“It wasn’t really optional,” I say. “Mandatory grief counseling. League policy.”
She smiles, but it’s the kind of smile you practice in the mirror. “Mandatory doesn’t mean you have to talk.”
“That’s good,” I say. “I’ve got nothing to say.”
Another smile, this one a fraction warmer. “How are you sleeping?”
“Fine.”
She makes a little mark. “Any nightmares?”
“Not that I remember.”
“What about appetite?”
I shrug. “I eat when I’m hungry.”
She flips to a new page. “You’re very measured, Darius. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“All the time. Coaches love it.” I let my gaze drift to the window, watch the cars crawl by, everyone rushing toward something that’s probably going to kill them in the end.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” Dr. Sharma says, voice still soft, still patient.
“Not really.”
She waits, gives me the rope. I don’t hang myself with it.
After a while, she asks, “What’s the first thing you remember, after the shooting started?”
I pick at the hem of my sleeve. I don’t want to answer, but that’s the trap, if you don’t answer, they assume you’re hiding something. I don’t want to seem weak, or worse, broken.
“I remember the sound,” I say finally. “Not the gunshots. The sound after. Like everything just…stopped.” I don’t look at her when I say it.
She’s quiet for a moment, then, “Is it the silence that bothers you?”
I shake my head, no. But my hands are betraying me, fingers tapping out some code on the back of my thumb.
“What about that silence makes it hard?”
“It’s not hard,” I say, voice sharper than I intend. “It’s just there.”
She nods, marks another something in her notebook. “What else do you remember?”
I think about the blood, the way it moved across the ice, bright and alien. I think about the feel of Rosen’s hand on my arm, the press of muscle and bone, a human anchor in a room of sinking men.
I think about Cap, face-down, blood pooling out like a signature.
I look at my hands, realize I’m squeezing them so hard my knuckles are white.
“Nothing,” I say. “Just the sound.”
She doesn’t call me out on the lie.
“Do you ever wish you could forget?” she asks, but it’s not a challenge.
I almost laugh. “I don’t think about it that way. What happened, happened.”
“And what are you supposed to do with that?”
