A month later, Joe is working late again. He tends to do that when he knows Barry will be out anyway and Iris isn't planning to come over. This time, Dunning comes to his desk with a concerned expression on his face.

"Joe—you know that girl, the one you took home a few weeks ago?"

"Yeah." The detective starts to get a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"We picked her up again. She's asleep in my car. What do you want me to do?"

"I'll take care of it," Joe replies.

The transfer from the cop car to his own car isn't difficult. Caitlin is dead weight, already passed out from whatever cocktail of drinks she's had. At least she doesn't have any signs of alcohol poisoning, just the evidence of drinking more than she can handle.

Joe shakes his head. He's disappointed, but he's not surprised. He drives back to the midtown apartment building, but this time, as the guard is opening her locked apartment, Joe asks, "How often does this happen?"

The bored security guard is more than happy to be chatty. "There's not usually any police—just the other time when you came and this time, but she comes in plastered a few times a week, sometimes with guys, usually alone."

"Thanks," says Joe, closing the door behind him and the sleeping woman across his shoulder.

This time, Caitlin's shoes are intact, so Joe sets her in bed and takes them off, then covers her up and turns out the light. Undressing her is way beyond his purview; if she's going to get picked up drunk in the bad part of Central City, she's going to have to deal with spending the night in grimy clothes.

This time, Joe stays. He sends Barry a quick text to say that he's had a work situation come up, and he takes his place on the girl's couch, flipping channels until he's too sleepy to keep his eyes open.

The first sound that pulls the detective out of sleep is oil popping in a pan, something being fried. He opens his eyes and sits up and smells bacon. "Caitlin?" he says softly.

The scientist comes out of the kitchen fully dressed in a different outfit from the previous night and with a huge amount of makeup on—no doubt to cover the signs of her hangover as much as she can. After all, this girl is a professional at hiding her rough nights, Joe figures.

"Good morning," she says, a little too brightly. "I'm so sorry for your trouble. I'm making breakfast so you can eat before you leave."

"All right," he answers mildly. No reason to be confrontational until they both have something in their stomachs.

As methodically as usual, the scientist sets the table, but Joe sees how shaky her hands are. He wonders what she's told her colleagues at Star Labs. None of them have noticed anything—if they had, he'd have heard it from Barry or Iris. Maybe she's claimed to be sick a few times, taken a personal day here and there, made it seem normal.

Once they're seated at the small dining table with plates full of bacon, eggs, and toast, Joe looks over at the immaculately-put together girl and tries to catch her eye. She looks everywhere but at him—at her food, the table, the wall, her gray pumps.

"Caitlin, Honey," he finally says, "we need to talk."

That's when the explosion happens, when the tightly-coiled Dr. Caitlin Snow finally comes loose. She looks at him now, with eyes full of blazing anger. "Detective West," she minces, "I don't know what you think you're doing."

"Well, last night I took a girl home who passed out on the south side of Central City," he says mildly, not intimidated.

Caitlin clenches her jaw visibly. "I don't even know you that well, and you have no business commenting on what I do with my time after work."

"I wasn't aware I'd commented," the detective answers drily, "but I will." He looks back at her, absorbing her anger with his own resoluteness. "If you keep doing this, you're going to get hurt—more than you already have. Two nights picked up by the police means about a hundred more when you didn't get picked up. Different men, different bars, all in places you know your coworkers would never go."

"I'm not an alcoholic," she shoots back.

"I know," he replies, "you're just bad at coping."

"You're not my father, so what is it to you?"

It's so classic that Joe would laugh if the situation wasn't so serious. He takes a sip of coffee before answering. "Caitlin, I worry about you the way I worry about all of you kids at Star Labs. Being a genius doesn't mean your judgment has caught up with your brains. And trying to live a double life doesn't work for anybody. Eventually, there's not going to be any more Dr. Snow because she's going to get eaten up by the girl I brought home last night."

"I still don't see how it's your business," she says.

"Maybe it's not," Joe replies, wiping his mouth with his napkin and standing up from his chair, "but next time you get picked up, you'll wake up in the drunk take; trust me when I say that. If you ever want to talk—have a real talk, I mean—you know where to find me."

He leaves, feeling about ten years older. The woman he's just spoken with is nothing like the bright scientist the world knows as Caitlin Snow, but grief and pain and anger do weird things to people, especially when they have no idea how to handle them.