Two rows of opposing chairs—we shift, unable to find a width of cushion on wine-colored vinyl.

The vinyl itself is all cracked up.

Like veins where it is broken.

Like thin little white veins.

Thoroughly drained, empty.

We face forward: mothers, fathers, husbands or ex-husbands, wives, ex-wives, uncles, aunts, grandparents, siblings, sons, daughters, and a baby in a carrier with sweet, black curls.

A woman, who wears a whistle, points at the board with a long piece of unbroken chalk. She smiles with too much of her cheek as she points to a projected picture and tells us: This is what it looks like, what their brains look like. With a disorder caused by a consistent misfiring of neurons, their lobes begin to look like shredded broccoli. This is why we say it’s a sickness. Maybe not like cancer, maybe not like epilepsy. Certainly though, their brains suffer.

From a chemical imbalance.

From self-inflicted harm.

From corollary erosion.

From irreversible degradation.

But now, what causes all this misfiring?

She blows the whistle. We start. The baby murmurs from the carrier.

A trigger causes the misfiring—she answers. Some thing, or activity, or thought, or feeling associated with a previous misfire they experienced: this will trigger the imbalance, and boom! There goes their thinking, their training, all the tips and tricks built up. And so, isn’t it important to know, to understand, for their sake and our own, what could be a trigger?

We think. A thick citrus scent fills each deep inhalation and deep exhalation, as we wonder if this is the air they breathed, if these are the chairs they shifted in, if these four cement walls have helped them, protected them, surrounded them in the past 30 or 60 or 90 days.

The woman’s eyes pivot among us.

We begin to answer, one by one, what their triggers are.

Television. News. Commercials. Billboards on the highway.

Eating out. Eating in, also, especially for holidays and gatherings.

Work obligations. Or social events. Any events, like concerts or fairs.

Add stress, fights, or drama.

PTSD—one of us says from the back, eyes under the rim of a Vietnam vet ball cap.

Barbecues. Bowling. Card games. Karaoke.

Driving, flying, traveling. Leaving the house.

But also staying in the house.

A certain time of the day.

A certain comfort. A certain pain.

Not being able to sleep.

Waking up.

The woman with the whistle forges on: Well-functioning brains, like ours, are designed to protect us from ourselves, right? We know what we shouldn’t do, so we don’t do it, right? We don’t want to harm ourselves. Their brains, with all this erosion from the past, have lost that design of the functioning brain, and that ability to know what protects them. So with the trigger and misfire, they can’t decipher what they shouldn’t do anymore, and they harm themselves.

She puts the whistle in her mouth again, her lips still moving: They’re going about their day, whether they’re inside, outside, anywhere it seems—from what we’ve said.

Then, there’s the trigger (she blows the whistle).

There’s the misfire (we wince, the baby writhes).

There’s them harming themselves (she points to the projection).

There’s the erosion (we fixate on the broccoli brain).

The smile is in her cheek still, but she downturns her lips and says she has a hard truth to share now. There’s something we need to know before we see them again today.

Over the past 30 or 60 or 90 days, each of us witnessed a side of our son, daughter, wife or ex-wife, husband, ex-husband, niece, nephew, grandchild, sister, brother, father, or mother that was untriggered, unable to fully misfire because of these four cement walls. This made us believe in them again. This made us think they could be a kind of 2.0 version of themselves. New, changed, better, everything we’ve wanted for them, for our families, for ourselves.

But—the woman says—the hard truth is that retraining the brain is no easy feat, let alone an imbalanced brain; and so, out of a hundred of their brains, only one will be able to never get triggered and misfire again after leaving this place. That’s the statistic. 1 in 100. Those are the odds.

One of us, a woman whose cheeks blister red like the chair vinyl, sits forward.

What are you saying then?

What are we supposed to expect?

What are we supposed to do?

We’re all hot suddenly. Red. Like her. Like the vinyl.

Why are they here then?

What did we pay for?

What are we hoping for?

But the woman with the whistle doesn’t flinch. Her answer: The question is not what we hope for, right? We all know that, right? Rather, the question is: Are we capable of helping them, knowing we have no control? We can have all the hope, patience, understanding, and prayers in the world. But we don’t have control. Tips, tricks may not help them. Their triggers and erosion may worsen—certainly, beyond our control; but also, largely, beyond their own control.

Our faces flush, veins surfacing.

We sense, at the same moment, shadows encircling the door—all smiles, all waving, their eyes full like we haven’t seen in a long time, their skin bright, clean, beaming in the daylight. Our pulses bounce with theirs. Our children, spouses, siblings, family members, fathers, mothers. We feel what they feel; we want to hold them, forgive them, cry with them, hope with them, help them, protect them, surround them, shake them, tell them they will be that 1 in 100.

Like a gunshot, a shriek again—that trilling whistle.

The woman directs our eyes back to the board.

Away from their hopeful faces.

Toward the projection of the broccoli brain.

There’s that seizing—but we feel it now.

That erosion. That shredding sensation.

But, between our ears now, our brains now.

The baby cries out.

Meg Granger has published fiction in Routine: A Crack the Spine Themed Anthology, flash fiction in Crack the Spine’s issue 238 and Best of XVIII Anthology, as well as poetry in The Merrimack Review. Since receiving her MFA at Western New England University, she has taught writing and composition at WNEU and at Pioneer Valley Writer’s Workshop; she has worked in publishing for BusinessWest Magazine and for Common Ground Review; and she has completed a readership with the Masters Review.