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Twenty minutes in and Matt had barely said a word. Arms crossed, eyes down.
Kyle waited.
“The nightmares came back,” Matt spoke at last.
Everything in Matt’s file said the same thing. He refused to talk about the nightmares. His wife had told him as much herself.
Kyle kept his face neutral.
“When?”
“Last week.”
“Had they stopped?”
“…For a while.”
The hospital discharge summary had noted reduced frequency. Matt confirming they’d actually stopped was new.
“What happened?”
“I was… falling. The tape didn’t do anything.”
“First time the tape hasn’t worked?”
“Yeah.”
“How long has it been working for you?”
“Since September.”
“What does the tape do for you? When it works.”
Long silence.
“Gives me something real. Something I can hold onto when everything else is—”
He stopped. Kyle didn’t push for the rest of the sentence.
“Eight months off one piece of duct tape. Not bad, Matt.”
“And now it’s not enough.”
“Same problem as the elevator, Matt. You’re reacting after it starts. We need to get ahead of it.”
“Except I can’t control when it happens.”
“You control what happens before. Right now your body’s still on alert when you fall asleep. That’s why it spirals. Build a routine. Same thing, every night. Stretches, breathing, doesn’t matter what. Let your brain learn to switch off before you go under.”
“And that’s supposed to stop it.”
“Your body starts calm, the panic’s got less to work with.”
“What if it spirals anyway. What if I—” His head dropped. “Wake up and can’t breathe?”
Matt, asking him for help. Progress.
“Same game, tougher boss. You upgrade your gear. When the tape’s not reaching you, snap your fingers. Hard as you can.”
“That’s your upgrade?”
“It’s loud and instant. One second of disruption is all you need to get your head back.”
Matt didn’t say anything, but his right hand stirred.
“You don’t beat endgame with just the starter weapon, Matt.”
“…I’ll give it a shot.”
“Good. Let me know how it goes next week. I want a full report.”
Build a routine. Same thing, every night.
He didn’t know where to start. Kyle didn’t give him a list, and there wasn’t much in the room beyond the books Uncle Brian had brought last week.
His bag was in the corner. The one Ben had packed when he transferred here. He hadn’t touched it since. Maybe there was something in there he could use.
He wheeled over and unzipped it.
Socks. A bootleg DVD labeled The Little Mermaid in Ben’s handwriting. The hoodie Lucy insisted he would need. Then something hard and flat.
A laptop. The one Danny brought to the hospital months ago. Ben must have packed it with everything else.
Matt set it on his lap. Beside it, wedged against the bag’s inner wall, was a battered game box.
Age of Empires II.
He barely looked at it when Danny left it. Didn’t have the energy or interest then.
Build castles, manage armies, outthink your enemies.
Maybe they had been onto something after all. That did sound like his thing.
The game went on the nightstand. He still had a routine to build.
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