Gracie took a long, deep breath and forced herself to totter into the pet store. Why couldn’t she stop her hands from shaking? A fish. A pet fish, Gracie. This shouldn’t be such a huge deal.

But it was.

As she found herself staring at swirls of vibrant tetras and serene angel fish, she couldn’t shake the sinking feeling in her stomach. Whichever one of those beautiful creatures came home with her…it was going to die.

“Hello, ma’am! Welcome to PetsMart. Is there anything I can help you with?”

Gracie flinched, as much startled by the kid’s lightning blue hair as by his sudden appearance.

“I, uh,” she swallowed hard and focused on the feeling of solid ground beneath her feet, “I’m not sure. I mean, I guess it doesn’t matter. Can you, can you just give me whatever fish you think is the hardest to kill?”

The boy laughed, “Sure! I’d go with a guppy if I were you,” he moved towards a tank on the end of the wall and gestured for her to follow, “My favorite is this yellow guy here. If he gets stressed out he’ll turn white. Kinda like a mood ring. No guesswork; if he’s happy you’ll know it, you know?”

“Yeah, sure. That’s perfect. I’ll take him.”

It only took a few minutes for the kid to scoop out the fish and help Gracie with the right tank and accessories to buy. It felt like hours.

In the checkout line, she could almost hear the poor little fish’s cries for help, “Heeelp meee! Don’t send me with the crazy anxious lady who takes an hour to psych herself up to reply to a text!”

“Enjoy your new friend!” the cashier chirped.

If he lives that long, sure.

At home, Gracie took her time unpacking each item from the bags. She read the directions three times before setting everything up. By the time she was ready to put the guppy in his tank, he was ghostly white and barely swimming in his plastic bag.

“Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die! It’s ok, I’ll take care of you!” she whispered frantically, pouring the little guy carefully into his new home. “I don’t know why I listened to my therapist,” she muttered to him as he explored the new gravel and plants, “Having something alive to take care of was supposed to give me purpose and calm me down. Now I’ll just have the death of a living creature to deal with along with everything else.”

But in the morning, he was still alive. And the next day, and the next. Saturday morning Gracie found herself addressing the bright yellow fish as Reginald. Monday afternoon in Janae’s office, Gracie had to admit it.

“You were right. Once I got over the sheer panic of it, I realized that just because things went wrong in the past doesn’t mean everything will. And I do have control over some things, I guess. Having Reginald always there to depend on me — I don’t know. It made me dig deep into a place I’d forgotten I had. A place in my heart that needs to be needed.”

Really, though, it was just a fish that needed her. This shouldn’t be such a huge deal. But it was.