Happy loved taking her time after a long day spent working with her father in his shop: taking a long, hot shower, then carefully brushing and drying her long hair; and finally crushing on her bed with a good movie, thankful she got to spend her day knowing her father better doing something they both loved together.
At 10.30, she had just press the button to turn on her laptop, when she heard the phone buzzing on her nightstand.
"Doc, is everything alright?"
"Hi Happy, sorry to bother you, could you come over, please? I locked myself out."
"Really? That PhD of yours is seriously overestimated… I'm coming, give me 10 minutes."
This wasn't the first time Happy had to come to the rescue because Toby forgot his keys inside or was simply too wasted to remember to took it with him when he got out.
When she arrived, tool case in her hand, found the door ajar, she carefully entered and saw Toby's back, hands clenched on a chair, panting silently.
"Doc, what's going on? Did you manage to open the door yourself? Did you call me so I could hear you brag about your lock-picking hidden talents in person?"
Strangely, he didn't answer. She put the toolbox down and got closer to him.
"Hey, is everything okay?"
His arms and shoulders were tense, his left knee was nervously trembling, and as she looked at him, she noted a lost expression, fixed on the horizon, as well as puffy red eyes.
Like a spontaneous reflex, she gently put her hand on his back. "What's going on, Doc? You can talk to me, you know that."
"Sorry I… I didn't know who to call, I just… I didn't want to be alone tonight."
"Stop apologizing please, it's okay. Sit down and tell me what's wrong."
"My old man would be sixty-five today. It's the first though I had when I woke up this morning, but then I tried to forget it keeping myself busy with patients' records, new articles on criminal profiling, and… stupid, unimportant stuff like that.
Half an hour ago, it hit me again. I took my time to think about it, and I started crying like a fifteen year old girl."
She slide past the witty remark, because she wanted to help him overcome his ghosts, as well as he did with her, helping her reconstruct the relationship with her father.
"What happened to your dad?"
"My second year of college, my mother had one of her bad moments: she took a bottle of pills, went to bed and never woke up. My father was out buying groceries with some money he won on dog races the night before, bless him" he said, half-laughing. "When he arrived home, my mother was already dead, and he was devastated by the guilt.
I was too busy trying to forget where I came from and gambling money away to take care of him the way I should. The firefighters found him two months later in his car; they had to break down the garage door. The neighbors called them, but it was too late. He was gone." His voice broke.
"And I wasn't there. I, the brilliant student, the genius, the Harvard prodigy, couldn't help my father get over his guilt, because I was an egocentric self-absorbed prick. It was my fault."
"Toby, listen to me." At the sound of his name, he turned up his head. A pair of clear brown eyes mirrored in hers. "It wasn't your fault, you were a kid. He was the parent; he should have reach out for help. You were trying to become your own person, to grow, to get away from the problems of your parents."
His eyes shifted away, to a small plastic box on the couch.
"I rented his favorite movie; do you want to watch it with me?"
"Where eagles dare, ah? Never saw it."
"Really? You should, Eastwood's great in it."
He stood up, she saw him brush away a tear with the back of his hand. He went inside the kitchen and she heard him bustling about, probably because he wanted to avoid showing her his vulnerable side again, the one he carefully kept hidden behind witty remarks. She knew she was the only one he told the real reason he became a psychiatrist, and one of the few people who was able to see behind the sarcastic mask.
"Popcorn's ready, my loyal companion, put the disc on!"
The movie started, and Toby's comments started too. He was too busy describing his father's opinions and comments on the movie or some anecdotes on his childhood related to the times he watched it with him, that she was barely able to follow the story.
But watching the movie wasn't that important: what mattered to her was see him smile again, hear the sound of his laughter and of his voice, free from the guilt and the grief the memory of his family history stirred up in him.
Unfortunately, she didn't have any good memories of her own, but it was Toby who helped her rebuilt what was left of her family. He was the one who gave her the courage to built a relationship that would gave her good memories to remember in the future.
As the final credits appear on the TV screen, she turned her face to him.
"Are you okay?" Happy asked him, gently putting her hand on his forearm.
His gaze was fixed into her eyes while he took her hand, and slowly intertwined his finger with hers.
"Yeah, thanks." As a big smile appeared in his face, she couldn't help but smile back at him.
"Anytime, Doc."