"So how do you feel, Beverly? Being back at work?" Janet asked where we all sat around the table in the staff's room eating our lunch. I smiled at her before I looked at the other girls to do the same.

"It feels wonderful, that cold was a nightmare," I lied. I still didn't want to tell them the reason why I went home that day although they were my friends. And even if I was still ashamed that I let the guard out of the room when I absolutely was not supposed to, the situation was now over anyways.

Brandon and I were good again, so for my own advantage, I concluded it was best just to keep pretending I got home because I got sick.

"So, Harriet. Who was the guy you escorted through the corridor before? New inmate?" With curiosity I looked at Harriet, and noticed Mildred and Janet doing the same.

We all glared patiently at her as she chewed her food to swallow before being able to talk.

"That was  Joseph Acker, he's been wanted for years but never got caught until now. He's here because of his psychotic behavior and mental disorders. It didn't work out in prison,"

While listening carefully to Harriet's words, I nodded my head along with the other two girls by the table. On the inside, my head turned into a mess. Another criminal inside the hospital walls, right where he belonged.

"Was he set on your list?" Asked Janet.

"As it seems right now, he will be in my care, yes," Harriet responded as she looked at Janet with her beautiful, big, brown eyes.

"What is he convicted for?" Without helping it, the words flowed out my mouth in inquisitiveness.

Harriet stopped in motion by my obtrusive question, hesitated whether to respond.
My stomach turned with immediate regret, but then, thankfully, she decided to speak again.

"Murder," Her one short chosen word requited my desperate curiosity, and the conversation was left into emptiness. Mildred and Janet looked at their plates while waiting for the awkward moment to pass.

"Speaking of murderers, how's it going with Brandon, Beverly?" Mildred suddenly asked. The other girls' eyes got bigger with their shared nosiness, and I felt my cheeks heating up by the thought of the previous kiss.

Obviously I would never tell them about that, but it was hard to think about something else as his name was mentioned out loud.

"We're doing progress and he's behaving. He actually talks to me, which I thought he never would the first time I met him," Grinning as I spoke, I felt proud about the way I actually managed to handle Brandon like no one else could.

"I can't believe it, he's never been cooperative before, at least as far as I know," Mildred responded, and Janet and Harriet nodded their heads to agree with her statement.

I shrugged, not knowing how to respond to Mildred's words. I still didn't know why he was so cooperative with me, and even if I was aware of him feeling something different for me, he couldn't have known that he would feel that way before he even met me.

"Did you hear about last Saturday? About the situation with Brandon?" She asked after noticing my silence. I faded back to reality as I got interrupted in my thoughts. My heart skipped a beat, and now I was the one with big, curious eyes, looking back at Mildred. I pretended not to know what she was referring to, and shook my head desperately.

"No I didn't, what happened?"

"According to Ethel, she exposed Brandon in an incursion, hurting himself with a piece of glass in his room. When she tried to terminate him, he freaked out and it didn't stop. Even guardsman Burton tried to settle him by holding him down, but nothing worked, it was like he was manic. It ended up with him being put in the hot tub, since there was nothing else to do," Mildred's voice was serious and concerned, and the atmosphere between us got grave as before.

The imagination of the dramatic situation inside of my head was obscene. One part of me was glad that I wasn't here to witness the horrifying, tragic outburst, while the other wished I was, because if I would've been present, it might not have happened at all. At least I got to know what happened to him without asking Brandon himself, and that was relieving.

Even if I felt so bad for him, I understood why Ethel made the decision and put him in the tub. For her, he was just an outrageous, uncooperative and violent patient.

It was usual for inmates like Brandon to end up in the hot tubs if something dramatic, like this described occasion, appeared.

Only if I hadn't left him... This plight occurred because of me. If I wouldn't have left that day, none of this would have happened.

Brandon wouldn't have cut his arms open, Nurse Browne wouldn't have had to make the decision to put a patient in the boiling water, and Brandon probably wouldn't have had a burst of manic seizure. Also, his beautiful pale skin wouldn't have been burned and destroyed by the hot water.

All of this was my fault, I made the decision to overtake Brandon in my care, yet I couldn't seem to handle it. I was the one responsible for the way he felt for me, still I made the malicious decision and left him even though I knew he needed me to be there.

For six days I left him, even after he told me that he needed me, even though I was aware he hurt himself when he was without me for too long.

Never had I felt this selfish before. My patients should be the only thing for me to prioritize, not myself. I couldn't run around the way I wanted just because I got scared of a mentally ill person. It was my choice to work with people like that and I knew terrifying situations would appear sooner or later. I knew it from the first day of my five-year-long education.

The feelings of guilt and bad conscience rushed over me but I tried to stay settled in front of my friends.

I had to apologize to Brandon, for leaving him, and for putting him through this torturing pain. Now the last thing I could do for him was to make sure that he would get out in the sunlight. Because he deserved anything after this.