“When working with patients, the first and last meetings are the hardest, with the stakes greatest, and I’m having an awful lot of first and last meetings these days. Maintaining course after the initial connections have been made is easier. I know who I’m talking to and what I’m doing, there will be peaks, plateaus and valleys, but I can generally feel like there’s progress being made. The first meetings and the goodbyes? They’re critically important.”

“You want to make sure you’re laying good groundwork.”

“It’s not just that. The wrong kind of connection or break can do a lot of damage. Failing to realize you’re hurting a patient when you say something or take an approach, failing to be strong enough from the outset with patients who need a hard line, being too hard on patients who need a soft touch…”

I nodded. I started to think about which I’d been, back then, but thinking back was hard and unpleasant.

“I…” She’d started to say something, and then stopped.

“You?”

She sighed, leaning back in her seat.

“I’ve put myself in an awkward position here,” she said. “Actually a few, including you and me sitting here having this conversation. I want to get right to it so you’re not talking to me under the wrong pretenses, but I’m not sure how to navigate this, either.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“That’s just it,” she said. She frowned. “I wanted to have a conversation with you for another reason.”

That stung, in a way. That we weren’t meeting up for the sake of meeting up.

“Okay,” I said.

“I might have made a mistake,” she said. “And I was thinking you might be able to help.”

Flare 2.5

“A mistake?”

“I worry it’s the case. Time will tell, but I can make educated guesses and I have concerns.”

“I have to admit, I’m not sure how to respond to that,” I said. “I’d say you’re only human or you’re only mortal, but doesn’t that sound condescending, coming from a parahuman?”

“We’re all mortal, Victoria. Even Scion was.”

I nodded.

It was strange to hear that name spoken out loud. Nine out of ten times, people would avoid saying it out loud. As if they couldn’t reconcile the first hero with the thing that had ended the world.

“I’d like to help,” I said. “A couple of things are off the table, obviously, but you know what they are, I think. I wouldn’t be okay if you wanted me to reach out to my sister, or that kind of thing.”