Wired: A Neurodivergent Hurt/Comfort Romance

She catfished a stranger at 2 a.m. The stranger was three beds away.Mira Schäfer has twenty-six electrodes glued to her head, one night of supervised sleep to get through, and a strict policy of telling no one how bad the seizures have gotten. Somewhere past midnight, out of boredom and spite, she rebuilds her dating profile into a woman who doesn't exist - and matches with a man whose entire bio reads: honestly just bored.Three beds away, Jonas Albrecht is wired to the same machine. He's spent twenty-nine years passing as a man who finds life easy, and he's very good at it - which is precisely the problem. He swiped right on account of her punctuation. He would explain, but it's two in the morning and the woman he's typing to is somehow, impossibly, whispering from across the dark.Eleven hours until the morning shift unplugs them. Eleven hours of being honest with a stranger because it doesn't count. Except it counted - and now they're loose in a Berlin winter with each other's numbers: ghost-station walks, a grey cat with opinions, two people who are experts at being fine.Falling is the easy part. But her seizures are getting worse and she isn't telling him. His mask is airtight and it's suffocating him. Loving each other is simple - letting themselves be seen is the thing neither brain agreed to.Eleven hours was the easy part.Book One of The Ward - a standalone with no cliffhanger and a happy-for-now ending (together, present, choosing each other). Dual POV - forced proximity - hurt/comfort - open-door heat - neurodivergent and chronic-illness rep. Content guidance: on-page seizures, recreational drug use, sensory overload. For readers of Chloe Liese, Helen Hoang, and Ali Hazelwood.

Pages: 322, Paperback, Independently published