Updated Mar 23, 2026 • ~8 min read
Chapter 6: The work she chose
AMY
She saw him on a Thursday.
She had been doing Thursdays at the Garland VA for three years, which meant she knew the layout and the check-in process and the specific sound of the east corridor where the individual session rooms were, and she knew most of the staff by name, and she knew the rhythm of the morning — the groups that came at nine, the individual appointments in the ten and eleven slots, the lunch quiet.
She was setting up the art room at 9:15 when she saw Jake in the east corridor.
He did not see her.
He was with a staff member she recognized — Dr. Okafor’s intake team — walking toward the individual session wing with the particular posture of a person who had told himself he was fine with this and was making sure his posture corroborated the claim. Shoulders back. Chin level. The walk that said: *I am here voluntarily and I have decided this is fine.*
She watched him turn the corner.
She felt something move through her that was not sadness exactly and was not pride exactly and was something in between. He had called. He had come. He was here, walking down the corridor with his chin level and his shoulders back, doing the thing that was not easy because it was the right thing and he knew it was the right thing.
She went back to setting up the art room.
Her group was eight people that morning: four men, two women, and two who came sometimes and sometimes didn’t, and the reliable presence was the core four who had been coming for eight months. Corporal Dawes, who had started doing the charcoal work in week three and had not stopped. Mrs. Ferreira, sixty-two, who had a daughter in the Marines and came to the group because she needed somewhere to put it. Sergeant Washington, who drew large architectural spaces — hallways, high ceilings, lots of light — and had told Amy in week two that the spaces were imaginary, places he hadn’t been yet that he was building for himself. And Private Collins, who was nineteen and had been in the VA since November and whose drawings were mostly of his dog back in Lubbock and who was, Amy thought, one of the most resilient people she’d ever met.
She set out the materials and let them choose.
This was the practice she’d built the group around: no assignment. She would sometimes offer a prompt — *draw something you want to return to* or *draw something you’ve left behind* — but the choice was always theirs, and the choosing was part of it. The VA clinical team had told her that control was important, that the loss of agency was one of the through-lines of trauma, and that anything that restored small choices was therapeutic. She believed them. She also believed it because she’d watched it work — watched Sergeant Washington choose the architectural drawings week after week and gradually begin adding figures to the spaces, first small ones in doorways and then larger ones at tables, and in last month’s session he’d drawn a window with a garden outside and a person standing in the garden.
She had not commented on the figure or the garden.
He had said, unprompted, at the end of the session: *I used to garden. In California. I haven’t done it since I got back.*
She had said: *What grew best.*
He had said: *Tomatoes.*
She had said: *I’m growing heirlooms. I’ll bring you seeds.*
He had laughed.
The group worked for ninety minutes. Afterward, she cleaned up and filed her notes and ate the lunch she’d packed and checked her phone.
She had a text from Linda Mitchell.
Linda said: *Jake was in Garland today. Don’t tell him I said anything. I’m just glad.*
Amy looked at the text for a moment.
She typed back: *Me too.*
She put her phone away and went to find Dr. Okafor.
She didn’t ask about Jake — she wouldn’t, it wasn’t her information. She asked about the Thursday afternoon slot in the art room, whether Dr. Okafor wanted to refer any of the new intakes to the group, and they talked for twenty minutes about the program and the waitlist and the new grant application the VA was putting together for expanded arts programming.
Dr. Okafor said: *We have a referral I’d like to discuss. New intake, just started this week.*
Amy said: *Of course.*
He said: *Sergeant Mitchell. He’s just back in the area. I’ve seen his file — the shrapnel injury was significant, the PTSD indicators are moderate to high. He’s engaging with the program, which is good.* He paused. *I’m not going to suggest art therapy as a first step. He’s in individual sessions. But I wanted you to know he’s here, in case he comes up as a referral down the road.*
Amy said: *I appreciate the heads up.*
She kept her voice level. She kept her face level.
Dr. Okafor said: *You know him.*
She said: *We grew up in the same town.*
He said: *Good. The familiar faces help.* He paused. *He’s doing the right things.*
She said: *He is.*
She drove home.
She drove through the flat Texas afternoon with the windows down and thought about Jake walking down the east corridor with his chin level and his shoulders back, making the decision every time it required making. She thought about what she’d learned in three years of Thursdays: that the people who came back were not the people who weren’t damaged. They were the people who decided to do the work. That was the whole distinction. The work was hard and slow and never done and they did it anyway, and that was what it looked like from the outside.
She thought: *he’s doing it.*
She thought: *of course he is.*
She stopped at the grocery store on the way home. She was out of coffee and she needed more flour for the weekend baking and she walked the aisles in the fluorescent light and thought about Jake and about patience, which she had practiced for twelve years and was still practicing.
She ran into Mrs. Henderson in the produce section.
Mrs. Henderson said: *Amy. Have you seen Jake? He looks thin.*
She said: *He’s settling in.*
Mrs. Henderson said: *Is he all right.*
She said: *He’s doing the right things.* She said it the same way Dr. Okafor had said it. *He’ll be all right.*
Mrs. Henderson looked satisfied with this and moved to the tomatoes.
Amy bought her coffee and her flour and drove home.
She graded papers at the kitchen table until seven. She made soup from the things she had. She ate at the table and looked out the window at the road.
Down the road, the farmhouse was lit. The kitchen light. The upstairs light — his room.
She thought about him in the individual session room in the east corridor of the Garland VA, working through the things that needed working through. She thought about the function of the art therapy room — the way making something with your hands created a distance from the thing inside you and that distance made it possible to look at it. She thought about how Sergeant Washington was growing tomatoes now, or was going to, and how Private Collins had started drawing his dog from the front instead of from the side, which was a small thing and was not a small thing.
She thought: *Jake used to draw.*
She thought: *he drew in high school. He was good at it.*
She thought: *I’ll wait until he asks.*
She thought: *if he asks.*
She finished her soup.
She washed the bowl.
She went to bed at ten and lay in the dark and thought about a Thursday afternoon in the east corridor of the Garland VA, and a man she’d loved since she was sixteen, walking toward the thing that was hard because it was the right thing.
She thought: *I love him.*
She thought: *I know.*
She thought: *I have known for twelve years and I am going to keep knowing it until it is right to say it, and until then I am going to be in the kitchen at five o’clock with the iced tea and the mail and the stories about Marcus.*
She thought: *I am very patient.*
She turned over.
She slept.
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