Beginnings

When artist and barista Elena Evert wakes up in the hospital after collapsing in the street, her biggest fear is that they won’t let her leave—a fear that is quickly realized as she finds herself being transferred to the hospital’s psychiatric ward. She is in desperate need of professional help, not only to gain enough weight to stay alive but to start recovering from the eating disorder that’s been convincing her that she’s not good enough for years. Despite her near skeletal stature, she constantly believes that she could lose more weight. But while she might need help, she certainly doesn’t want it.

Also in the psychiatric ward at the time is Maverick Sovannah, a poet and book lover who’d been recently brought into the hospital with drug-induced psychosis, resulting from taking cocaine laced with something that had inspired him to climb onto a rooftop and try to jump. His stay in the hospital will be far shorter than Elena’s, though just as desperately needed, and just long enough for them to briefly meet on her first day there.

Three months later, out in the world, their paths cross again, and this time there is an almost instantaneous connection between them—a connection that soon blossoms into a sort of love that neither of them has ever experienced. A love that feels selfless and unconditional. It feels like two parts of a single being coming back together at last. But even such a love as theirs is no remedy for mental illness or addiction on its own. . . and its survival is never guaranteed.