The incident report comes up at dinner.
Not from Gavin — from Leo, who has heard something from someone in the way Leo always hears things. He leans across the table and says quietly: "Sven's filing the incident report tomorrow."
"And?"
"Gavin didn't write it. Sven insisted." A pause. "Nobody knows yet what he's putting in it."
I think about Sven on the floor. Sven on a stretcher. Sven, who moves toward threats instead of away, who has been in this building longer than almost anyone.
I think about what Sven could put in that report.
What he could leave out.
I pick up my fork and finish my dinner and don't say anything else because there is nothing to say yet.
Chapter fourteen
The door opens at eleven.
I'm not asleep. I've been lying on my bed in the dark with my arm across my ribs and my eyes on the ceiling, running the same loop — the sound of Sven's head hitting the floor, RJ's eyes yellow and wild, the weight of him collapsing into me,sorry sorrybarely a word. I've been running it for three hours and I'm not done with it yet.
Dalton steps in.
He looks at me the way he looked at me after I stepped in front of RJ — like he's taking inventory, checking for damage, running his own loop. His jacket is still on. He hasn't been to sleep either.
"I'm okay," I say.
"I know." He doesn't move. "I needed to see it."
I look at him for a moment — the jacket, the controlled stillness, the thing underneath the stillness that he's managingbut not quite managing. He came here because he needed to see me with his own eyes and that's a thing I file in the part of myself that has been learning him since the lodge hallway.
"Come in," I say.
He comes in and sits in the chair and I sit on the edge of the bed and we look at each other in the dark room. The bond is warm and present.
"What happens to him now," I say.
Dalton pauses. "Tonight — medical assessment, sedation probably, secure holding. Tomorrow the review process starts."
"How long does the review take."
"Depends on what they're reviewing for." He says it carefully. "If it's a standard incident review, two to three weeks. If they're considering reclassification—" He stops.
"How long."
"Less. When they've already made up their mind, the process moves faster."
I look at my hands. The ribs ache. I breathe through it.
"He knew what he did," I say. "The moment he came back. He stayed with it. He didn't run."
Dalton looks at me. "That’s improvement," he says. "And it should help, but whether it does—" He leaves it there.
We sit for a while. He doesn't try to fix it and I don't ask him to. The building settles into its late sounds around us — the reduced hum, the particular silence of a place full of people who are mostly asleep. At some point the silence shifts from something we're both sitting in separately to something we're sitting in together.
"I didn't know," he says. Not looking at me. At the wall, at the dark window. "When I came through that door. I didn't know what I was walking into."
"I know you didn't."
