“I wish you could run again. I should cut these straps so you can try. You’d get more than a busted cheek this time.”

The other man stood in front of us, his back to me. I saw his shoulders bounce as he chuckled. “It’s like they think they’re all great athletes now or something. Too many years spent on their asses, living off the taxpayers. Now all of a sudden they’re all Olympians.”

They both laughed.

“Yeah,” said the big guy. “They finally get a chance to provide something to society, to pay us back for centuries of free school and special privileges, and they’re even trying to get out of that.”

“Typical.”

I kept my eyes on the lit-up red arrow above the door, trying not to hear them.

“You hear me, niijii?” He said it through gritted teeth, gripping the handles of my chair again and shaking it. “Or are you too stupid to understand?”

“Ah, leave him.” The Watchman in front turned his head. “He’s pretty much just a ziplock for what we need. We just gotta keep the bag from tearing before it’s time to break the seal.”

Ding.

The doors slid open, and they went back to their stoic stance. All professional-like. The elevator was on the other side of the guard station, so we had to swipe through into the hallway. I used every second of the journey to take in details about the place. The windows were all high up on the walls, so trying to use one to get out would involve finding a way to reach them.

The hallways were empty, but the doors were all open. I strained to see in each one, looking for any familiar faces, but there were no people at all. Each room, identical to mine, was empty, the bed made and the light on. There was nothing differentiating one from the next, no posters or knickknacks, no books or even a clock. A few had a pile of folded clothes at the foot of the bed, mostly pale green but one or two grey, but they could have belonged to anyone. There was nothing about any room that indicated an individual and nothing to tell me if I knew any of the people who were kept there.

And then I heard a noise I had no real memory of hearing before. A cacophony of voices mixing and weaving, punctuated by laughter and a few small currents of despair, all joined and set loose from throats with abandon. We turned into the main room, and there they were, about sixty people of different ages and sizes, all in white T-shirts and pale green scrub pants like me, all Indigenous like me. They gathered in small groups around the space. Two boys tossed a red ball back and forth. There was a lively card game happening at one coffee table, and a group of teary old men in serious conversation at the other. Teenagers stopped talking to watch us pass. The general volume lowered as I was wheeled through, but there was no moment of silence. I was so happy I could have cried. Here we were, taking up space, filling it with our bodies and with our voices. It was more than I ever could have hoped for in any place, let alone this one.