The same lines she’d told herself before too.
Jade exhaled forcefully, set down her tea, and stood, pacing to the window. Rain blurred the streetlights below, turningPhoenix Ridge into watercolor smears of yellow and gray. Somewhere out there, Maddox Shaw was probably doing exactly what Jade had done after her first therapy mandate: ignoring it, resenting it, white-knuckling through the weekend until she had to show up again.
Jade had read the rest of Maddox’s file after the meeting.
Deployment history: Marine Corps, multiple tours with classified details, then an honorable discharge. She’d joined the Phoenix Ridge PD eight years ago and worked patrol for three years before transferring to K-9. Partner: Zeus, a five-year-old Belgian Malinois. The record noted their bond as “exceptional” and their success rate as “outstanding.”
What the records didn’t note was how Maddox’s entire body language had shifted when Chief Marten mentioned Zeus, how her rigid posture had softened just slightly, just enough for Jade to catch it. How she’d said,“He’s good at his job,”with more warmth than she’d used for anything else in that office.
That was the way through her armor. Maddox Shaw didn’t trust people, but she trusted her dog completely. It was something. Not much, and definitely not a weakness, but something.
Jade moved from the window and returned to the couch, picking up the file again and studying the service photo clipped inside the front cover. Maddox stared back at the camera with the same neutral expression she’d worn in the office, giving nothing away. But Jade had learned to read what people rarely said, and she noticed the tightness around Maddox’s eyes, the set of her jaw, and the way she held herself like she was already braced for the next hit.
You’re carrying something,Jade thought.Something heavy. And you think you have to carry it alone.
She knew that weight intimately, had carried her own version for years after Marcus Lambert had died on a fieldstretched while she’d been trying to save someone else. She had carried it through three tours, through her discharge, through a relationship that had crumbled under the pressure of her hypervigilance and her nightmares and her inability to stop feeling everything so intensely.
“You’re too much,” her ex had said.“You care too much and feel too much all the time. It’s exhausting.”
Jade closed the file and set it aside, then reached for the box she’d been avoiding all evening, the one markedpersonalin her own handwriting. She pulled back the flaps and stared at the contents: deployment photos, commendation certificates, and a folded flag.
And there, tucked in the corner: a photo of Marcus Lambert’s daughter at his memorial service, holding a folded flag of her own.
Jade had made the right call. Triage was about who you could save, and she’d saved three soldiers that day instead of one. She knew the math, understood the logic, had made peace with the decision years ago in a therapist’s office not unlike the one she now worked in.
But she still kept the photo. She still thought about him and his family. And she still carried the weight of choosing.
That’s what Maddox didn’t yet understand, that the weight didn’t disappear just because you made the right call. That doing your job well didn’t mean it didn’t cost you something of yourself.
And that sometimes the strongest thing you could do was admit you needed help carrying it.
Jade gingerly closed the box without unpacking it and returned it to the corner with the others. Not tonight, maybe not for a while. Some things you kept packed away, not because you were avoiding them but because you’d learned to live with them sealed up tight.
She gathered the files—Thorne, Kowalski, Shaw—and stacked them neatly on the coffee table. Tuesday. She had until Tuesday to figure out how to reach someone who didn’t want to be reached.
The rain eased outside, softening to a steady patter. Jade finished the last dregs of her tea, now lukewarm again, and looked around the apartment. It still didn’t feel like home and probably wouldn’t for a while. Fresh starts never felt easy at first.
But she learned something in the Army, something she carried into every therapy session: you didn’t need to feel ready to do the work; you just needed to show up and start.
Tuesday, Maddox Shaw would show up because she had to. Jade would be ready because that’s what she did. She showed up for people who wouldn’t show up for themselves, even the ones who didn’t think they needed her.
The weekend passed in the quiet rhythm of settling into a new pace. Jade unpacked three more boxes, hung curtains in the bedroom, and took a long run along the harbor trail that left her legs burning and her mind clear. She called her mom—yes, Phoenix Ridge was good; yes, she was meeting people; no, she wasn’t working too much. Sunday evening, she meal-prepped for the week and reviewed her session notes to prepare for the week ahead.
Monday brought her first group session with Phoenix Ridge Fire Department, which was easier than she’d expected, their camaraderie evident even in how they deflected from talking about the hard calls. Tuesday morning rolled in gray and damp, the kind of spring day that couldn’t decide if it was still winter.
Jade arrived at the Phoenix Ridge PD building at nine, plenty of time to do her paperwork and catch up on notes before Maddox’s session at two. The converted conference room that served as her temporary office still felt more institutional than therapeutic, but she’d been working to soften it andmake it more homey. The fluorescent overheads hummed and flickered, so she’d brought in two floor laps with warm bulbs that cast gentler light across the space. A pothos plant sat on the windowsill, small but alive, which was what mattered. The industrial carpet was standard-issue gray, but the chairs she’d requisition were comfortable without being too informal.
It wasn’t so much a therapy office as a debriefing space. First responders didn’t respond well to clinical settings. They needed environments that felt tactical, not therapeutic. Somewhere they could talk without feeling like they were on a couch confessing weaknesses.
Jade moved one of the chairs, angling it slightly away from the other. Not across the desk because it was too much like being called into a superior’s office, but not directly face-to-face either because it was too confrontational with no option to look away. She positioned them at a comfortable angle with a small side table between them. Maddox could make eye contact if she wanted, look out the window if she needed to, or have coffee, water, or something to do with her hands.
These small details, she learned, they mattered.
She set her leather-bound notebook on the side table and placed a box of tissues nearby. She didn’t expect Maddox to cry, but having them available meant people didn’t have to ask.
The window overlooked the parking lot, and from it, Jade could see officers coming and going, the K-9 units parked in their designated spots near the back. A light rain misted the glass, softening the edges of everything.
She reviewed her session plan again, though she’d memorized it already. Her approach with first responders was always the same: meet them where they are, use language they understand, and frame it as a tactical debrief, not emotional processing.
