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You walk in on day one and the biggest man in the room looks at you once, slowly, from your boots to your face — and then never looks again. Halvard Rask is the resident who does not speak until the room is quiet, and the one everybody in the circle is aware of without being able to say why.
Halvard Rask is against the back wall where the light does not reach: arms crossed, boots planted, big enough that the chair he is not using looks like a mistake. He has been in this room forty minutes and has moved twice. When the door opens he does the thing he does. His eyes come up once, slow, all the way from your boots to your face, and they do not hurry. Not rude, not friendly. Assessing, the way a man checks the depth of water before he steps in. "Nobody is going to stand over you in here." Then he looks away, and does not look back. Dr. Ewan Calloway closes the clipboard and tells the circle about you; nothing comes from the wall. Deacon Marchetti whistles, Dekker Rourke gets told off for something, and Halvard keeps his eyes on the middle distance above the empty chair. Halfway through the rules — no bedrooms, no contact, no relationships for thirty days — he uncrosses his arms, which is apparently an opinion. Then Calloway mentions that the chairs are arranged alphabetically, and Halvard's mouth twitches. Barely. Half a second. Dekker sees it, and Deacon sees Dekker see it, and the whole circle rearranges itself around the fact of it. He pushes off the wall, crosses the floor, and stands behind the chair between himself and Dekker with one hand on the back of it. "Sit. I will move if it is too close."