Nancy

"But how are you doing today?"

The crisp voice of Doctor Gemma Wright cut into my thoughts as I watched the wisps of icy swirls dance across the darkened window, realizing that I had been talking but not conscious of what I had been saying. My brain clogged. Today? Today was horrible. The worst day of my life. Where do I start? Where do I end?

"I am doing fine," I lied, wrenching a smile on my face, sure I was showing one too many molars. Doctor Wright frowned and put down her pen, fixing me with a piercing glare that I had never seen before. Then the momentary blip of anger dissolved into tiredness and she rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Nancy, some day you are going to have to do the math on all of the 'I'm fines' you have told me."

I was taken aback. I had been seeing Doctor Wright since May, almost seven months now, and in all of that time she'd never once been critical of me. She'd listened and offered coping mechanisms to the problems I had told her but she never been condemnatory of what I had shared with her. I was taken aback, visibly recoiling away from her.

She continued, staring hard into my eyes, "I know the only reason you are here is because of Chief McGinnis and your father. But in the months that you have come to see me you haven't told me anything, just a constant stream of "I'm fines'," I stared in shock as the petite doctor's voice began to rise, "I thought we were making a breakthrough today. You phoned me! I stayed late, hoping that today would be the day you told me the truth, but no," she threw me a disgusted look, "No, just more 'I'm fines'."

I felt my face heating, my anger level always just below boiling point these days threatened to explode, but the phone call came to mind. That one minute phone call. And I deflated into a pile of tears that had been more than half a year in the making.

"Today… wasn't fine," I sobbed, the understatement of the sentence enveloping me as I forced myself to remember things that I tried hard to forget.

Doctor Wright's voice was soothing and calm again but her gaze still held strong, "What happened today?"

I stared hard back at her, tears still streaming down my face, "I got the call." Her face froze. I'd never talked to her about what had happened in April but of course she knew. The country knew. Twenty year old, former child detective, kidnapped from Emerson. People love a good headline.

"They found him?" Her eyes were like side plates and she leaned forward towards me.

I laughed a harsh laugh which broke gutturally over my sobs, "They found him at the beginning of May," quizzical eyes searched me, "I just didn't want to believe it."

"W-what," the eyes grew to the size of dinner plates, "I didn't hear anything about that."

"The police kept it quiet. It was pretty grim." The doctor's eyebrows puckered in an unspoken question but one that, nonetheless, demanded an answer, "They found him in a tub of lye and water in a Boston landfill." Disgust once more crossed the doctor's face but thankfully not directed at me this time.

She fought a losing battle to get control of her face before stuttering, "B-but that was in May. What phone call did you get today?"

I knotted my fingers staring intently at my nails as I made myself step into the flames and remember hell, "The body was damaged so we all fought to have it positively identified. They kept the case open but it was only because we fought. They have been going over every inch of everything. Last month they proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the tiniest smear of untainted blood on the lid was his. The facial reconstruction is a dead ringer. They worked hard and we fought but in the end it was him," I gulped, my eyes dry. There were no more tears left to cry. "Yesterday, his parents got the call. They phoned me today. It is official now, even though we all knew before."

The silence stretched out beyond the point of awkward, only the sound of my heart pumping in my ears intruding.

"I am sorry, Nancy," whispered Doctor Wright, eventually.

"I'm fine," I mused, studying the snow swirls again, getting lost in my own thoughts as my mouth babbled on, "After all I am the one who killed Frank Hardy."