This one didn’t.
I sat down carefully, my arm still healing, my body still wary of sudden movements like it didn’t trust gravity to behave. The couch sighed beneath my weight. It was a normal sound. I latched onto it anyway.
I hadn’t been charged. Not really. Driving under the influence should have ruined me. It should have followed me forever in ink and paperwork and whispered judgment. But the judge had read the note they found in my pocket—the one Ididn’t remember writing—and something in his face had shifted. His voice softened when he handed the papers back.
Mandatory therapy. No jail time. No record—if I complied. Leniency felt like a word that belonged to other people. Like something I hadn’t earned. This room was the price of it.
It felt like a hinge moment. Like everything—the jump, the note, the judge’s mercy, this too-small room—had aligned into one narrow opening I could either step through or miss forever. I had the strange, unsettling sense that if I didn’t try here, really try, there wouldn’t be another chance waiting. No soft landings. No pauses. Just the slow fade I already knew too well.
For a fleeting second, I imagined my mother’s hand at the small of my back, steadying me.Be brave,she would have said. The thought hurt but it also anchored me. For once, staying felt like the harder choice. And maybe the right one.
Nora didn’t rush me. She didn’t fill the silence. She didn’t tilt her head in pity or lean forward like she was bracing for impact. She just waited. Present in a way that made my skin prickle, like she could actually see me instead of the damage I’d dragged in with me.
I wondered briefly if she’d read the file. My blood alcohol level at the time of the crash. The time I jumped off the cliffs. The note found in my car that they claimed was a suicide note..
If she already knew how close I’d come to not being here at all.
My fingers curled into the sleeves of my hoodie. I stared at the carpet between my shoes and tried to remember how people started talking in rooms like this.
When she spoke, her voice was calm. Grounded. “Before we talk about anything hard,” she said, “I want you to look around the room.”
I blinked. Once. Twice.
“Tell me three things you can see.”
The request landed gently, but my chest tightened anyway. My instinct was to saynothing, oryou, orI don’t know. Instead, I swallowed. “The… bookshelf,” I said finally, my voice rough from disuse. “The plant. The window.”
“Good,” she said, like it mattered. Like I hadn’t just named the most obvious things in the world. “Two things you can feel.”
The couch beneath me. The ache in my arm. The air against my skin. My heart, still too loud. “The cushion,” I said. “And my feet on the floor.”
She nodded. “One thing you can hear.”
I focused. Past the hum in my ears. Past my breath. “A clock,” I murmured.
Her smile was small. Not pleased. Not triumphant. Just steady. “You’re here,” she said. “Your body knows that now. That’s important.”
Something in my chest shifted. Not in relief. More like… a fraction less pressure. Like a knot loosening by a single millimeter.
“I’m Nora,” she said then. “And I’m not here to take anything away from you. We’ll go as slow as you need.”
Slow felt dangerous. Slow meant space for thoughts to crawl back in. But I nodded anyway.
She glanced briefly at my arm, the sling, the faint bruising still visible above the collar of my top. Then her gaze returned to my face, direct but not invasive. “Tell me what brings you here,” she said.
I opened my mouth.
Nothing came out.
My throat closed as if it had been waiting for this exact moment to betray me. Heat crept up my neck. My jaw locked. I stared at the plant on the shelf like it might answer for me.
Nora didn’t interrupt. She didn’t rescue me. She waited.
“I—” My voice cracked. I stopped. Swallowed. Tried again. “I don’t… function very well when people leave.”
There it was. Small. Inadequate. But the truth in its barest form.
Her expression didn’t change, but something in her eyes sharpened—attention, not alarm. “Tell me whatleavemeans to you,” she said.
