“You’re in luck.” I say, pulling the robe from her shoulders. “I am the police.”
“In that case, “Heeeeeelp! I thought you were exhausted.”
“I’m going to feel better in a minute.”
“It’s going to last a whole minute? Oh lucky me.”
“How you been, Sam?”
“Peachy keen.”
“You going to start out with the shitty attitude again?”
“Nice shrink-talk, doc.”
Dr. Kari Stephens crosses her legs, sips from her coffee mug, on which there is an image of John Wayne and the words A man’s gotta have a creed to live by, and lifts her eyebrows. She’s a plain looking fifty-year-old Chinese woman, fit, gun-silver hair that’s cut a tad longer than a Marine’s, and wearing an expensive and impeccably tailored navy-blue suit. Her eyes watch me as if I were a field mouse and she a bird of prey. I’m dreading the big question she’s going to ask and that I have to answer.
I look out the window for a moment, not really seeing the Portland skyline, and exhale some of my resignation. I don’t like being here, plain and simple. I hate talking about my feelings and about the loony tunes that’s going on inside my skull. It helps a little that the mad doctor is tougher than a gunny sergeant; if she were all hugs and touchy feely this wouldn’t work at all.
“Sorry doc.”
“For acting like a prick?”
I sputter a short laugh. “Yeah, I guess.”
“It’s your word, Sam. You referred to yourself as one during your first visit. If it’s true, well, maybe you can’t help it.” Her eyes penetrate, though a small twinkle gives her away.
I snort again. She’s got a rep for not tolerating fools and big tough cops who act like spoiled children. “Okay, okay. Man, I can’t believe the PD hired a leatherneck to be our psychologist.”
She rotates her wedding band a couple of times, then smiles, but only faintly, a rarity from her. I’m thinking she’s married to an Ellen. Or, god forbid, a Rosie.
“You want Mother Teresa?”
I laugh. ”Well, maybe a little.”
She peers at me over her glasses as she swigs from her cup. “Uh-huh,” she says, though the tone is more like, “Buuuull shit.”
I chuckle, nodding. I liked her from my first appointment, though I hated the department mandate that forces all officers involved in shootings to see her. Few cops go without grumbling, though most admit later that the visit, sometimes multiple visits, helped get their heads back on straight. Taking a life, no matter how deserving the departed, shakes most to their core. Some cops lose a few nights sleep before they’re back resuming their normal lives. Others need about a month to feel right, and still others take several months, even years to find peace with what they’ve done. I’ve known three who never recovered.
“I’m still having the dreams except now it’s my face I’m… shooting.”
“It’s common to reverse the roles. That too shall pass. Remember, Sam, and you’ve heard me say this twenty damn times, everything you’re experiencing is a normal reaction to an abnormal event.”
I nod and look out the window. I know that, but knowing it doesn’t help much at night when I’m soaking my sheets in sweat.
“It will in time,” she says, as if reading my mind. “You just have to keep telling yourself that each time you have a dream or any other negative experience. Or even a positive one that seems out of the norm for you.”
I grunt a yes. She tilts her head and does that eyebrow lift again, her way of telling me to keep talking. “I do understand, doc. On the surface, anyway. I just got to understand it deeper so it’s there for me in the witching hour.”
“In time,” she repeats.
I nod and look at her for a moment. In time. Fortunately, training in the martial arts has made me a patient guy. I get the in time thing but I still want this behind me.
My mind flashes to Tiff. Not Tiff the person. Her body. I look back out the window irrationally embarrassed that the doc is reading my mind.
“What?”
I look back and instantly wilt under that raptor gaze. “‘What’ what?”
“There’s something else on your mind.”
“You ought to be a detective,” I say shaking my head. At least she didn’t read my lurid thoughts.
“I am. Tell me.”
Actually, I have been wondering about something but there’s no way I’m going to ask it. No way at all. Her eyes bore; her eyebrows lift.. Damn her. I sit up higher like a kid in the principal’s office. “It’s my, uh, relations with my ex… with Tiff.”
“You get back together or cut it off completely? Or are you still doing the carnal visits?”
Tiff left around midnight last night. We began the evening with self-conscious chitchat, moved to lust, and then laid there after without a whole lot to say to each other. A half hour later, I walked her out to her car where there was an awkward moment of internal debate whether to give her a goodbye peck. Finally, she leaned forward, did an air kiss off to the side of my face, and mumbled, “See yuh, good lookin’.” I nodded and snapped a military salute as she slid behind the wheel. I saluted, for crying out loud.
“We’re not getting back together.”
“But you’re still meeting occasionally?”
“Yeah.”
“For sex?”
“Yeah. We barely talk at all after. She just goes home.”
“So what’s your question? Mr. Happy isn’t so happy or is he happier than he’s ever been.”
I snort a laugh. “Well…”
“Whichever it is, it’s still a normal reaction to an abnormal event.”
“It’s the last one. I mean, I can’t get enough of her. Then afterwards I don’t like her anymore. I mean, I like her, it’s just that… Damn, I don’t know what I mean. We’re that cliché of two different people from two different worlds.” Could I sound anymore like a seventeen-year-old.
“So while you’re having all this confusion you’re still okay jumping her bones?”
“Yeah. That make me bad?”
“No, just male.” She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Listen Sam,” she says in a softer voice, recognizing that this
