Kate's Modern Impalement

Chapter Five

The waiting room at the Chiron Institute could have belonged to any mid-range therapist’s office. Soft gray chairs arranged in careful clusters. A low table with outdated magazines no one touched. Recessed lighting that tried too hard to be gentle. The air smelled faintly of coffee and industrial cleaner. Kalani Addison sat with her hands locked together in her lap and stared at a blank spot on the opposite wall, determined not to look at anyone else.

She failed, of course. Peripheral vision was enough. Journalists, easy to spot by the way they held their tablets like weapons and scanned the room for usable faces. Court adjuncts in stiff, dark clothing, already checking the time. Families—some quiet, some already fracturing in low, sharp whispers. A few had brought children. Everyone wore the same muted palette, as if they had all received the same unspoken dress code. Funeral clothes. Kalani supposed that was exactly what they were.

Her stomach turned without warning. She stood too quickly, muttered something about the restroom to no one in particular, and walked the short hallway with her arms folded tight across her chest. The bathroom was empty and clinical. She locked herself in a stall, sat, and waited. Nothing happened. Her bladder was fine. It was only the nerves, the same ones that had kept her awake for most of the last three nights. She washed her hands twice, then dug the small prescription bottle from her bag. The anxiety pills were already half gone. She tipped one into her palm, reached for the water, and watched the little white tablet bounce off the edge of the sink and disappear down the drain with a soft, final click.

Behind her a stall door opened. The sound of retching had been quiet enough that she almost mistook it for the plumbing. A young woman about her own age stepped out, Press badge clipped to her jacket, tablet clutched against her side. Her face was pale and shiny with sweat. She rinsed her mouth at the neighboring sink, then caught Kalani’s reflection in the mirror and gave a weak, embarrassed smile.

“Sorry,” she said. “I thought I could handle it. Turns out maybe not.”

Kalani managed a short, unexpected laugh—the first real one in days. “That makes two of us.”

The journalist’s name was Karen. She looked barely older than Kalani, still new enough that the badge seemed slightly too large for her. They stood there for a moment in the fluorescent quiet, two strangers bonded by the shared failure of their stomachs and nerves. When Karen realized Kalani was not another reporter but family, her expression shifted into something more careful, almost apologetic. Kalani shook her head before the other woman could speak.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Really. I’m not offended.”

They walked back to the waiting room together. Karen talked first, voice low, about the pressure of being the newest hire on a State-aligned desk, about editors who wanted clean, usable narratives and did not care how the people inside those narratives actually felt. Kalani listened, grateful for the temporary distraction. Then the conversation turned, almost without either of them noticing, toward her mother.

“She was… kind,” Kalani said after a long pause. “Patient. Maybe too patient. My father was the only full citizen in the household, and he never let anyone forget it. Arrogant. Always certain the rules were correct because they favored him. Mom just tried to keep things calm. After I left for college I think she got bored. Lonely, maybe. I don’t know. I wasn’t there enough to notice until it was too late.”

Karen did not reach for her tablet. She did not ask clarifying questions designed to shape a story. She simply listened, eyes steady, while Kalani kept talking—about the trial, the speed of the conviction, the way the system had closed around her mother like a door with no handle on the inside. About her own fraying mental health, the medication that only half-worked, the nights she had spent staring at the ceiling wondering whether showing up today was courage or self-punishment. About the simple, stubborn fact that she had to see her mother one last time, even if the glass and the distance made the word “see” feel like a lie.

The announcement came over the soft ceiling speaker without drama. Witnesses for the four o’clock cycle were asked to proceed to the gallery.

Karen stood first. She waited until Kalani rose as well, then fell into step beside her. Neither of them spoke as they left the ordinary waiting room and followed the short corridor toward the witness chamber. The air changed as they walked—cooler, more tightly filtered, carrying the faint metallic edge of the facility beyond. Kalani kept her eyes forward. Karen’s presence at her shoulder was the only thing that felt even slightly real.