Page 91 of The Fall Classic

“Stay with the cold,” he says. “Keep looking at the spot and sit with that feeling.”

I don’t answer right away. After months of this, I’ve learned the easy answer isn’t the only answer. With my eyes firmly at seven o’clock, I let my mind flit wherever it will.

And it takes too long to get there, but it gets there.

“Georgie,” I say. “The girl I told you about. Two nights ago at dinner, she fainted. It was terrifying. She went limp and cold, and I—” I stop.

“What?”

“I panicked.”

“What did panic look like?”

“Nothing. Action. I dropped down to the ground and got her help, but during that instant … and then waiting⁠—”

“Stay with it. Think about it.”

I do as he says, sitting with the feeling in all of its discomfort. The tightness in my chest expands, climbing up my throat where it throbs, but it takes up space lower, too. This all-consuming fear that nothing I did would be enough to save her, this unwillingness to let go.

I’m still staring at the pen low and to the left in my field of vision. I blink and the pen disappears, and I see Georgie’s colorless lips, the way her fingertips were almost blue.

“I gripped. I couldn’t let her go, couldn’t let her out of my sight. I stayed over and barely slept. Watched her all night.”

“Keep looking. Is there anything else there?”

I keep my eyes on the end of his pen and let the question linger.

“I don’t know.”

“Does this feeling tell you anything about what’s happening right now? With Georgie?”

I stare at the blue tip and think. “No,” I say slowly. “It’s just there.”

“Keep looking. Keep feeling it all,” he says. “Let your eyes come back when it feels done, not before.”

My eyes stay fixed on that spot while I breathe. The tightness loosens by degrees, easing so slowly and subtly, I don’t notice how much easier it is to breathe until I’m inhaling fully, like there was a rubber band around my lungs that’s finally snapped. I remove the headphones, the air on my ears making me shiver.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Looser. Less like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

“That’s good.” He sets the pen down. “Anything you want to talk about now?”

I turn my focus back outside, to the field, where the lawn mower is cutting perfect diagonal stripes into the grass.

“Yeah. That question I asked when I first got here.”

I turn the thought over in my head, trying to orient it so it’s facing up in my head. My texts with Georgie flitter past until there’s a snag. My text to her about the Tree.

Is it really giving freely if she never knew there was another choice?

I think about Tuesdays with Morrie and that section on detachment.

“How do you know the difference,” I say, “between holding onto someone because you love them and holding onto them because gripping too hard is your MO?”

Dr. Chang picks his pen back up, but he’s not writing anything or having me track the movement. I wonder if this is how he thinks through things.

“Have you ever felt the difference before?”