Had I Only Listened
A mentor's warning, remembered too late
Years earlier, her had warned her about the danger of caring too much and remembering too little.
Dr. Halloway, whose voice still echoed in her memory, had said that could quietly rewrite a mind.
Had she listened then, Elena might have recognised the signs now unfolding all around her.
If she had kept his letters, she would have had a record of everything he predicted.
Instead, she had thrown them away, certain that she would never need his warnings.
Had I only listened, she whispered, as settled over her like a heavy winter coat.
Halloway had once told her that the mind protects itself by forgetting what it cannot forgive.
Had she understood that sentence sooner, she would not have dismissed it as mere poetry.
If a patient had ever been harmed under her care, would her memory have kept it or hidden it?
The question frightened her, because she no longer knew which answer she would prefer.
Never had she imagined that her own profession might one day be turned against her.
She had spent a whole career helping others their pasts, yet she had buried her own.
Had the warning signs been any clearer, perhaps a colleague would have stepped in to help.
But she had been careful, always careful, to appear perfectly in control of herself.
If she had asked for help when the first doubts appeared, this might never have begun.
Now the doubts had grown into something that followed her from room to room.
Rarely had she felt so certain that a truth was near, and so afraid to reach for it.
Had Halloway lived, she would have driven to his house that very night.
He had died three winters ago, taking his warnings and his patience with him.
She remembered the very last thing he wrote: the you must fear is the one inside.
Had she grasped his meaning at the time, she might have prepared herself for this moment.
Responsibility, he believed, was not a to escape but a to be paid.
If she had accepted that earlier, the weight might now feel a little lighter.
Instead she had let it grow in the dark, feeding quietly on every forgotten hour.
Had anyone asked whether she trusted herself, she would once have laughed at the question.
Tonight, alone with his remembered voice, she could no longer find the joke.
Only by listening now, she realised, could she ever the silence of all those years.