“No.”
His fingers twisted in the blanket.
“I don’t know what prepared is supposed to feel like.”
“No one does,” Priya said. “You will still be frightened when you leave. The goal is not to eliminate fear. It is to make certain you have enough support to live alongside it.”
He considered that.
“I want to go.”
Dr. Whitcomb looked at me. “And you?”
“The apartment is ready.”
“That was not my question.”
I looked at Noah.
He was watching me too closely for a lie to survive.
“I’m afraid,” I said.
His eyebrows rose. “Of what?”
“Missing something. Giving you the wrong dose. Not noticing a change. Letting you fall. Hurting you while trying to help.”
“You won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know you.”
The words came easily.
Then he seemed to hear them.
His expression altered.
“I mean the person you are now,” he said.
“I understand.”
That was enough.
Dr. Whitcomb closed the folder in her hands.
“Then we prepare for Saturday.”
By the time I returned after the ward’s evening break, the rain had stopped.
I carried a duffel bag filled with clothes, toiletries, and the things Noah had asked for over the past few days. He sat propped against the pillows with his phone in his hand.
The device had synchronized fully with his account.
Years of photographs, messages, and fragments of ordinary life were waiting behind a screen he understood intellectually and did not recognize emotionally.
He looked up when I entered.
