They don’t let you smoke in the rose garden.

  Bullshit.

  It’s the only thing here that feels alive enough to ruin.

  My editor thinks I’m in Palm Springs. I told her I was doing a profile on celebrity rehab chic.

  Technically, not a lie.

  The working title was Saved Me / Slayed Me: My Journey from Crisis to Content. I already hated it, but the advance would cover a year’s rent and at least two relapses. I called it research, but I packed enough pills to make sure I’d never get too close to healing. This was the kind of place where writers went to come undone beautifully—and I needed beauty more than sobriety.

  I lit up anyway. One Virginia Slim. Lit with the last match from a pack that had Marriott Burbank printed across the book in faded gold. The security camera blinked at me from the stucco overhang like it wanted to say something, but had too much decorum.

  It was day zero. Hour two. I had already lied on the intake forms (no, I don’t drink before noon; yes, I can identify all major emotions; no, I’ve never been diagnosed, but people have suggested things). I gave them a fake emergency contact and spelled my fake name wrong on purpose. They scanned my luggage and took my nail scissors, but they missed the hollowed-out devotional in my tote bag. Inside: one flash drive, three hydros, and a printout of a chapter titled Rock Bottom Is A Myth Invented By Sober People.

  I was here for research.

  For closure.

  For material.

  Not healing. Please.

  Healing is just ego in a cardigan.

  The cigarette tasted like hotel carpet and denial. Around me, the rose garden bloomed with institutional effort—aggressively manicured, too many whites and blush tones, like someone had designed grief using a wedding palette.

  From somewhere behind the hydrangeas came footsteps.

  Slow, too even.

  Employee cadence.

  I flicked the ash into the mulch, already halfway into my performance.

  "You’re not supposed to be out here."

  Female voice. Late twenties, maybe early thirties. Not brittle enough to be admin, not soft enough to be one of the yoga nurses.

  I didn’t turn around.

  “Neither are half the pills in my bloodstream, but here we are.”

  She moved into my peripheral. Khaki scrubs, clipboard, lanyard that read Sunshadow Wellness – Staff, hair pulled back like it was trying to escape her skull. She looked like someone who used to be tender and had that surgically removed in year three of burnout.

  “Name?”

  “Roxie Hart.”

  She didn’t blink. Just scribbled something and clicked her pen in a way that sounded vaguely accusatory.

  “We do morning vitals at six. Don’t smoke in the garden again.”

  “You didn’t say I had to stop now.”

  She didn’t. She just left.

  I smoked the rest with ceremony. Long draw, two-second hold, exhale slow enough to feel like proof of life. I stubbed the cigarette into the soil next to a white bloom and buried the butt under my heel.

  I turned back toward the building. Stucco walls, floor-to-ceiling glass, everything soft-edged and clean. The kind of place where even your breakdown had to look curated.

  Waiting just inside the double doors, looking bored and disgusted at the same time, was the roommate they’d assigned me.

  Combat boots.

  No bra.

  Hoodie with the sleeves torn off and the phrase I Am Not Your Lesson sharpied across the chest.

  She looked me up and down like I was a rumor she’d heard once and hoped wasn’t true.

  "You’re late," she said.

  "Wasn’t aware we had a schedule."

  She turned and walked off without a response.

  Perfect.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I liked her already.

  She didn’t hold the door.

  Inside, the air smelled like lemon balm and sterilized regret. A man in flannel was crying into a cup of tea by the fireplace. A motivational quote floated across a wall-mounted monitor: The wound is where the light enters.

  I hated it immediately. The wound is where infection enters. The wound is where people pause the podcast and say, “Wow, that’s deep.”

  I followed hoodie girl down a hallway lined with fake succulents and framed abstracts in earth tones. Her hair was a mess in the deliberate way—the kind that said I’ve been through shit but also don’t you dare ask me what kind. She didn’t talk. She didn’t look back.

  “You know you’re legally required to give me your name before you emotionally abandon me in a hallway,” I said.

  She stopped in front of a door marked 4D. No knock, no flourish—just opened it and stepped inside.

  “Trix,” she said, still not looking at me. “That’s what they call me. You can call me that or don’t. Just don’t talk in the bathroom. And don’t go near the top drawer.”

  “Understood,” I said. “No small talk in the john, and the top drawer is sacred. Got it.”

  I stepped in. Twin beds, both made military tight. Hers had a single paperback on it (The Bell Jar, of course) and a chipped mug with a cigarette floating in water. Mine looked like a catalog display. There was a lavender sachet on the pillow that I would absolutely be hiding pills in before sundown.

  Trix sat on her bed and lit a cigarette without asking.

  “You’re not allowed to do that in here.”

  “Neither are you,” she said.

  Fair.

  We sat in silence. Not comfortable, not tense—just the kind of silence that two animals share when they’re not sure yet if they’re going to fight or sleep near each other.

  Then, without looking at me:

  “Why’d you come?”

  Not what’s your name, not what do you do, not what’s your story.

  “Research,” I said. “Closure. Material. Probably shame, but I’m pretending it’s work.”

  She nodded like that was the only honest answer she’d heard all week. Then she blew a ring of smoke toward the ceiling and muttered:

  “Everyone’s either here to be forgiven or to be seen. You don’t strike me as the forgiving type.”

  I didn’t reply.

  Trix stood and crossed the room in two steps, stubbed the cigarette out on the ceramic rim of the mug like she’d done it a thousand times.

  “Lights out’s at ten,” she said, tossing the butt in the trash. “They say it’s for routine, but it’s really just to keep us from getting ideas after dark.”

  “Ideas?”

  “Screwing, screaming, stealing, slicing, smoking. Pick your trauma response.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That alliterative or alphabetized?”

  “Both. I used to write slam poetry.” Flat delivery with no trace of irony. I couldn’t tell if she was kidding, which meant she was probably not. She dropped back onto her bed, arms folded behind her head, eyes fixed on the yellowed acoustic tile ceiling like she’d found something up there worth waiting for.

  I sat.

  The mattress was too firm, like they thought softness could be a gateway drug. My back registered a spring. My hip registered disapproval. I kicked my boots off with less grace than I intended, and they thudded against the wall.

  Trix didn’t flinch.

  Outside, the sun was bleeding out—just that long, pink fade over the hills that made you nostalgic for things you hadn’t earned.

  Somewhere, someone was ringing a chime. Gentle, insistent, the kind of sound meant to suggest serenity but mostly just reminded me of spa commercials and guilt.

  Then Trix said, quieter:

  “Don’t give them what they want too fast. They like when you crack slow.”

  I looked over.

  She still wasn’t looking at me.

  Just the ceiling. Or something beyond it.

  “And what do they want?” I asked.

  She smiled without turning her head.

  “A story they can sell back to you with better lighting.”

  It was still day zero. Hour three. I hadn't cried. I hadn’t confessed. I hadn’t committed to a single goddamn thing. But I wrote that line down in my head and filed it away under Chapter Seven: The Cult of Curated Collapse.

  The lavender sachet stayed on the pillow.

  For now.

  Trix fell asleep like a switch flipped. One minute staring at the ceiling, the next curled into a ball with her hoodie half off one shoulder and her fist tucked under her cheek, as if she'd punched herself into unconsciousness.

  I lay there blinking at the ceiling, which had its own kind of institutional poetry—water stain in the shape of a kneeling figure, one flickering LED like a tiny, judgmental eye. I’d been trying not to look at the devotional in my bag.

  It had weight. And the kind of heat that only came from intention.

  They’d told us during intake that we’d be safe here. Said the word like it was a promise and not a sales pitch. I nodded, smiled, took the welcome packet and the granola bar.

  I didn’t ask how they defined “safe.”

  No one ever does.

  It's one of those words that loses its shape if you look too close.

  I turned on my side, facing away from Trix. Across from me, a corkboard was pinned with affirmations in pastel fonts.

  You Are Here.

  You Are Whole.

  You Are Becoming.

  I’d been here less than four hours and already hated all three of those things. Somewhere down the hall, a door clicked shut, followed by a long silence and the soft static hum of the HVAC system struggling against the coastal night. I didn’t know how long I lay there.

  Long enough for my spine to start mapping the springs in the mattress.

  Long enough to hear the shift in Trix’s breathing as her body surrendered completely.

  Then—

  A soft knock.

  I didn’t move.

  Another knock, this time less polite.

  Then the door creaked open an inch. A head poked through.

  Male.

  Young. Faint shadow of stubble and an expression that said I do not care that you hate me, but I am also not leaving.

  “Vitals,” he said, voice low and unapologetic.

  I sat up. He crossed to me, already snapping a velcro cuff free.

  “You couldn’t do this in the morning?”

  “You’ll be lucky if you remember this in the morning. First day hits hard.”

  He had a clipboard balanced on his forearm, mismatched socks and lanyard that said Nico. I clocked the nicotine patch on his wrist and the silver pen clipped sideways to his pocket like a weapon.

  He wrapped the cuff around my arm with practiced efficiency, pressed the stethoscope to the crook of my elbow.

  No eye contact.

  No small talk.

  I respected that.

  “Blood pressure’s fine,” he muttered, scribbling something. “Heart rate’s high.”

  “I’m awake in rehab. Should it be low?”

  He shrugged. “Fair.”

  I looked at him harder. He had the kind of tired that didn’t come from insomnia. The kind that comes from too many truths witnessed, not enough absorbed.

  “Do they make you say something inspirational after this part?”

  He paused, considering.

  “Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t.”

  And then he was gone.

  Trix rolled over without opening her eyes. “That one’s mine.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The orderly. You can have the therapists. But that one’s mine.”

  I laughed once, low in my throat.

  “I’m not here for that.”

  “No one says they are. Until they are.”

  She rolled away again.

  I stared at the ceiling.

  I still hadn’t unpacked. But I’d already rewritten the first chapter. The one where I show up invincible.

  It was day zero. Hour four.

  I was still lying.