They discharged us four days later. Noah in a blanket Sophia had brought from the hostel, me in the same clothes I had arrived in, both of us stepping out into a February morning that was grey and biting and entirely indifferent to what we had just been through inside those walls.
I stood on the pavement outside St. Lennox with my son against my chest and I looked at the street, at the cars and the people moving past without slowing, at the ordinary world that had kept going while everything inside that building had changed completely, and I made myself one promise.
Three months. That was what I gave myself before I walked back into a room that mattered.
Not to fall apart. Not to sit somewhere quiet and wait for someone to come tell me it was going to be fine. I already knew it was goin
