Yvonne

Yvonne is the university counsellor who meets Connell Waldron during his first counselling session after Rob Hegarty’s suicide. In a brief but consequential encounter, she helps Connell put words to his grief, guilt, depression, and isolation, and treats the severity of his symptoms as a matter requiring further care. Her role is both attentive and limited: she can listen and recommend next steps, but cannot undo the losses or alter the circumstances he describes.

Identity and Introduction

Yvonne appears in the university counselling service, where she comes to the waiting room to meet Connell and leads him into a small office. The room contains an old Microsoft computer, a desk, and two low mint-coloured armchairs facing each other. Yvonne wears a long grey cardigan and glasses on a chain, and carries a clipboard. The setting is ordinary and institutional; Connell, by contrast, arrives struggling to manage even the effort of smiling and instead rubs his jaw before sitting down.

She opens the session by asking how he is feeling and when the change began. Connell dates it to January, a few months earlier. Yvonne’s questions give structure to an account that he has not yet managed to frame clearly for himself: the conversation moves from the timing of his distress to Rob’s death, Connell’s guilt, his current symptoms, and the possibility of seeking further help.

Listening to Grief and Guilt

Connell tells Yvonne that a school friend died by suicide in January. He recounts receiving a late-night group message from Rachel Moran asking whether anyone had seen or heard from Rob, and that Rob’s body was recovered from the River Corrib the following day. Connell had not been in regular contact with him. He also remembers that he had never replied to Rob’s last message, sent years earlier, and says he feels guilty for not having kept in touch or recognised that Rob might have been struggling.

Yvonne acknowledges the pain and self-questioning that can follow a suicide, while telling Connell that Rob’s death was not his responsibility. Connell’s response—that other people had at least tried to help—shows how firmly his grief is entangled with comparison and self-reproach. Yvonne does not treat that guilt as proof of responsibility; she recognizes the painful sense that Connell missed an opportunity to help, and allows him to articulate it rather than dismissing it as irrational.

The loss has also reopened Connell’s relationship to his own past. He cannot clearly summon Rob’s face, and the gap between their lives at college has left him feeling that he failed to notice what was happening. His recollection of the unanswered message makes the death feel attached to a specific omission, even though Yvonne distinguishes that regret from responsibility for Rob’s decisions.

Assessing Connell’s Condition

Yvonne turns to the inventory Connell completed before the session. She explains that it is the Beck Depression Inventory and that each item receives a score from zero to three. Against her examples of low scores for someone without depression and a score associated with a mild episode, Connell’s result of 43 places him, in her assessment, in the territory of very serious depression. She asks whether that judgment fits his experience. Connell quietly agrees.

The score gives a concrete measure to distress that has been accumulating since Rob’s death. Connell describes anxiety that has become severe, episodes of tingling during ordinary social interactions, and major panic attacks involving hyperventilation, chest pain, and a sense that the world has become artificial or unreal. Yvonne also identifies his negative feelings toward himself and suicidal thoughts as concerns to take seriously. The consultation thus moves beyond general sympathy: she names the seriousness of what the assessment indicates and discusses a route to additional medical care.

Yvonne says she will recommend that Connell speak with a GP at the college about the possibility of medication. She makes clear that she cannot prescribe it herself. Connell understands that distinction, though he remains restless and rubs his itchy eyes. When she offers him water, he declines. Her assessment is direct, but her role is bounded by the counselling service’s remit.

Isolation, Relationships, and the Limits of Help

When Yvonne asks whether Connell has friends in Dublin whom he can talk to, he names Niall as someone who has looked out for him. He also describes Marianne, who is away on an Erasmus year, as someone supportive and unusually close: they speak almost every night on Skype, and he feels they see the world in a similar way. He tells Yvonne that he struggles to find people he truly clicks with and that this difficulty is familiar, though it feels sharper at Trinity than it did at school.

Connell’s account of school complicates his loneliness. He had friends because he belonged to a group, even though he and Rob did not share especially deep interests or political views. Rob’s behaviour toward girls had sometimes alienated him, but shared circumstances had made them friends. At Trinity, Connell had expected to find more like-minded people; instead, he feels that students compare their parents’ wealth and that he fits in less well. Yvonne gives him room to describe how the loss of Rob compounds this social displacement: Connell feels unable to recover either the friendship or the life he left behind in Carricklea.

Yvonne tells him that counselling can work on his feelings, thoughts, and behaviours, but cannot change his circumstances. The distinction acknowledges both the potential and the limit of the session. She gives him worksheets with illustrated arrows and photocopied material about anxiety; Connell accepts them while only pretending that he intends to complete or read them. She also prints a note for him to take to the college health service, and he says he will return for another session in two weeks. Her intervention offers a next step rather than a resolution.

Narrative Role and Significance

Yvonne’s importance lies in the contrast between the scale of Connell’s distress and the practical form the response takes. His grief encompasses a dead friend, an unanswered message, panic attacks, a lost sense of belonging, and the conviction that he cannot return to his former life. The session gives these experiences a sequence and a name: January marks the onset, the inventory registers severe depression, and the college health service becomes a possible next point of contact.

The scene does not present counselling as a cure or suggest that Yvonne can restore Connell’s lost relationships. Instead, she listens, assesses risk and severity, and directs him toward further care. The forms, handouts, and follow-up appointment sit beside Connell’s unresolved guilt and uncertainty; that difference preserves the scene’s tension between an available institutional response and pain that cannot be settled in one meeting.