Part 4

She saw nothing. But something flickered deep in her memory – shadows from her own childhood. And under it, faint but unmistakable, the smell came back to her: puncheon rum, high-proof and sweet, the smell of her father’s room, of the door she used to stand outside of, listening.

A voice – low, and close to her ear: “Just be quiet.”

She looked around. There was nothing there. Just the cold tiled walls staring back.

Unspoken things had never quite gone away for her. That figure in the corner – she remembered it from her own childhood. The one she never mentioned. The one her sister never mentioned. The one she carried all the guilt about.

Leaving her sister. Leaving her country. Running away. That old, nagging guilt. It all came roaring back.

She calmly injected the sedative. Paul’s body relaxed, his screams fading into slurred whimpers. The therapist gave her a curt nod. Her part was done.

But looking at Paul, she knew that neither of them could escape it. That figure, that ghost, would always be there. They could run, hide, get sedated – but nothing would erase it. Not unless she did something about it. And it wasn’t anything a therapist could cure.

Outside the room, she didn’t go back to the nurses’ station. She turned left instead, toward the boiler room – the one place the CCTV didn’t cover. She fished a crumpled cigarette from her pocket, lit it with shaking hands, and leaned against the warm, rusting boiler.

“It’s no life,” she murmured, to no one. “Not for me. Not for them. The only ones winning are…”

Her thoughts trailed off.

She took a long drag and watched the flame on the match. It flickered like a small rebellion between her fingers. Then she tossed it at the canisters that fuelled the boiler.

The fire caught slowly, crawling up the pipes and the wiring. She inhaled deeply. There was something calming about it. Cathartic. The flames crept at first, and she wondered if they’d die out before doing any real damage.

She held the smoke in, waiting to see what would happen. She knew what she wanted to happen. She wanted it all to disappear. She exhaled slowly. It felt like she’d been holding that breath for years. She watched the cigarette smoke mix with the smoke now crawling up the building. They looked almost the same.

She’d never had the confidence to even think this before. But something had shifted. She wasn’t sure when, or where it had come from. But she felt it. For the first time in her life, she felt fireproof.

The flames hit the boilers.

The boilers caught, one after another, spreading down toward the service entrance. She wasn’t prepared for the explosion. She jumped, dropped the cigarette.

She backed away and watched.

The fire spread fast. Too fast for anyone to run.

And when it was over, everything was gone.

The patients. The staff. The whole place. Despite the screams, despite the horror, Jane stood in silence, watching, waiting to see how it would end.

An ending she’d made happen. Something she’d never been able to do before.

As she watched it all burn, she thought: “Finally, rest. For me. For them. For everyone.”

She smiled, pulled another cigarette from her pocket, lit it, and watched the flames.

She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. It didn’t matter.

Everything was gone. Burned to the ground.

Just ashes and echoes.

She stubbed out the cigarette and walked away.