The Reader and the Ink I COMPLETE I ??

The Pain of a Thousand Pages

She couldn't stop.

Even now, with her body still reeling from the pills, even now with death grazing her fingertips only hours ago, her mind was clawing for fiction. She needed it like oxygen. Craved it. Hungered for it. The way addicts claw for one more hit.

The Itch was merciless.

She shifted beneath the hospital blanket, her muscles tight, her skin clammy with sweat. She could still feel the echo of the last book she devoured. The lovers who couldn't be together. The twist ending. The grief that had hollowed her chest like a black hole. She'd lived a thousand lives. Fallen in love ten thousand times. Died in every way imaginable. And none of it was hers.

But she felt it as though it was.

That was the curse.

Readers were banned in most cities. Treated like contagious diseases. Dangerous. Unstable. Pitied. Some were hidden away by families. Others—like her—slipped through cracks until they became a danger to themselves.

The door opened with a click.

Her body flinched involuntarily. She turned her head, eyes sluggish.

A police officer walked in. Stern-faced. Broad-shouldered. The type who had seen too much and judged quickly.

He held a clipboard.

Without a word, he walked to her bedside and handed her a piece of paper.

She didn't reach for it immediately. Her fingers hesitated.

"You've been committed," he said, voice flat. "Mandatory psychiatric evaluation. Ninety days. Facility on the edge of District 7."

She blinked at him. Her brain wasn't quite catching up.

"It's a Reader-Author group center," he added. "Therapeutic. You'll be under watch. Can't be alone for long periods. Court mandated. You signed the forms when you were brought in."

She hadn't remembered signing anything. She barely remembered the paramedics.

Her fingers finally closed over the paper. Her eyes scanned it. The words blurred together in her dazed state, but the key points glared back at her like neon lights:

90 DAYS. NOT SAFE TO BE ALONE. AUTHOR-READER PROGRAM.

By the time she looked up again, the officer was already walking toward the door.

"Check out is in the morning. They'll pick you up."

The door shut behind him.

She stared at it for a long moment before slowly crumpling the paper in her fist.

Therapy.

A joke.

What kind of therapy cured this kind of broken? What kind of therapy erased the memories of a thousand dead children, a thousand heartbreaks, a thousand loves lost to the cruelty of plot twists and fate? What kind of therapy could silence the relentless screaming inside her head, the desperate need to feel everything, anything, all at once?

She curled onto her side.

The IV tugged slightly.

She ignored it.

Her body trembled with withdrawal. Her brain buzzed with static. She wanted a book. A story. Anything. Something to take her away from this room, from this world. From herself.

But they'd taken it all away. No books. No screens. No stories.

Just her.

Alone with her mind.