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“You seem very quiet this morning, any reason for that?” he asked leaning closer and I forced myself to remain where I was, knowing that if I took a sudden step back it would alert Roz to there being something wrong.

I picked up the cup of water and held it out to him instead of answering. And he took it the same way he had taken the cup of medication, unhurried and with two fingers coming down over mine before he had any real need to touch them at all.

“You didn’t sleep well.” It wasn’t a question and I looked at the chart and not at him.

“No. Not much,” I answered despite myself.

“And why is that?”

And God help me, I answered him again.

“Things from my past,” I said. “Keeping me awake.”

Every part of me knew better. It came out anyway, and it was the closest thing to being honest I had ever said to him.

Something moved through him at that. It didn’t quite reach his face, but it went through his shoulders and his hands before it was gone again.

“Mm,” he said. “I am told a hot shower, and exercise is very good for a troubled mind.” I swallowed my own spit and nearly took it the wrong way because I knew exactly what he meant. Or more like… what memory he was reminding me of.

Roz, behind me, made a sound like a chair leg on a floor.

“Water,” I said again, hoarsely. And with that confident smirk back in place, he drank it and he didn’t take his eyes off me the whole time. He just tipped his head back, swallowed, put the cup down on the lip and turned it once with two fingers so that it sat square to the edge.

“Open, please,” I said. “And lift your tongue.”

And he did it without hesitation. No argument, no reluctance whatsoever, tipping his head back and opening his mouth and lifting his tongue like the most cooperative patient on that entire ward.

Both pills were sitting underneath it.

Tucked right back in the pocket between the tongue and the floor of the mouth, exactly where they go.

I didn’t move.

He didn’t move either. He held it there, mouth open, eyes on mine, like he wasn’t frightened of being caught in the slightest, because being caught was the entire point. He had done it in front of me on purpose. He was showing me.

Then he closed his mouth, lowered his face and raised one eyebrow.

Well? Go on then… it said.

Because he knew I wouldn’t say a damn thing. Not when he owned me in this place and was the one calling the shots. So, I swallowed hard and answered the way I did with everyone else who took their medication nicely.

“Thank you,” I said.

I wrote administered on the chart, and my hand did it neatly, which surprised me more than anything else about that morning.

“Next, please.”

He smiled at me. Actually, fucking, smiled, and then stepped aside for the man behind him. I then watched him from the corner of my eye all the way across that room, and I saw exactly when he did it. He turned toward the trash can by the door and dropped the paper cup into it, as his other hand went past his mouth on the way. But if you hadn’t been watching for it, you would have simply seen a man putting a cup in a trash can.

Two seconds. Maybe less.

And then he went back to his wall, and put one shoulder against it, and looked at me.

“He likes you,” Roz said, about ten minutes later in between patients.

“He likes women,” I stated, repeating the very same thing she had told me the morning before.

“Mm.” She leaned past me for the next chart. “He hasn’t taken his eyes off you once since you walked in here, though.”