His brain is not swelling.
His limbs are not broken.
He is not bruised or perforated.
He’s whole.
He thinks, What do you know about schizophrenia?
It turns out he knows quite a lot.
It’ll take… time. To build the relationships you had before, if you even can. You are not Mike Frazier. You are Greg Hughes. You can’t use his experiences as a template. You need to try and build your own. There is a life for you there. I can give you the tools to make one, but I can’t force the people of Amorea to accept you.
He gets angry still. Sometimes.
He’s angry at his mother. Angry at his father.
Angry at Jenny. He’s so angry with her, but he’s mostly angry with himself, because if he hadn’t gotten drunk that one night, if he hadn’t taken her to bed, would he even be here?
He doesn’t think he would.
They would have stayed friends.
Or they would have drifted apart.
He could have found a nice man or woman to settle down with.
He could have had a family.
Except he had the capacity to become his father.
Yes, he was defending himself.
But even he can remember the sick satisfaction he felt at the sound of her nose breaking when he punched her.
I know you say that you didn’t kill your wife with any ill intent. That you did what you did in defense of your own life. That she’d managed to twist together an unlikely narrative in order to frame you in a plan that ultimately cost her her own life. And I know that we cannot regulate you like we could the others, not without splitting your mind in half. We took away the darker parts of them to make them something new. I cannot do that with you. If you hurt anyone, Mr. Hughes, if there is a monster lurking under your skin, I will do what I must to ensure the survival of Amorea.
He looks in the mirror for the last time.
When he sees himself again, he’ll be whole.
There will be no more scars.
There will be no more pain.
There will be no more suffering.
He will be the truest version of himself that he could possibly be.
It’s a second chance.
He’s going to make the most of it.
“Are you sure?” Dr. King asks for the last time. She’s standing near the doorway, and he can hear the resignation in her tone.
He doesn’t look at her. He looks at himself, gaze tracing along the scars in his reflection. He knows that Amorea is just an illusion, a costumed skin hiding all that lurks underneath, but it’ll be enough. It has to be enough.
“I’m sure,” he says.