“You have to care about your patient,”
Jesse said. “But you
can’t let the caring interfere with your treatment.”
Dix made a movement with his head that might have been a nod.
Jesse was quiet again.
“You know the kid that got raped?” he said after a
while.
Dix did the head movement again.
“She’s gone. The family put the house up for sale and moved
away.”
“Do you know why they moved?” Dix said.
“I assume it was too tough on her in school. You know what kids
are like.”
Dix smiled faintly and waited.
“I couldn’t save her,” Jesse
said.
“Why would you think you could? You did what you are able to do.
You caught her rapists and brought them to justice.”
“Yeah. A few months swabbing floors after school in the police
station.”
“That’s the justice that was
available,” Dix said. “You couldn’t
prevent her rape. You can’t prevent her peers from alluding to
it.”
Jesse looked past Dix out the window. It was a fresh bright day,
intensified by the new snow.
“It seems to me that nobody can protect anybody.”
“Risk can be reduced,” Dix said.
“But not eliminated.”
Dix was quiet, waiting. Jesse said nothing, still looking out the window.
“There’s a point,” Dix said
after a while, “where security and
freedom begin to clash.”
At midday the sun was strong enough to melt the snow where it lay on dark surfaces. The tree limbs had begun to drip. Jesse turned his gaze back onto Dix.
“You’re not just talking about police work,” Jesse
said.
Dix tilted his head a little and said nothing. The rigmarole
of psychotherapy.
“People need to live the life they want to live,” Jesse said.
“They can’t live it the way somebody else wants them
to.”
Dix smiled and raised his eyebrows.
“Everybody knows that,” Jesse said.
Dix nodded.
“And few people actually believe it,”
Jesse said.
“There’s often a gap between what we know and what we do,” Dix
said.
“Let me write that down,” Jesse said.
“Psychotherapy is not snake dancing,” Dix said. “Mainly it’s
just trying to close the gap.”
