Jade smiled. "You did the work. I just witnessed it."
After Stacy left, Jade went back to her chair, tucked a leg underneath her, and checked her phone. She saw a text fromMaddox, sent twenty minutes ago: “Quiet morning so far. Zeus is bored.”
Jade typed back: “Tell him to be patient. Crime doesn't run on his schedule.”
The reply pinged quickly.
Maddox: “He disagrees and thinks criminals should be more considerate.”
Jade found herself smiling at her phone like a teenager. She set it down in her bag and pulled up her notes to review before her next session.
Her eleven-thirty session was with a firefighter dealing with nightmares after a house fire where they'd lost a family. It’d be a heavy session, and her client needed Jade to be fully present to hold space for her.
She brewed a fresh pot of coffee, reviewed her notes, and centered herself.
The firefighter—Leilani Silva, a young woman with a kind smile—arrived right on time. She had dark circles under his eyes and was carrying an already empty coffee cup. Her long dark hair was braided in a messy plait that fell over her right shoulder.
They'd been working together for two months, building trust slowly.
"How’s your week been?" Jade asked as Leilani sat down.
"Three nights in a row." Leilani's voice was flat. "The same dream repeating the same moment when I realize we're not getting them out in time."
Jade listened. This was familiar territory: the dreams that replayed trauma, and the brain trying to process what couldn't be fixed. She asked about the details, the feelings, and the moments Leilani woke up.
"Have you tried the imagery rehearsal technique we discussed?" Jade asked.
"Yeah." Leilani rubbed her face, and there was a sharp edge in her tone. "It doesn't help. I just... I keep seeing their faces."
“The family?”
"My crew. Afterward." Leilani's voice cracked slightly. "The way they looked at me..."
Jade leaned forward slightly. "What do you think they were thinking and feeling?"
“That I failed.”
“Is that what they said?”
Leilani was quiet for a long moment. "No. But I know."
They worked through the cognitive distortions, the guilt that wasn't proportional to reality, and the weight Leilani was carrying that belonged to circumstance, not her personal failure. Jade had learned this herself the hard way.
Knowing you did everything right didn't stop the guilt from crushing you from the inside out.
By the time Leilani left, Jade felt wrung out. Holding space for that kind of pain took energy, even when you were trained for it. She now had a lunch break, forty-five minutes before her next client, and she quickly checked her phone notifications and saw a text from Maddox.
Maddox:“Lunch break. You eating?”
Jade:“Just finished a session. About to.”
Maddox:“Was it a rough one?”
Jade stared at the text. How did Maddox know? Then again, she probably recognized the timing of her texts, the slight delay in responding, the brevity.
Jade:“Firefighter with nightmares and survivor’s guilt.”
Maddox:“Yeah, that’s hard.”
