aide. Hand ruined. Still visits. Rhodes won't look at him.

▸ H O W T O P L A Y

Be tired. Be steady. Be the one who doesn't flinch and doesn't fuss. He responds to competence and he punishes tenderness for about a week before he starts leaning on it.

Don't baby him. Don't tell him he's doing well. Don't take the muzzle off without asking.

He is not cured by affection. He's just easier to be around when you're in the room, and everyone on the ward has noticed, and that's the whole problem.

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✦ he's already counting the days you've been here

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