"So how do you feel, Beverly? Being back at work?" Janet asked me 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 and did the same.

"It feels wonderful, that cold was a nightmare," I lied.

I still didn't want to tell them about the reason why I was home, even if they were my friends. And even if I was still ashamed that I let the guard out of the room when I was absolutely not supposed to, the situation was over now anyways.

Me and Brandon were good again so for my own sake I better just keep and pretend that I got home because I got sick...

"So, Harriet. Who was the guy you escorted through the corridor before? New inmate?"

I looked at Harriet with curiosity and Mildred and Janet did as well. We all looked at her patiently while she was chewing her food to swallow before being able to talk.

"That's Joseph Acker, he's been wanted for years but never got caught until now. He's convicted of killing his own wife and two stepchildren. He's here because of his psychopathic behavior and mental disorders. It didn't work out in prison,"

While listening carefully to Harriet's words, I nodded my head together with the other two girls. My stomach turned.

Another psycho-killer inside the hospital walls, right where he belonged.

"Is he your patient?" Janet asked.

"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.

"Speaking of murderers, how's it going with Brandon, Beverly?" Mildred asked me.

The other girls' eyes got bigger and I felt my cheeks heat up by the thought of our previous kiss. Of course, I would never tell them about that, but it was hard to think about something else when his name was mentioned.

"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," I grinned as I spoke, proud over the way I was actually able to handle Brandon the way 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 my shoulders, not knowing how to respond to Mildred's words. I still didn't know why he was so cooperative with me. Even if I knew that he felt something different for me, he couldn't have been aware that he would feel that way before he even met me...

"Did you hear about last Saturday? About Brandon and Ethel Browne?" She asked when she noticed 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 at Mildred.

Did she know about what happened?

I pretended not to know what she was talking about and I 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 stop him, he freaked out and it didn't stop. Even the guard tried to settle him in a grip but nothing worked, it was like he was manic. It ended up with him being put in the hot tub, there was nothing else to do,"

Mildred's voice was serious and concerned and the atmosphere between all of us got grave.

The imagination of the situation inside of my head was obscene.

One part of me was glad that I wasn't there to witness the horrifying and tragic outburst, while the other part wished that I was... Maybe if I would've been there, it wouldn't have happened at all?

At least, I now got to know what happened to him without asking Brandon himself. Even if I felt so bad for him, for not being there for him to calm him down myself. I understood why Ethel made the decision to put him in the tub. For her, he was just an outrageous, uncooperative and violent patient in her care, and it was normal for patients like him to end up in the hot tub if something like that happened.

Only if I hadn't left him.

This situation occurred because of me. If I had never left that day, none of this would have happened. Brandon wouldn't have cut his arms up, nurse Browne wouldn't have to make the decision to put a patient in the boiling water, and Brandon would probably not have had his outbreak and manic seizure.

Also, his beautiful pale skin wouldn't have been burned and destroyed by the hot water if I didn't leave. All of this was my fault, I made a decision to have Brandon in my care and I couldn't even handle that. I was the one responsible for how he felt for me, and then I left him even though I knew that he needed me to be there.

I left him for six days - even after he told me that he needed me - even if I was aware that he hurt himself when he was without me only for a short amount of time.

I had never felt this selfish before. My patients should be the only thing for me to prioritize, not myself. I couldn't just 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 that terrifying situations would appear, from the first day of my five-year-long education.

The feelings of guilt and bad conscience were rushing over me but I tried to be settled in front of my friends.

I had to apologize to Brandon, for leaving him and for putting him through torturing pain. And 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.