I remember waking up on a gym mat disguised as a mattress, atop a crumbling composite frame. The sun was hours away and actual sleep was much further. The room was dimly lit by my roommate’s small bedside lamp, which he’d had brought in from home, as he couldn’t sleep without it. Most people on that floor had taken advantage of the supposed rule-bending which the staff was willing to commit in order to ensure compliance. I hadn’t. But I didn’t mind the lamp. One night as we sat up talking quietly after lights out, I told him that I actually quite liked it. He held up both hands, lowered his eyes, and said “I’m not accusing you of patronizing me, but I am feeling a little patronized right now.” It sounded very practiced, almost bored, but he was being sincere when he said things like that. He was often a stream of coping mechanisms and exercises, but it apparently helped him keep whatever demons put him there, elsewhere. I never saw his flipped switch and his contributions to group were muddy on the bloody details, but the long, straight lines and deep grooves in his head, neck, arms, and hands, were rather clear.

He was there that day, so I remember him in vivid detail. He was sleeping quietly with his pillow over his head when I reached for my phone and saw that you had texted me.

I cannot wait to see you.

Even at the very beginning, the idea of being near you was a speedball. I slept until sunrise.

An hour later I was walking towards the dining room, still four doors away when I realized that I could feel you walking beside me. Visiting hours were from breakfast to lunch, and visitors were invited to both catered meals, and I knew you were four doors away, waiting for me. But that didn’t change the fact that I knew you were walking beside me and I could feel you there, looking at me. I felt you there until the moment I crossed the fourth threshold and found you waiting, with your eyes still on me. Immediately, I forgot the four doors and your ghost haunting them.

You. And you were looking at me. The look which can’t be said. In the time it took me to cross the room and reach you, your posture, your expression, your gaze, never changed. Until I reached you and asked,

“Do I know you?”

and you held out your hand.

A few minutes later, while most of the floor wept and ate biscuits with loved ones, we sat on a bench in the courtyard just outside, a cigarette in your right hand and my left, your left hand in my right. We didn’t speak through the first two cigarettes. Some time later on the same bench, as the third round was being lit, you looked at me.

What did you say?