April is amazed at herself. There! It is out. The cage door opened, the bird flown. Dr Logan lets it flap right past him. He doesn’t try to lasso it with questions. He doesn’t repeat it back to her like he used to; like kids do when they’re being cruel to each other. Gratitude washes over her. Now she can reach for the other words, words she has never said and could never say, for fear they would razor her throat as she spoke them. Now, as they rise to her mouth, they are small and smooth as pebbles.

I was gang-raped, she says. At a party.

Oh, there are still tears. Tears for the sixteen-year-old girl who loved Jesus. Who believed she was saved, even as she drank the spiked punch. Who had to endure her Lord’s name as a bass-line for their bestial act. And as she’d matched her breathing to Dr Logan’s, he matches her tears with his own: even now, they are making their way down his cheeks.

I hated those Godless boys, she says.

Logan looks at the blinking red light on the eye of the camera. All of this has been recorded. Is still being recorded.

Because he wondered if this might happen, he has, in his pocket, a sock. His career could be ruined by what he is about to do, but it is the only human response. He crosses the room and places the sock over the camera. The judge and jury will want an explanation. In this dark moment, anything could happen.

What happens is love. Not the reportable physical sort, though the sock leaves that possibility open. He is in April’s hands, having removed himself from legal protection. But she has been through the process and he trusts she is washed free of malice. He sits beside her on the bed and puts his arms around her, as he would his own daughter, and holds her as she cries, silently, into his shoulder. She cries for some time. When the knock comes, he removes the sock and opens the door. He explains that Everything is fine and even though the nurse frowns, he looks so peaceful, so definite, that she feels unable to override him, and disappears. The interruption has, in any case, roused April out of her crying.

Are you ready to explain what happened? To the camera?

Nodding.