The entry the court motion cited: a dosage doubled eleven weeks ago with no corresponding clinical note, no documented behavioral escalation beforehand, no treating physician's signature authorizing the change. Just a number on a line, twice as large as the entry before it.
I close the file and look at Gage. He leans against the doorframe, arms folded, watching me.
"Ready to meet the man himself?" he says.
"Yes."
The court order that placed me here came from a motion filed by the patient's legal counsel, citing chemical-restraint practices at Greenridge: that doubled dosage with no documentation and a six-month gap in independent oversight. Someone argued this patient is being over-medicated, that nobody is watching how much or how often, and that the facility has a financial incentive to keep him quiet rather than treat him. The court agreed. I'm the independent set of eyes. I don't know who filed the motion. I don't need to. My job doesn't change based on who asked for me: observe, document, report.
Gage badges us through two security doors and a checkpoint staffed by a guard who looks up from his phone, sees Gage, and straightens so fast his chair rolls backward into the wall.
"Lewis."
"Harris."
The guard's eyes flick to me, then away, and he buzzes us through without another word.
Ward C sits at the end of its own corridor. The temperature changes the moment we step through, warmer and staler, like a room that doesn't get opened enough. The paint shifts from institutional beige to a flat gray that swallows light. Cameras placed every six meters, red indicators blinking. The deeper we walk, the quieter it gets, until the only sounds are our footsteps and the low electronic hum of a wing that runs on locks and monitoring.
Gage stops at an observation window. Reinforced glass, one-way, the control point for Ward C. Through it I count four cell doors down a short corridor. Three closed. At the far end, the fourth stands open, two guards stationed at the doorway.
"Wait here," Gage says.
Through the window, one of the guards steps close to an open cell. His body language is loose, one hand hooked in his belt like he's leaning on a fence at a barbecue. I don't know the protocol for cell proximity, but whatever it is, this man isn't following it.
Suddenly the guard's body jerks sideways. One arm extends at the wrong angle and his wrist folds over on itself so fast that for a full second my brain can't assemble what it's seeing into anything that makes sense. The guard drops to his knees and the sound that comes out of him is high-pitched and continuous, an animal noise that carries through the glass.
Then an alarm goes off.
The man in the cell doorway still has the guard's wrist in his grip. He's six-four at least, brown hair, green eyes, and gorgeous. Not the point. He's built like someone who has spent years in a space too small for his body and turned every inch of it into a training ground. He lowers the guard to the concrete and lets go, then steps back into his cell. Four seconds from start to finish and his expression doesn't change once.
The second guard hauls his colleague backward by the collar, screaming into his radio. Boots on concrete, voices layered over the alarm. A response team rounds the corridor in a tight formation: six men, shields, helmets, moving fast and drilled tight enough to work as one unit. They push into the cell together, a wall of Perspex and body weight. Through the glass I watch them drive the patient into the hallway, pin him face-down on the floor and lock his arms behind him.
He lets them. His head turns sideways and he stares at the wall.
A woman in scrubs arrives half a minute later. Small, dark-haired, moving fast. She draws from a vial, taps the syringe, and pushes the needle into his shoulder through a gap in the restraint team's hold. His eyes track the ceiling like none of itis happening to him. She finishes, caps the needle, and leaves without looking back.
I check my watch. The response team arrived forty-two seconds after the alarm. The sedation nurse, just over a minute. I write both numbers down.
Around me, the staff who froze by the observation window have started breathing again. A woman's hand shakes against the clipboard she's holding. The guard at the checkpoint sits with both palms flat on the desk, staring at his phone like he forgot how it works.
I look up. "What's his name?"
The woman with the clipboard stares at me. "What?"
"The patient. What's his name? I'll need his name for my records."
"Chadwick." She says it like she's not sure she heard me right. "Jude Chadwick."
Gage is back at my shoulder a few moments later. He must have gone in with the response team—I lost track of him after the alarm. I glance at his reflection in the window. He's not watching the corridor. He's watching me.
"I need to see him," I say.
"He just broke a guard's wrist."
"I know. I watched."
He stares at me, searching for the flinch, the waver, the part where this gets real.
