Dr.

Devlin walked her through it patiently, again and again: that the injury was not a character flaw, that you can love a thing and still be allowed to survive it, that there is no medal for staying at a post that is quietly killing you.

What finally moved her, she told me later, was not any argument at all.

It was Colm.

It was realizing that the version of herself she most wanted him to grow up watching was not the one who could absorb any amount of suffering without flinching, but the one who knew when to ask for help — because that was the lesson that might actually save his life someday, and she could not teach it while hiding in a car in the dark.

Chapter 27 — The Color Coming Back