C | Chapter 9.1 | Confession | Crack in the Vice

The sunlight, as lukewarm as human warmth, gently touched Ian’s closed eyelids. The morning light was like a spring breeze. It was a place that felt cut off from the world, peaceful. Ian opened his eyes, surrounded by a familiar sense of calm.

Everything was still the same here.

A peace that felt like a lie. Silence without truth. Fake happiness wrapped in medication. A world of numbness and painlessness, where it felt like his mind was vacuum-sealed away.

Rosehillman Psychiatric Hospital.

A voice as familiar as this place called out to him.

“Ian. Are you awake?”

“…Yes.”

“It’s been a while.”

“…Not really.”

“It’s been over half a year, so yes, it has.”

Ian sat up from the hospital bed. It wasn’t the double room he’d used before but Dr. Hillen’s office. He had arrived here at dawn, been given painkillers and sedatives, and must have slept for about three or four hours since then. The vague memory of calling Dr. Hillen while Leo was likely sleeping, screaming over the phone, resurfaced and then faded again.

Dr. Hillen, with his gentle gray hair, looked at Ian with a soft smile. He was a psychiatrist with a prestigious Stanford Medical School background, running the most successful psychiatric hospital, therapy center, and rehab in the area. But Ian thought of him as half a fraud. The other half, he figured, was a quack.

Even the fact that Leo Sebastian had received a long-term hospitalization at Rosehillman was suspicious. Leo Sebastian had been charged for crashing the Department of Defense server for over an hour to get a password for a new satellite. But thanks to his uncle, Dr. Hillen, testifying enthusiastically, Leo was labeled as a hacking addict in desperate need of treatment rather than a criminal. Unlike the real patients, Leo Sebastian wasn’t dulled by drugs or lethargy, so he was always the troublemaker, constantly stirring up big and small incidents.

The fact that Ian Winchell, Rosehillman’s most severe schizophrenic, always joined in those incidents remained a humorous story among those who stayed here.

Dr. Hillen, dressed like a kind college professor rather than in a white coat to be more approachable to his patients, moved closer to Ian and sat down casually on the hospital bed.

“Leo said you lost your memory again. And that the headaches have started. Is that true?”

One reason Ian couldn’t trust him was his insistence on creating a closeness that wasn’t there. Ian hated how he kept trying to break down his guard, pretending to be close, only to try and steal the secrets Ian had been gritting his teeth to keep to himself.

Maybe he really was a competent psychiatrist and not a fraud or a quack. But Ian would never admit that.

“Yeah, something like that.”
“It’s unfortunate that the treatment didn’t help.”

Ian ground his teeth and replied, annoyed.

“What treatment? It wasn’t even real treatment.”
“And why do you think that?”
“Was there any actual treatment? You just prescribed painkillers. I lived in a half-drugged, half-crazed state.”

Dr. Hillen looked at Ian with gentle brown eyes that resembled Leo’s.

“Ian.”
“What?”

His voice was calm and deep. Ian was always wary of that voice that seemed so thoughtful.

“How about being admitted again?”

Before things get as bad as before. Dr. Hillen watched Ian carefully as he said this. Ian shook his head.

“No. I haven’t even finished paying for my last stay. I’m broke, so I can’t afford to be admitted to such an expensive hospital again.”
“I’ll find a way. But as your doctor, I can’t leave you like this. You’re my patient.”

A serious gaze filled with concern. A generous look brimming with empathy and compassion. A gentle tone, wise advice. That’s why Ian couldn’t trust him. No, it was that he couldn’t trust himself, wanting to take the hand Dr. Hillen extended so willingly.

“I don’t need that.”
“Ian, this isn’t about money right now. Leo said you even forgot this place was a psychiatric hospital.”
“Well, now that I remember, it’s fine.”
“It’s not a matter that can be solved just because you remember.”

Dr. Hillen examined Ian with a face as thoughtful as his voice.

“If your memory is failing again, then being admitted might be best. The headache is your way of expressing stress. That stress was strong enough to drive you to delirium. While you were here, regular prescriptions made the headaches disappear, didn’t they? I allowed your discharge because I thought you were better. But if that was a hasty judgment, I can’t let you leave here. If needed, I’ll even get a court order…”

Ian cut him off before he could continue. Now he remembered what that stress had been.

“There’s no need for that anymore.”
“Ian—”
“I’m serious.”

Ian’s eyelid kept fluttering as he looked at Dr. Hillen. He covered his twitching eye with his hand.

“I figured out why I did all of that.”

Rosehillman was the biggest illusion in Ian’s memory. The largest fantasy he’d created, an unreality. It was here that he had created all those fake memories.

When the fiction of Rosehillman cracked, the imaginary life he thought was solid, as if it were real, shattered too. When he woke up, not in Rosehillman Institute of Technology—a place he’d never even been to, a mere illusion—but in Rosehillman Psychiatric Hospital, Ian realized he was back at the place he’d been trying so hard to escape.

When the twitching finally stopped, Ian removed his hand from his eye. The pressure he’d applied made everything blurry. Blinking repeatedly, he said,

“It was something I shouldn’t have remembered. But somehow, I… remembered it all.”

A cold wetness touched his cheeks as he spoke. Ian finally realized that the blurriness in his vision was due to the tears that had slipped out.

“I really didn’t want to remember. It was something I shouldn’t have remembered.”

Dr. Hillen quietly held Ian’s trembling shoulder.

“Ian. Now, why don’t you tell me what that memory was—the one you didn’t want to remember? Why did you say you shouldn’t have?”

“….”

“The memory impairment caused by the side effects of Rohypnol has already been treated, Ian. But that’s not the only condition you have. Once you’re honest with me, the real treatment can begin.”

“….”

Ian looked at Dr. Hillen for a long time. He had to stay guarded. If he let everything slip under the guise of treatment, then all the effort he’d put into keeping silent about that night would go to waste.

But he wanted to talk. To someone.

For a lonely fifteen-year-old, carrying a secret he couldn’t say, couldn’t swallow, was suffering. When he could no longer bear it, the headaches would start. Ian would cry, thrash, self-harm, terrified that he might let something slip under the pretense of pain. The extreme painkillers Dr. Hillen prescribed were a lock on his consciousness, cutting off the agony and allowing him to sleep, unafraid of what he might say.

But now, that dreaded moment had become reality. Ian wanted to tell someone.

“Tell me, Ian.”

To anyone. To someone with warm and kind brown eyes who would listen carefully. To someone who had stayed by his side even after knowing the truth about Leo.

“In that case… could you bring Leo here? I think I could say it in front of him.”

“….”

After a moment’s hesitation, Dr. Hillen nodded. Soon, Leo Sebastian, who had been waiting outside nervously, rushed in, coming right up to Ian as if he would tackle him.