Echoed Rain

The patient entered with a sigh, shaking his head. It had been a difficult day — nothing had gone to plan, which, in all fairness, seemed to be exactly the kind of plan the day had in mind. Expectations had fallen like dominoes, except that dominoes at least fall in an orderly fashion. His pulse flickered between breaths, rapid but uncertain, as if caught between deciding whether to panic or simply give up and take a nap. Outside, the rain poured relentlessly, its rhythm filling the room, steady and indifferent, the perfect background score for existential crises everywhere.

The consulting room, usually a space of quiet refuge, felt different today, as though the storm had followed him inside. The air was thick with the scent of rain-soaked clothes and the unspoken weight of things not quite said. The rain drummed against the window, tracing long streaks on the glass, as if jotting down notes on the conversation yet to unfold.

He sat down heavily, his body sagging into the chair, though not quite finding comfort. But at this point, sitting down was an achievement in itself.

"And they say everything has a solution..." he muttered, half to himself, half to me, his voice carrying both doubt and the faintest glimmer of hope. Maybe, just maybe, this was one of those rare moments when people turned out to be right.

His pulse spoke in shifting rhythms, skipping a beat here and there, like someone artfully dodging awkward questions. His face carried the exhaustion of a man who no longer expected miracles — just a pause, a small reprieve, maybe even a decent cup of coffee. Outside, the city blurred into liquid silver, softened by the rain, dissolving into something dreamlike. And here, inside this quiet room, time did something strange. It didn’t rush. It didn’t demand. It stretched — elongating itself not as an empty void, but as an invitation. An opening. A moment where something could shift, even if only by a fraction.

"Shall we begin?" I asked, not out of habit, but as someone offering a small but significant step forward. A way to steady the falling pieces, or at the very least, to pause long enough to watch where they landed.

The patient nodded — not with conviction, not with the certainty of someone convinced of his own recovery, but with the quiet resignation of a man who understood that even standing still takes energy. And honestly, who has the strength for that?