I show up because my mother asked me to and because showing up costs me less than the conversation that follows when I don't. The office is warm and quiet, the kind of carefully designed neutrality that's supposed to make people feel safe enough to say things they'd normally keep buried.
I've always found it faintly aggressive.
Dr. Hartley is already there when I arrive. My mother. My father, who looks like a man performing the role of concerned parent with moderate success. And Nessa, curled into the corner of the couch with her sleeves pulled over her hands, headphones around her neck like she might need them at any moment.
I sit, and the session begins.
I do what I always do — give enough to appear cooperative, deflect anything that gets close to something real, watch the others, and file everything away. My mom speaks carefully. My dad speaks carefully. Dr. Hartley navigates the space between them with the practiced patience of someone who has seen this particular dynamic a hundred times.
Nessa is quiet for most of it.
The first thing she says is, "I heard his eyes opened."
The session continues around me. Dr. Hartley asks Nessa questions to clarify what she means. My mother's expression shifts into something careful and professional. My father doesn't react.
I sit very still.
His eyes opened?
I hear the words again in the specific silence of my own skull. I feel them move through me the way cold water moves — slowly, reaching everything.
How does she know? Who told her? Why does she know before I do?
And underneath that, I think about Adela.
Does she know yet? Is she already at the hospital? Is she sitting beside his bed right now, holding his hand, looking at his face, listening to whatever version of events he decides to give her?
My chest tightens.
I wanted him dead.
I want to be very clear with myself about that, in the privacy of my own head, where no one can read it. I wanted him gone. Permanently. Completely. I wanted him removed from theboard in a way that couldn't be reversed, couldn't be negotiated, couldn't be walked back by a surgeon and a medical team, and whatever particular miracle of modern medicine kept his heart beating when it should have stopped.
He was supposed to stay under.
He didn't.
And now he's awake, and he has a mouth, and whatever he remembers or doesn't remember or chooses to say is a variable I cannot control from here.
I become aware that Dr. Hartley is saying my name.
"Theo. How does this news land for you?"
I look at her. "Fine," I say. "It's good news."
My mother is watching me. She's always watching me, reading the thing underneath the thing, assembling the picture I'm trying to keep scattered.
I stand. "I need some air."
"Theo—" Dr. Hartley starts.
"Five minutes." I'm already at the door.
The hallway is quiet. Carpeted. The kind of building that absorbs sound and returns nothing.
I stand with my back against the wall and breathe through it. Not panic. I don't panic. Just recalibration — taking the new information and running it through everything that follows, mapping outcomes, identifying threats, deciding which ones require immediate action, and which ones can wait.
Cody awake.
