"They're going to take you," I say quietly. Just for him. "And I'm going to be here when they bring you back. Do you hear me?"
He doesn't answer. But the shaking slows.
"RJ."
"Yeah," he says. Into my shoulder. The word barely exists.
"I'll be here."
I let go.
I stand up — one arm across my ribs, breathing shallow, trying not to show how much it hurts — and I step back and I watch them bring the cuffs out and I watch RJ look at them and not resist and I watch them put his hands behind his back and I watch Gavin say something to him in a low voice and I watch RJ not respond to any of it because he's somewhere inside his own head now, somewhere that the cuffs and the room and the staff can't reach.
They walk him out.
He doesn't look back.
I stand in the middle of what's left.
***
Medical arrives for Sven. He's conscious by then — barely, eyes open, not tracking right — and they carry him out on a stretcher and the sight of it is its own weight to carry.
The common room empties. Staff. Residents. Gavin, pausing at the door to look at me with an expression I don't have room for right now, then going.
Jake stays. He's at the far end of the room and he doesn't come closer and he doesn't leave. Jim is beside him, standing quietly.
Dalton is next to me.
"Alex." He looks at my arm across my ribs. "You need medical."
"I'm fine."
"You're not."
"Dalton." I look at him. He looks at me. The professional distance is back in place — I can see him reassembling it, the careful architecture going up around whatever was on his face when I was holding RJ on the floor. "I stepped in front of him."
"I know." Something moves in his jaw. Not his expression — his jaw, the specific tell. "That's why you need medical."
"I didn't know it would go this way," I say. "He wasn't — he's not — he had been doing better."
"I know." He says it differently this time. Lower. "I didn't know what he was seeing when I came through that door. I didn't know."
I look at him.
"I know you didn't," I say.
Something in him releases. Not much.
I look at the door RJ went through.
I look at Dalton.
"Walk me back," I say.
He does.
***
