In the hyper-diverse North Richmond-Abbotsford neighbourhood in Melbourne widespread public injecting and establishment of a supervised injecting centre have been contentious issues. However, the prevalence of both firsthand and vicarious trauma in this context, presents a case study in which to explore the emergence of more care-full responses to risk. Typically studied in isolation from one another, I argue bringing geographies of care and risk into relation with one another develops insights regarding the complex negotiations of anonymity, surveillance and recognition which occur in encounters in the neighbourhood. Drawing on narrative interviews with diverse women about their experiences in North Richmond-Abbotsford, I argue that physical and emotional proximity and/or distance to trauma are central to how women make sense of and navigate the tensions between sense of, and response to, risk; duty, and capacity, to care; and feelings of indifference. Currently there remains a siloing in the literatures which does not account for the relational interdependence between responding to risk and enacting either care or indifference. In bringing care and risk into conversation this research highlights crucial spaces in which belonging amidst complex difference might emerge. A belonging with difference that disrupts exclusive notions of community by building on an Ahmedian sense of provisional collective which centres care.