“Fine. Where am I from? I was raised by capes to be a cape, and after finally getting powers I lived a lifetime in three years. I was reborn, I rushed through my education, I made mistakes, I started working, I found someone who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I… started losing people. I went to the funerals. I gave my dad showers, because he needed the care. Then it was my turn, except… worse than death. I ended up in a hospital and a care center, broken and kind of forgotten or ignored. I can’t leave that hospital room or that feeling.”

“I’ve heard the general story. We will touch on that. I think I can help you if you want that help. I’ve dealt with a lot of people who had rooms or scenes they couldn’t put behind them.”

I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s that easy. It was two years that I was like that. Every moment was a scene unto itself.”

“Understood. Just do me a favor and don’t dismiss the idea of it being fixable right away.”

“Okay,” I said.

“That’s where you’re coming from, then. A lifetime of crisis is hard enough to deal with, and you didn’t have the tools to deal with it.”

“I had some,” I said, annoyed. Annoyed because he wasn’t jumping to the right conclusion and because he wasn’t Jessica. There couldn’t be a Jessica because Jessica was gone. “I was raised to be a heroine. I didn’t do it all right, I cringe at who I used to be, and how I used to hurt people, but I was given more tools than most people my age, I think.”

“Okay,” he said.

“Yeah. I’m getting sidetracked. Where am I now? I’m trying to make sure that a whole lot of people, some of Jessica’s old patients foremost among them, don’t end up like I did, because there’s nothing I’m willing to do to undo that or unlive those years, but I can at least save other people from it.”

I stabbed the table a few times with my finger to punctuate the last few words.

“You feel what you had to deal with could have been averted, and you want to avert it for others.”

“One thousand percent,” I said, with emotion. “One thousand fucking percent, it could have been averted.”

“By an outsider? Or by someone close to the situation?”