“You’re allowed to continue to live without punishing yourself for surviving.”
She completely evades my comment, and I’m not even sure it registers in her mind. “We returned to the hospital.”
“Have you not been there since you left?”
“I haven’t, but Kace has. Sometimes work leads there, and he’s—it doesn’t affect him as much.” She looks away, no doubt ashamed by whatever thought just surfaced in her head.
“What did you just think?”
She grabs one of the small pillows and tucks it tight against her. “Something stupid.”
“No stupid thoughts here,” I urge her to continue, genuinely curious of this woman’s life and progress.
She blows the air out of her puffed cheeks. “I love him, but I resent him for being able to keep it together.”
“You’re still standing.” I pause and smile, then immediately assess the action. Not forced. Interesting. “Well, sitting at the moment, but I wouldn’t underestimate your own strength.”
“I’m a mess. I’m lost. There are so many emotions; I can’t even breathe without one escaping.” She returns a sad smile with a quick glance in my direction and sighs. “It’s not strength.”
“Oh?”
“It’s determination, and if he finds out what I’m doing, he’s going to hate me forever.” A fact she has voiced multiple times.
“Is ‘what you’re doing’ worth his eternal hate?” Though I don’t believe in unmeasurable times, my patients seem to think once an emotion hits, it lasts forever, so I play along. “Is it so unforgivable?”
She shrugs and lowers her lids to stare at the coffee table, lowering her gaze away from me and hiding the effect of her thoughts. “It depends on the day.”
“For this session, let’s talk about today, at this moment.”
She exhales and softly answers, “Today, it doesn’t feel worth it. Today … I want to love myself, just a little.”
“Love yourself or love your fiancé?”
“It doesn’t matter because love isn’t enough to sway what I’m determined to do. I want to find the person who did this and kill them.”
Again, repeating what she already said. “Kill them in the literal sense?”
She drops the pillow and turns cold eyes on me. “Like put a bullet through their brain and end their fucking life, kind of kill them.” She sits up and readjusts into a fleeing position: her feet are firmly planted on the ground, toes pointed toward the door, and her legs are slightly spread, ready to take off. “Are you going to put that in your report?”
I drop my pen down on my lap and angle my shoulders toward her. “Do you feel as if I shouldn’t put it on the record? Because it’s evidence?”
“I don’t care if you testify against me after I shoot the fucker, but only after I …”
In my experience, when people often revolve back to the same fragments of thought, it means they are working on coming to terms with their completion. “After what exactly?”
She smashes her lips together and looks out the window.
Okay, she doesn’t want to divulge her plan just yet. I can respect that. I have ways around it. “Tell me about your childhood. What was it like?”
“Again?” She looks startled by my change in subject but willingly refers to her memories for a report. “It was normal. Mom and Dad, family vacations for Christmas and the summer, dinners every night at six, church on Sundays. They were ritual with family things.” She smiles, fondly. “They still are.”
“Do you currently attend church?” I ask, picking up my pen.
“Not since the shooting.”
“Do you think it’s affected your belief in God?”
She leans back on the couch and stretches her legs out, once again making herself comfortable while she works through the question. “I don’t think so. I still believe.”
“Then why haven’t you gone to church?”
“Because I don’t think He’d welcome the thoughts I have.”
Ah, here we go. “Which thoughts?”
“Murder, suicide, revenge. Lying to Kace to try and…” Her hand flies up to her mouth and drops to her necklace as she continues, “I don’t feel comfortable walking into a holy place, knowing I’ve been plotting someone’s death. Not exactly ‘turn the cheek’ material.”
She’s aware of her slip, which means if I press and directly ask what she’s been plotting, she’ll shut down. I gently wade the waters around the topic. “Have you been to confession?”
“No,” she affirms adamantly. “I don’t want someone to talk me out of it.”
“Interesting,” I note a four for conscientious of right and wrong. “Would Kace talk you out of it?”
“More than likely... Sometimes words aren’t even necessary.”
“Did you have a partner when you worked at the precinct? You haven’t mentioned it.”
“No, I worked exclusively in the interrogation room or during investigations. Like I said before, being a behaviorist gave me a good set of skills. Micro-expressions and body language tell a lot about a person.”
“This is true.” I was not an expert, but it was apparent she had not been engaging in it for a while. She barely even looks people in the eye.
“Don’t you want to go back to work?”
She rolls her head to me and flinches the right side of her face. “I don’t know how good I’d be.”
“Why? You’ve had six years of training, plus or minus some undergrad work. I would think that would make you pretty good at what you do.”
She shakes her head and purses her lips. “We questioned someone the other day, and I messed up.”
“Messed up how?”
“Because I got the feeling he lied about something, but I didn’t know what. Turns out he was dealing drugs, or delivering them, probably for the same guy who killed my baby.”
“I thought the shooter was never found.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence to be undercover at the Pregnancy Center one hour, and then shot a couple hours later. The distributor, disguised as a medical doctor, has something to do with it. I know it in my gut.”
“Did you ever interview him and use your skills?”
“No. Since the shooting, I’m not focused. Like with this kid from the hotel, I got distracted by his hand movements, and I was looking for truths instead of lies, so I let myself get caught up in the narrative of the story. It was the worst interview I’ve ever conducted.”
“What did Kace say?” I record a one for job function, giving she’s currently on unpaid leave and only working on a case due to courtesy.
“He didn’t even notice.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?” I glance at the number I had jotted down for social score. Two.
She sighs and shuts her eyes. “I’m already fucking up on everything else. I don’t want to fuck up on doing my job too.”
“Do you think Kace would think less of you, or it would affect your relationship if you were not good at your job?”