Imani initially refused every television request.
She was not afraid of cameras. She was afraid of becoming a symbol before she had finished being a person.
At the clinic, patients stared at her wrists. Staff members asked whether she needed leave. A nurse named Camille left a cup of tea on her desk without saying anything. Another employee quietly replaced the broken copy of a journal article that had been ruined on the driveway.
Imani tried to work.
She lasted ninety minutes.
During a consultation with a woman managing chronic lung disease, someone dropped a metal clipboard in the hallway. The sudden crack against tile made Imani’s body jerk so sharply that the patient noticed.
“Doctor?”
“I’m fine.”
She was not.
That afternoon, she called a trauma therapist recommended by a colleague.
Dr. Leah Simmons did not tell Imani to be strong.
Imani appreciated that immediately.
“The problem with being competent,” Leah said during their first session, “is people start treating competence like immunity.”
Imani sat on a pale gray sofa and stared at the woven rug beneath her shoes.
“Everyone keeps saying I handled it so well.”
“How did you handle it?”
“I didn’t scream. I complied. I remembered details. I protected the evidence.”
“That’s what you did. What did it cost?”
Imani looked away.
For the first time, she admitted that she had stopped using the front door.
She entered through the garage now.
Leah did not dramatize the admission.
“Your nervous system learned that the front door was dangerous. We can teach it something new, but not by insulting it for learning the first lesson.”
At home, James struggled with a different form of helplessness.
He could call department heads, hire investigators, speak at press conferences, and push legislation. None of those things made his wife sleep through the night. Twice he woke and found her standing at the upstairs window looking down at the driveway.
The first time, he asked what she was doing.
“Checking,” she said.
“For what?”
“I don’t know.”
He stopped asking.
Devon became obsessed with police scanners and news updates until Imani took his phone one evening and sat beside him on the couch.
“You cannot live inside what happened to me,” she said.
“I’m trying to know what’s happening.”
“You’re trying to control something you couldn’t control.”
He looked at her sharply.
She softened. “I know because I’m doing the same thing.”
Maya’s fear surfaced differently. She began texting whenever Imani was late returning home. Five minutes became ten. Ten became a message: WHERE ARE YOU? A missed response became a call.
One evening, Imani came home from the clinic and found Maya sitting on the porch steps.
“You could have waited inside,” she said.
“I know.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Maya shrugged.
Imani sat beside her.
After a minute, Maya whispered, “I wanted to see you get to the door.”