Alice

Alice is a hospital nurse and the leader of a domestic-violence support group in St. Nacho’s. Her brief but consequential role joins immediate, bodily care with a community response to abuse: she tends to Yasha’s injured arm, then welcomes him into a group where his uncertainty about belonging is met without being treated as a reason to leave. A fellow member’s account reveals that Alice’s advocacy is connected to her own family’s experience of abuse.

Nursing and First Contact

At the hospital, Alice introduces herself while taking Yasha’s blood pressure. The cuff tightens over his bruised arm, and he reacts to the pain; Alice acknowledges that the bruising makes the measurement hurt and apologizes. The exchange is small, but it establishes her attention to the immediate physical circumstances of the person in her care. Yasha has been injured, and she does not treat his discomfort as incidental.

Alice appears again when Yasha attends the support group. He recognizes her as the nurse from the hospital, linking the clinical encounter to the broader support she offers. In both settings, she meets him in circumstances where he is vulnerable, though the group presents a different challenge: there, he must face whether he can understand himself as someone affected by domestic violence.

Leading the Support Group

At the group meeting, Alice welcomes Yasha while the other women sit in a small circle, silent and tense. The welcome makes him the focus of the room, and the attention intensifies his discomfort. When he says he does not belong and insists that he is not a victim, Alice rises as if to prevent him from leaving. She begins by recognizing that the group may initially feel unsuitable to him, but Yasha continues before she can finish.

The scene places Alice in a position of welcome rather than simple authority. She is responsible for leading the group, yet Yasha’s distress cannot be settled by the fact that she has invited him. His belief that he should have been able to protect himself complicates his willingness to accept the group’s description of his experience. Alice’s response leaves open the possibility that he can remain even before he is ready to speak or identify with the others.

Family History and Advocacy

A group member later explains that, after she first came home with a black eye from her boyfriend, her mother packed their belongings and moved them out of her father’s house. Her parents divorced, and the daughter identifies Alice as her mother. She also says that Alice now runs the group. The account connects Alice’s public work to a family history in which her daughter’s abuse precipitated a decisive departure from the household.

The daughter’s description does not make Alice’s experience identical to Yasha’s or to the other women’s stories. Instead, it gives the group leader a concrete history of action: when faced with her daughter’s injury, Alice moved them out, and she later became the person leading a place of support for survivors. In Yasha’s first difficult encounter with the group, that role matters less as an abstract promise than as a practice of making space for someone who is not yet sure he belongs.