I blinked.
Then I let out a rough breath. “Yeah. So. Apparently, I am talking about it.”
Elena’s voice stayed soft. “You are. And you’re doing it in a way that’s letting you stay in control of it.”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t feel like control.”
“It’s a start,” she said. “You chose what to say. You stopped where you needed to.”
I leaned back, suddenly tired. “It’s all wrong. The whole thing. I keep thinking—if I’d gotten home a day earlier or if I’d checked sooner, or if I hadn’t sent money that she probably used on drugs rather than on Gabbi… fuck!”
“That’s shock talking,” she said gently.
I frowned. “Shock?”
“Shock looks for logic where there isn’t any,” Elena said. “It tries to rewrite the timeline, so the outcome makes sense. So, it feels preventable.”
“Itwaspreventable,” I snapped. “She shouldn’t have died like that.”
“You’re right,” Elena said. “She shouldn’t have. But that doesn’t make it your responsibility.”
I pressed my lips together, shaking my head. “Feels like it is.”
“That’s grief,” she said. “And guilt. They tend to show up together.”
I stared down at my hands. “I don’t even know what I feel about her,” I admitted. “We weren’t… it wasn’t like that. Not really. One night. Then, months later, she tells me I’ve got a child. Then she’s gone.” I swallowed hard. “I don’t get to have clean grief. I don’t even know what I’m grieving.”
Elena leaned forward slightly. “You’re grieving what happened. The way it happened. What Gabbi lost. What you didn’t get a chance to understand or fix. That’s all valid.”
I scrubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “I just keep seeing it. The room. And Gabbi—” My voice hitched, and I forced it steady. “Gabbi crying like no one was ever going to pick her up.” I rubbed my hands together, grounding myself in the friction, forcing myself to stay here.
“That’s a traumatic imprint,” Elena said. “Your brain has tagged it as something important—something dangerous—and it’s replaying it to try and keep you alert.”
“I don’t need to be alert,” I muttered. “I already am.”
“I know,” she said. “That’s part of the problem. You’re stuck in that moment, even though you’re here now.”
I looked up at her then. “So, what do I do?”
“For now?” she said. “We work on reminding your brain that you’re not in that room anymore.”
I frowned. “How?”
She nodded toward the doorway. “Where’s Gabbi?”
“Asleep,” I said automatically.
“Safe?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Fed?”
“Yeah.”
“Warm?”
I huffed a breath. “Yeah.”
