'Are you all right?' he asks me. 'You back?'
I can't look at him. I bring myself to a sitting position.
'Why did you do that?' I whisper. I'm done with the pretense of being strong in front of my shrink. He's shattered me, and he holds my heart, still beating, in his hands.
He doesn't reply right away. He stands up, grabs a chair, and brings it close to the couch. He sits down, and though I still can't look at him, I can feel him looking at me, like a bird beating its wings against a window. Tentative, persistent.
'I did that . . . because I had to.' He's silent for a moment. 'Smoky, I've been working with FBI and other law-enforcement agents for a decade now. You people, you are made of such strong stuff. I've seen all the best parts of humanity in this office. Dedication. Bravery. Honor. Duty. Sure, I've seen a little evil, some corruption. But that's been the exception, not the rule. Mostly, I've seen strength. Unbelievable strength. Strength of character, of the soul.' He pauses, shrugs. 'We're not supposed to discuss the soul, in my profession. Not supposed to believe in it, really. Good and evil? They're just broad concepts, not things defined.' He looks at me, grim. 'But they aren't just concepts, are they?'
I continue to stare at my hands.
'You and your peers, you hoard your strength like a talisman. You act as if it has some finite source. Like Samson and his hair. You seem to think if you break down and really open up in here, you'll lose that strength and never get it back.' He's quiet again, for a good long while. I feel empty and desolate. 'I've been doing this for some time, Smoky, and you're one of the strongest people I've ever met. I can say with near certainty that none of the people I've treated in the past would be able to endure what you've suffered, are suffering. Not one of them.'
I manage to make myself look at him. I wonder if he's making fun of me. Strong? I don't feel strong. I feel weak. I can't even hold my gun. I look at him, and he looks back at me, and it's an unflinching gaze that I recognize with a jolt. I've given blood-drenched crime scenes that gaze. Dismembered corpses. I am able to look on those horrors, and not look away. Dr. Hillstead is giving me the same look, and I realize that this is his gift: He is able to give the horrors of the soul a steady, unwavering gaze. I'm his crime scene, and he'll never turn away in distaste or revulsion.
'But I know you are at your breaking point, Smoky. And that means I can do one of two things: Watch you break and die, or force you to open up and let me help you. I choose the second one.'
I can feel the truth of his words, their sincerity. I've looked at a hundred lying criminals. I like to think I can smell a lie in my sleep. He's telling me the truth. He wants to help me.
'So now the ball's in your court. You can get up and leave, or we can move on from here.' He smiles at me, a tired smile. 'I can help you, Smoky. I really can. I can't make it not have happened. I can't promise that you won't hurt for the rest of your life. But I can help you. If you'll let me.'
I stare at my shrink, and I can feel it all struggling inside me. He's right. I'm a female Samson, and he's a male Delilah, except that he's telling me it won't hurt me to cut my hair this time. He's asking me to trust him in a way I don't trust anyone. Except myself. And . . . ? I hear the little voice inside ask. I close my eyes in response. Yeah. And Matt.
'Okay, Dr. Hillstead. You win. I'll give it a shot.'
I know it's right the moment I say it, because I stop shaking. I wonder if what he'd said was true. About my strength, I mean. Do I have the strength to live?
4
I'M STANDING AT the front of the LA FBI offices on Wilshire. I look up at the building, trying to feel something about it. Nothing.
This is not a place I belong to right now; instead, I feel it judging me. Frowning down at me with a face of concrete, glass, and steel. Is this how civilians see it, I wonder? As something imposing and perhaps a little hungry?
I catch my reflection in the glass of the front doors and cringe inside. I was going to wear a suit, but that felt like too much of a commitment to success. Sweats were too little. As a testimony to indecisiveness, I had opted for jeans and a button-down blouse, simple flats on my feet, light makeup. Now it all feels inadequate, and I want to run, run, run.
Emotions are rolling in like waves, cresting and crashing. Fear, anxiety, anger, hope. Dr. Hillstead had ended the session with one dictate: Go and see your team.
'This wasn't just a job for you, Smoky. It was something that defined your life. Something that was a part of who you are. What you are. Would you agree?'
'Yeah. That's true.'
'And the people you work with--some of them are friends?'
I shrugged. 'Two of them are my best friends. They've tried to reach out to me, but . . .'
He raised his eyebrows at me, a query he already knew the answer to.
'But you haven't seen them since you were in the hospital.'
They'd come to visit me while I was wrapped in gauze like a mummy, while I wondered why I was still alive, and wished I wasn't. They'd tried to stay, but I'd asked them to leave. Lots of phone calls had followed, all of which I let go to voice mail and didn't return.
'I didn't want to see anybody then. And after . . .' I let the words trail off.
'After, what?' he prodded.
I sighed. I gestured toward my face. 'I didn't want them to see me like this. I don't think I could stand it if I saw pity on their faces. It would hurt too much.'
We'd talked about it a little further, and he'd told me that the first step toward being able to pick up my gun again was to go face my friends. So here I am.
I clench my teeth, call on that Irish stubbornness, and push through the doors.
They close in slow silence behind me, and I'm trapped for a minute between the marble floor and the high ceiling above. I feel exposed, a rabbit caught in an open field.
I move through the metal detectors of security and present my badge. The guard on duty is alert, with hard, roaming eyes. They flicker a little when he sees the scars.
'Going to say hi to the guys in Death Central and the Assistant Director,' I tell him, feeling (for some reason) like I have to tell him something. He gives me a polite smile that says he really doesn't care. I feel even more foolish and exposed and head to the elevator lobby, cursing myself under my breath. I end up in an elevator with someone I don't know, who manages to make me feel even more uncomfortable (if that were possible) by doing a bad job of hiding his sideways glances at my face. I do my best to ignore it, and when we get to my floor, I leave the elevator perhaps a little faster than normal. My heart is pounding.
'Get a grip on yourself, Barrett,' I growl. 'What do you expect, looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame? Get it together.'
Talking to myself works most of the time, and this is no exception. I feel better. I head down the hallway and now I'm in front of the door to what used to be my office. Fear rises again, replacing the nonchalance I had mustered. There are parallels here, I think. I've gone through that door without thinking about it more times than I can count. More times than I've picked up my gun. But I feel a similar fear here, in a more minor key.
The life I have left, I realize, is beyond that door. The people who make up that life. Will they accept me? Or are they going to see a broken piece in a monster mask, glad-hand me, and send me on my way?
Am I going to feel eyes full of pity burning holes in my back?
I can picture this scenario with a clarity that appalls me. I feel panicked. I shoot a nervous glance down the hall. The elevator door is still open. All I have to do is turn on my heel and run. Run and just keep running. Run and run and run and run and run. Fill those flats with sweat and buy a pack of Marlboros and go home and smoke and cackle in the dark. Weep for no reason, stare at my scars, and wonder about the kindness of strangers. This appeals to me with a strength that makes me shiver. I want a cigarette. I want the security of my loneliness and my pain. I want to be left alone so I can just keep losing my mind and--
--and then I hear Matt.
He's laughing.
