Chapter 69

“How do you feel?” Emma probes gently, that soft tone she uses when trying to talk me through life. Councilor Emma to the rescue.

“I don’t know, empty… Numb, sort of… Sad, I guess, but not like heartbroken devastation like when Arry and I fall out. I thought I would feel more than this by now. I look at him, and his pain is there on full display and soul-destroying, while here I am, like this. Like something in me is switched off. Shouldn’t I be sobbing or acting like we lost our baby?”

Saying those words bite at me, and I inhale slowly to soothe the way it tastes. I am not fully numb, but it’s there, cutting off what lingers behind so it doesn’t touch me. Like a million times in my childhood when I thought I was living through the worst hell of my life. It amazes me how many different types of suffering one person can endure.

“I don’t think that sounds like you don’t care. It sounds a lot like you are in the first stages of grief… Numb and empty are classic shock