Nightmares 2

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His eyes shot open in a flash of fear and he gasped a loud breath. For a second neither of us breathed; I stared wide-eyed with my own sort of fear at Hotch looking up at the ceiling. As I remained speechless and unblinking, Hotch slowly released the crushing grip on his shirt and began to recognize where he was, and soon after that, who was staring—almost open-mouthed with shock at him. Very quickly his face became one I recognized: one of alert attention. He swiftly sat up and all I could do is follow him with my eyes and stutter, "Are- are you okay?" I could hear the skepticism seep through my concern.

He leaned forward and rubbed his face vigorously as he stood up and put on his suit jacket. Unconvincingly he said, "I'm okay." His back was already to me as he walked to the mini-refrigerator and opened a bottle of water. "Just one of those things. I'm sure you know." He couldn't possibly think that this fragment of an explanation would settle the worry I knew he detected in my voice. How could he not know that I was picking up on every tell he was portraying: the display of this nightmare he knew he'd been caught having, the hasty way he removed himself from the vulnerable position without making eye contact, putting on his jacket as if it were going to shield him from some form of assault, casual denial. He knew that this was no longer just his "thing" as he called it. Something was not right with him and he knew now that I knew, and that last sentence he said gave me a perfect in.

"Really Hotch, I don't think I know what that was. I can tell you what I saw, but I don't know anything about the cause of what you were just seeing." I said this in an unthreatening tone as I rose from my position on the floor. Feeling the defensive attack I could see coming even with his back still to me, I stood still and maintained my ground.

Continuing with his strategy of denial he said, "It's nothing Prentiss. We have a gruesome and twisted job sometimes and our restricted feelings about it are bound to recreate themselves in our most defenseless state." He said this all with the composure and tone of a professor providing an explanation to a classroom, which of course was unacceptable to me if not for the shear lack of any real explanation then for the patronizing deliverance.

Bordering on insubordination and with an obvious air of indignance I said, "You have to be kidding me, right?" He was now attempting to maneuver around me to retrieve his brief case and I took a second to wonder if he really thought he could side-step this conversation. His actions of denial and secrecy alone could be detected by a seventh grader pretending to be a profiler! He stepped back and stood a few feet from me with a raised eyebrow and before he could voice a rebuttal, I continued: "After months of seeing you progressively fall into greater and greater bouts of restless sleep—which it is quite obvious that it is the only kind of sleep you've been getting lately, what with your thinning face, shorter temper and the perpetual dark circles under your eyes, how little you've been eating?" At this point I paused a minute to analyze what I'd just subtly revealed; I was talking about how I'd been watching him closer than what would be considered as normal, even normal concern. I added the others into my category of concern because I felt that I was revealing too much of my own secret. "Yeah, it's noticeable believe it or not and it's not just me that's picked up on it."

"Look," he said sternly, "Whatever conclusion you think you've come to is distorted. You've only seen one side of this situation, and I thank you for your worry, but really this doesn't concern you. I'm sorry if I've been short with the team lately; I'll try and be more aware of that. But other than that my performance is unaltered." He said those final words as though the conversation was closed, but I had to persist; 'One side of the situation?' What did that mean?

"Okay," I conceded, "this may not have concerned me and that's why I hadn't brought it up until now but you just made it my concern, Hotch." I new I had to tread softly if I was going to get anything more out of him. "You have to see this from my point of view." I pleaded, "You know it'll help to talk about it, and you know you have my strict confidence, and you know it'll only get worse, and it'll only be a mater of time before it does start to affect your work because clearly it's already affected your health. So tell me your side of what I just saw, or should I continue to list reasons why you should release some of the tension going on in your mind?" Here I thought it best to show some submission—Hotch was not one to take demands or ultimatums—so I sat down on the chair, crossed my legs and waited. He stood there and stared at me for a few seconds and just when he was about to speak the plane began its landing process. "Damn it!" I cursed in my mind. I knew I'd gotten close to opening him up but our decent gave him the perfect excuse to batten down the hatches.

"Emily, I really appreciate it and if I feel I need to talk about it maybe I'll give you a call." He was being diplomatic: settle the conversation so that your opposer perceives victory, yet you were the one to control the outcome. Picking up his brief case he took a seat behind me and buckled in. Damn him for using some cheap interview tactic on me. And damn him for making it work by using my first name, which sounded foreign and attractive in his deep voice.

In the final minutes of the flight I began to think of my feelings toward Hotch; this stubborn, inflexible and damaged (whether he chose to acknowledge it or not) man. I knew that I was on the border of thinking about him too much, looking at him just a little too long—especially on those rare occasions at the end of the day when he'd loosen his tie and roll up his sleeves. I started to dissect my concern: was it concern about a friend? Coworker? A coworker I wished was more than my friend? I stopped; this was where I kept myself in a pseudo limbo of nurturing my unprofessional feelings and beating them back.

The plane landed and we made short work of getting ourselves back to the parking lot. His car, along with the cars of the rest of our team were all parked together. I opened my trunk to put away my bag and he was already backing out of his parking spot. Looking up I saw that he stopped the car and rolled down his window to talk to me. "Good night Prentiss. Get some rest. See you next week."

That was rich! "Get some rest?" I repeated as I watched his car pull into traffic. "I'd say the same to you but I know it'd have wasted my breath." I said bitterly and got into my car.