The Quiet Room: A Short Story
- Dave Brennan
- Oct 3
- 6 min read
Author’s Note: My name is Dave Brennan, and I am a writer and mental health professional based in the United States. I live with my own experiences of depression and anxiety, which have shaped both my personal and professional journey.
“The Quiet Room” is a fictionalized short story inspired by those experiences—my time working within the mental health system as well as my own encounters with it. I wanted to capture the isolation, stigma, and small moments of human connection that can exist in psychiatric care, because those details often go unseen.
I chose to share this piece with Inspire the Mind because of your commitment to amplifying lived experience narratives, and because I believe stories like this can remind us that even in the most difficult places, connection and hope are still possible.
They called it “The Quiet Room.”
Whoever named it had a dark sense of humour. It was quiet, sure—but not in the way that made you feel calm. It was the kind of quiet that buzzed in your ears, heavy and sterile, like the soundproofed walls were swallowing every bit of life.
The room smelled faintly of bleach, like someone had scrubbed it too hard, trying to erase what couldn’t be erased. There was a cot bolted to the floor, a pillow as thin as a folded T-shirt, and walls painted a draining off-white. The ceiling tiles had water stains, shapes I found myself staring at until my eyes hurt.
I’d been there for three days before I realised I was counting time by the meals. Breakfast was a pale tray with eggs that could double as shoe rubber. Lunch was always soup—never hot enough, usually some shade of beige. Dinner, a limp sandwich and something sweet, because even here, sugar was supposed to make you feel better.
I’d landed there after what they called a “public mental health crisis.” Translation: I’d melted down in a train station, in front of strangers, unable to breathe, convinced the world was about to end. Turns out it wasn’t—but my world tilted anyway. An ambulance, two security guards, and one very calm nurse later, I was under a buzzing fluorescent light, signing papers I didn’t understand. Involuntary admission.
I was told I’d be “observed for safety.” Which meant isolation.
At first, I talked to myself. Out loud. Not because I was losing it (well, maybe a little), but because silence can make your thoughts too loud. I narrated my meals, my pacing, the slow drip of time. My voice felt like proof I still existed.
On the fourth morning, I noticed it.
A faint etching in the far corner, under the peeling paint: HI
It wasn’t much, but it was human. My first reaction was suspicion—staff didn’t strike me as the graffiti type, and patients weren’t supposed to have anything sharp. But the next morning, after breakfast, I crouched down and traced the letters with my fingertip.
Underneath, I scratched: HEY
It felt ridiculous. Like passing notes in a prison movie. But the next day, there was an answer: WHO R U.
And just like that, I wasn’t alone anymore.
We traded messages every day. Always short, always scratched into the same spot. They told me their name was Alex. They’d been in the unit “too long” (their words). They hated the soup. They knew which nurse would sneak you an extra blanket if you asked nicely.
Alex was funny, in a way that didn’t feel forced. Once, they carved: WHAT R U IN FOR? I scratched back: ANXIETY + DEPRESSION. They replied: WELCOME 2 CLUB.
I never saw Alex. The Quiet Room had no windows to the hallway, no way to peek out. I imagined them in one of the regular rooms, maybe pacing like I did, maybe staring at the same cracked ceiling tiles. But their words, crooked and shallow in the paint, were a lifeline.
It’s strange how fast you start relying on someone you’ve never met. I’d wake up thinking about what I’d write that day. I started saving scraps of my meals to use as makeshift tools—plastic fork tines for carving, a tiny smear of jam to darken the letters so they stood out.
We talked about everything. About the weird smell in the unit (“disinfectant + despair,” Alex called it). About the music we missed. About the time they’d hidden a smuggled chocolate bar in their sock drawer for two weeks before eating it in one glorious sitting.
One night, after another visit from the on-call psychiatrist—same clipboard, same gentle but detached smile—I felt the old weight creeping back in. The hopelessness. I scratched into the wall: I THINK I’M BROKEN.
The reply didn’t come until the next morning: SO AM I. STILL HERE THO.
That was the first time I cried in The Quiet Room. Not because I was sad—well, not only that—but because it hit me: we were both still here.
My stay stretched longer than I'd expected. Days bled into each other. I learned the rhythm of the place: medication rounds, group sessions I wasn’t allowed to attend yet, the squeak of nurses’ sneakers on polished linoleum, the hum of the vending machine in the staff lounge when the door opened.
The nurses weren’t unkind, but they were busy. The doctors came and went, white coats like revolving doors. My parents visited once. They brought me a book I didn’t read. My mom tried to smile, but it looked cracked around the edges. My dad kept checking his watch. They didn’t know what to say, and neither did I. When they left, I pressed my forehead against the cool wall, wishing I could disappear into it.
Alex’s words kept me tethered. Some days they were just jokes: NURSE SPIKED PUDDING? Other days, they were heavier: SCARED ABOUT LEAVING.
I scratched back: ME 2.
One morning, I carved: WHAT IF I NEVER GET BETTER?
The answer came quickly: WHAT IF U DO?
That sentence lived in my head for days. It was so simple, but something flipped inside me. I’d spent so long bracing for the worst that I’d forgotten to imagine the best.
I started sleeping better. I started eating more than just the dessert. I even asked for paper and wrote a letter—to myself, not to Alex—about the things I wanted to do when I got out. Small things: go to the park, make pancakes, text my sister back.
Sometimes, I told Alex about my life outside. About the train station where it all fell apart. About how I used to love sketching in coffee shops, blending into the background with a notebook. About the panic attacks that made me stop going anywhere crowded.
Alex never judged. They wrote: PANIC = BRAIN FIRE ALARM. SOMETIMES FALSE ALARM. It made me laugh. It also made me think.
My last week in The Quiet Room, I asked the psychiatrist if recovery meant “going back to normal.” He said there was no such thing as normal, only what comes next. I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but it sounded better than nothing.
The night before discharge, I wrote on the wall: WHAT R U GONNA DO WHEN U GET OUT?
The reply came the next morning: BUY SOCKS. CLEAN ONES.
I laughed out loud. It startled the nurse, who peeked in to check if I was okay. I nodded, and for the first time, I almost meant it.
The day they told me I could leave, I went to the wall and carved ‘THANK YOU’. I didn’t expect a reply before I was discharged.
But, as I was packing the few belongings they’d let me keep, a nurse came in to hand me my last tray (dinner: soup and a sandwich). I barely touched it. My eyes kept drifting to the corner.
That night, before lights out, I checked the wall one last time. Under my message, in crooked letters, was: ME 2.
I pressed my palm flat against the wall, as if somehow Alex could feel it on the other side. Then I picked up my paper bag of clothes, my follow-up appointment card, and stepped into the hallway.
Walking out of The Quiet Room, the world felt louder than I remembered. The air carried smells—coffee, cigarette smoke from the parking lot, the faint perfume of a volunteer who brushed past me. All of it was overwhelming, but also alive.
I didn’t know if I’d ever see Alex again. Maybe they’d be gone before my next appointment. Maybe they’d still be there, scratching words into the wall for someone else to find.
But I carried something with me—something harder to measure. Proof that even in the most silent, sterile places, connection can still find you. Sometimes, all it takes is two words scratched into a wall.
And sometimes, those two words are enough to remind you: you’re still here.