Baran doesn’t register what’s happened until Ahmad and Olsen are grabbing the patient and pulling him off her. “You ok?” Dana asks as she holds Baran’s shoulders, holds her steady as she sways. Baran isn’t sure. Everything feels fuzzy. Her wrist throbs, nothing serious she thinks. The pain feels very far away as if her wrist belongs to someone else. She knows the room is loud and busy, full of both needed staff and those who showed up to see what the commotion was about, but it takes effort for Baran to focus on what anyone is saying.

Baran forces herself to breathe slowly and replay the events that just occurred. Her patient had grabbed her wrist when she was listening to his heart. She’d been wary of getting that close after how he’d been yelling at her earlier, but she thought he’d calmed down enough for her to examine him. She feels so stupid. She should have had security in the room with her. Baran is not new to this job. She should have known better.

She’d been stupid, and the patient had grabbed her, caught her off guard as she was focusing on listening to what sounded like a faint murmur, had her pinned against the gurney in an instant. The feeling of her wrists in his hands and his weight on her back made everything short circuit in her brain in a horribly familiar way.

She remembers being five years old, remembers the blinding terror of being held down for procedures she didn’t understand. She knows she’d gone still then too, knows as soon as she’d been restrained with even the slightest pressure, she’d frozen and complied. Her mother had told her she was a good girl.

She’d gone still and quiet in Afghanistan too. It had been the right thing to do then, the way to survive. Frozen in place, terrified, no one even noticed her. And yet she’d hated herself after for freezing when her patients were being slaughtered.

“Are you ok?” Perlah asks.

Princess’s hand is on Baran’s back. Baran nods and tries to focus on Princess touching her. Baran’s patient is now restrained in the bed, Abbot and Jessie moving around him. Baran needs to pull herself together. She still feels shaky, can’t tell if her hands are trembling, tries to get her mind to focus.

“Come on,” Dana says, her hand lightly on Baran’s back as she guides her out of the room. She leads Baran over to the family room, Perlah and Princess walking with them. “Sit down for a few minutes.”

“I’m fine, really,” Baran says, but she does sit on the sofa. In her eleven months here she’s already sat too many families down on this same sofa to tell them the worst news of their lives.

“Mind if we sit with you?” Princess asks, but she’s already next to Baran before she can answer, a hand on her back again. Perlah sits down on her other side and smiles so kindly that Baran has to look away or she thinks she might start crying.

“You should go home,” Dana says.

“I’m fine,” Baran reiterates. She feels more like herself, can feel her body properly again, doesn’t feel that disconcerting numb, distant sensation that comes after her body freezes like it had today. She remembers her ex-husband rushing to her after the massacre in Afghanistan, remembers feeling nothing when he’d hugged her and sobbed with relief. It had been days before she could feel anything at all.

Dana gives Baran a long-suffering expression, hands on her hips, and asks, “Remember how you pushed for it to be hospital policy that staff need to go home if they get assaulted by a patient?”

“It was nothing, and that policy applies to nurses and techs.”

“And we were grateful for how hard you pushed to get it in the nursing contract,” Princess says. “You must have thought it was important.” She smiles a little smugly, and Baran chuckles.

“It’s hard to argue when you three gang up on me,” Baran says as she leans back against the sofa cushion and tries to will her body to relax.

Dana sighs dramatically before arguing, “Abbot’s here. We can hold down the fort for the last two hours of the shift.”

“I’m fine. I’m just going to sit here for a minute, then I’ll be back out there.”

“Do you want something to eat or drink?” Perlah asks. She rubs Baran’s upper arm soothingly, and the touch makes her shudder. Baran closes her eyes against a wave of embarrassment. “Princess and I always have food.”

Baran takes a few slow, deep breaths before opening her eyes, tries to push down a wave of emotion. She can’t manage to pull herself together like she normally would when Perlah and Princess keep touching her. “You’re all being very kind, but I’m really fine.”

“I swear if you say it again,” Dana tells Baran, then hands her a little plastic cup of water from the cooler.

“Do you want tea?” Perlah asks as Baran sips the water. It’s cold, and Baran registers that with surprise at how it feels in her mouth, resisters the muscles she uses to swallow as if this isn’t something she does without thought every day. She feels herself drifting from her body again, focuses on her breaths, on the feeling of the cold cup in her hands, of the sofa firm against her back. Princess rubs her shoulder.

“You don’t have to stay here with me,” Baran says, feeling increasingly uncomfortable with these women’s attention for something so minor, with them seeing how she’s reacting, with how close she feels to losing control. She knows each of them has experienced worse from patients on multiple occasions.

“Are you kidding?” Princess says. “We’re taking a break. You think we’d rather be working than here with you? We can get the mangoes Perlah has in her locker if you want.”

“I stashed some lumpia in the back of the freezer in case of emergency,” Perlah says. “It won’t be as good as when they’re fresh, but this is the sort of occasion they’re in there for.”

Baran feels certain for the first time that her colleagues actually like her. She’d not been sure, worried that all the changes she made rubbed people the wrong way or that she was too stiff and professional, never gossips with Princess and Perlah like some of the other doctors do. But they’re sitting with her and trying to feed her, and she knows it isn’t just because they’re good people. At some point in the last eleven months, they must have decided they cared about her.

Dana sits down in the chair across from Baran. “We’re not feeding Baran an entire mean in the hospital,” she chides Perlah and Princess. “We’re trying to send her home.”

“I know a lost cause when I see one,” Perlah says. “She has as much chance of leaving as you, D.”

“You wouldn’t leave either,” Dana tells Perlah.

“I’m sorry.” Siuan’s words feel more painful than being stabbed in the gut. Moiraine didn’t think that Siuan could look more devastated. She’d been wrong.

“Why are you apologizing to me?” Moiraine asks.

“I thought that would be obvious.” Siuan has never been shy, even now, even with the new scars Elaida left on her body, wounds that Moiraine had healed after they’d remained open for weeks before Moiraine found out that Siuan was alive. Siuan sits naked, and Moiraine lets herself do the same.

“I’m not upset,” Moiraine says, almost surprised when her oath allows it. She’s not upset for herself, but she is devastated for Siuan, remembers what it was like to be cut off, doesn’t know how Siuan is surviving.

Siuan shakes her head. “I’m sorry,” she repeats. “My body doesn’t feel like my own.”

Moiraine puts her hand softly on Siuan’s hip, over the indentations her own nails left there after a half hour between Siuan’s legs before Siuan had asked Moiraine to stop trying.

“Would it help,” Moiraine asks, “if I told you that your body still feels like it’s mine?”

Siuan laughs softly, a smile on her face for the first time in days. “It helps.” She wraps her arms around Moiraine and pulls her on to Siuan’s lap. “And I know you’re mine, because the girl I met at the White Tower would be blushing bright red right now if it weren’t for my influence.”

“Of course I’m yours,” Moiraine says. She’d nearly given up when she thought Siuan was dead. “Remember how long it took to figure out what my body liked?” Siuan had been so patient when Moiraine was sixteen and filled with shame. “I can be patient too. If your body needs something different now, we will figure it out together.”