A Different Simon

Ashley searches for a word and forbids herself to think it: not frightened, not broken — “empty.” Then Simon collapses into her arms, calls it exhaustion, and in an even voice agrees to the plan she has spent months fighting for. The agreement feels “less like a victory than a thin warning signal”: she has gotten her “yes” from a different Simon. The intuition she could not “file in a folder” in chapter sixteen works here without error.

This is important for anyone who is close to a person after an attempt: sudden calm, evenness, “I don’t care” and a readiness to agree to anything are not signs of recovery. Often they are signs of shutdown, and a person who has shut down is not protected from himself (see “Already Said Goodbye”). Fainting spells, refusing the hospital, a “nothing serious” said “the way someone talks about the weather in a country they have no intention of visiting” — these are reasons to insist on medical help, not to be glad of the cooperation. Ashley does the right thing: she does not argue with that voice — and she does not let go of his elbow.