Here I am. Send me.--Chapter Twelve

After the school shooting, Evelyn sits down with a therapist.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Evelyn went straight to the CTC from the Police Headquarters and found a stack of busy-work waiting on her desk. With nothing else to take her mind off the previous day, she dove into reviewing and filing reports. She mumbled under her breath as she stuck her elbow into the pile of staples she had removed from the documents in the 'to scan' stack and was picking the little bits of twisted metal from her skin when she sensed someone standing over her shoulder.

She looked up to see Amanda. "Have you got anything more boring for me to do? Maybe watching dust settle?"

"Signing up for a slot with the therapist would be a break."

"I thought that was voluntary."

"It is voluntary." Amanda didn't move.

"I guess I'm volunteering."

"That you are." Angie's next opening is in ten minutes.

"Ten minutes! Give someone else that slot."

"I don't want you to have the time to come up with comfortable dodges. I want you to go in there raw and real."

"It's therapy, not wrestling."

"They're not dissimilar. Angie will come out and get you when she's ready."

"Great." Evelyn made no effort to sound excited. It didn't matter; Amanda was already out of earshot.

After fifteen minutes of her life that she would never get back, Evelyn noticed Angie's approach as the therapist interrupted the fake work Evelyn wasn't doing. "Hi, Evelyn. I'm Angie Graham. It's nice to see you again."

"It's nice to see you, too. Is it my turn?"

"If you're ready."

"Amanda told me I am."

The two women walked single file to the spare office which was called the 'Hot Seat' with Angie shutting the door behind them. Two chairs were arranged facing each other in front of the battered old metal desk. A makeshift sheet was in place over the interior window for privacy and a small table was placed next to one of the chairs which held a box of Kleenex. She guessed that was her seat. She sat. The office was small, and their knees were almost touching.

Evelyn stared into her lap, prompting Angie to speak first. "You've had a rough week."

"People keep telling me that."

"Probably because it's true."

Silence fell between them. Evelyn recognized the ploy and knew Angie was expecting its weight to force her to speak. She waited it out.

"You don't believe in the value of therapy?" Angie broke the quiet. Evelyn won.

"Of course, I believe in voluntary therapy." She let that statement lie.

"Talking to fellow psychological professionals is always hardest because you know my game plan. But we've all watched this scene on television. This is the part where I tell you that Amanda will ask me about you, and I will either tell her that you're ready to get back to field work or that you were uncommunicative."

"The two options are mutually exclusive?"

"Yes. In my professional opinion."

"What do you want to know?"

"I want to know what you want to talk about."

Evelyn couldn't control the look of annoyance that crossed her face. She felt it was clear that she didn't want to talk about anything. But that, apparently, wasn't an option.

"Last Sunday, the police officer with whom I work and I were called to a house in Hermitage. The call was for a person suspected of mental health issues. When we got there, that person was threatening the life of her child. I attempted to speak to her to reduce the threat and failed. My officer, John Toland, physically subdued her."

"And the child was safe?"

"Correct."

"You used the word failed."

"Correct."

"Why do you think you failed if the child was safe?"

"My part of the job was to talk her down without violence. John's part was to restrain her if I failed. I failed. He didn't."

"Or you worked as a team and together succeeded."

"I'm pretty sure that's the slant that Amanda's report took."

"But it's not yours."

"It doesn't represent the facts."

"You felt you could have done more."

"I could have done what I did better."

"What could have been done differently?"

"I could have figured out her button... her motivation. With that, I could have unlocked why she was doing what she was doing and de-escalated the situation without the child almost being killed. If John were a half-second slower, the child would be dead."

"But he's not. And you had just a few seconds to completely psychoanalyze this woman while she was holding a knife to her daughter's throat and come up with a complete diagnosis."

"You read the reports."

"Of course. All three of them. Yours, Amanda's, and Officer Toland's."

Evelyn's head snapped up. "You read John's?"

"Yes." She pulled a folder from the desk, opened it, and read aloud. "Co-Responder Evelyn Dunham was able to get the suspect involved in a conversation, which allowed me to get in position to restrain her before she could harm the child. Without Evelyn, that child would be dead now."

Evelyn reached out. "May I see that?"

Angie handed over the sheet of paper, and Evelyn scanned the report and read it completely. It was the standard police form. Most of it was just data: location, time, weather, names, synopsis. What Angie had read aloud was at the bottom of the page under the heading 'Conclusions and Lessons Learned'.

Evelyn read it again from the top. There were two typos. He had used 'there' instead of 'their' and had misspelled Josey's last name. She couldn't stop looking at the typos. There was something human about them: human, real, and John Toland.

The tears came.

Evelyn fought them and lost. She had planned to go the stoic Clint Eastwood strong-silent-type route. But here she was. Angie glanced at the box of tissues. It felt like adding insult to injury. But Evelyn plucked a couple of the tissues from the box and wiped at her eyes. Her efforts to make the crying stop changed the tears from those of loss to tears of frustration. They were working their way to tears of anger when the flow finally began to ebb.

She heard a tap on the desk and pulled the tissues away from her eyes. The therapist had placed a small bottle of cosmetic removal pads within reach. Now, this was getting clich It only got worse when a small mirror materialized from the woman's purse.

"Enough already!" But that didn't stop her from picking up the mirror and surveying the damage. Never one to wear much make-up, there were no black streaks of mascara running down her cheeks. Had she been able to afford higher-quality products, they would have held up. But they were cheap, so she unscrewed the cap on the bottle, pulled out one of the pads, and easily wiped away what was left. The face that looked back at her from the mirror was the same one that greeted her each morning after her shower, plain and simple. She would have to make it back to her desk, where she kept her reserves.

Angie broke through her mental plans. "Why did you cry?"

This was a stupid question. "I don't know. Because a human being died yesterday, maybe?"

"What was he to you?"

Where was this heading? "He was someone that I spent two to five days a week with for the last year."

"Is that all?"

"He was my friend, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I considered him a friend. I don't know what he thought about me."

"You don't?"

"No. He was Southern."

"What does that mean?"

"Southern people are so polite that you never know what they really think. Whether they love you or hate you, they treat you like their best friend."

"Sounds duplicitous."

"No. It's just Southern."

"You're not Southern?"

"Not originally. I've lived here most of my life, though."

"But you consider yourself an outsider?"

Evelyn thought about that for a second. "Not any more than anyone else."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, we're all outsiders. No one fits into the rest of humanity. We're all individuals who are alone inside our own heads."

"And hearts?"

"I guess."

"That's a lonely way to live."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I guess it is. But it's the only way I know."

"How often are you disappointed?"

Evelyn looked into the other woman's eyes and saw nothing to help her parse what she was trying to ask. "What do you mean?" She tried the direct approach.

"How often do you enter into a new relationship, hoping to find someone with whom you share a sense of unity or belonging, only to find yourself again on the outside looking in?"

"That's a pretty deep philosophical question."

"That's why they pay me the big bucks. I've got a million of them. You haven't answered it yet."

"I used to get disappointed pretty often, but as I've gotten older, I expect less of people and don't get as disappointed."

"Then why did you cry about Officer Toland?"

"Because he died. What's so hard to understand about that?"

Another cloud of silence fell over the conversation, and Evelyn let it lie again.

Angie stood. "I'll recommend a week of light duty, and then you can resume your normal workload."

Getting a new officer assignment would take more than a week, so this didn't alter her plans. She stood and shook Angie's hand. "Thank you."

"If you need or want anything from me, call me. My number is in the company directory."