"So, are you and Jerry still friends?"

Neal stopped fiddling with his bag strap and looked up to question the doctor. "Yeah. Why wouldn't we be?"

"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because you got him in trouble. Maybe because you took the fireworks, talked him into going on the roof. Maybe…"

"Way to make a guy feel good about himself, Janice. Do you have you had an actual psychiatrist degree or am I a part of your training?"

"Fine, I get it. You and Jerry are still good buddies…What does Jerry think of Kate?"

Neal shrugged and got up to pace the floor again. Any mention of Kate would do that.

"Neal?"

"What?"

"What does Jerry think of Kate?"

"I don't know."

"You've never asked him?"

"Jerry likes Eleana."

"Eleana?"

"Yeah. Eleana and Emmy Enricoh. They're twins in Jerry's class at school. Eleana is very close to her sister, probably too close. She wants to do everything with Emmy so it's a bit of a problem because, Jerry keeps wanting to go out with Eleana but she always brings Emmy. You see the problem…?"

"Jerry keeps asking you to be his wing-man to even up the numbers?"

Neal stopped pacing and smiled at the doctor. "Maybe you're not too far off the end of your training after all, Janice."

"Do you like Emmy?"

Neal shrugged. "She's great. Real sweet. I like being around her."

"So why not go out with her? What does a fourteen year old do for a date these days? Back in my day, we'd go down to the local café for a couple of sodas or ice-creams. Sometimes catch a movie with a group of friends. What's the trend nowadays?"

Neal sat on the arm of the couch and folded his arms pretending to be deep in thought. "Oh gee, let me see?" He held up a finger and tapped his lips as part of the act. "First we'd download a good porn movie from the internet. Then we'd meet up with our local dealer on the street corner and get our fix. Of course, we'd have to knock over a convenience store before hand so we could pay the dealer. Then we'd stop at the pharmacy to get some protection, no point in adding to our burdens and then we'd wait till our parents were away for the weekend before breaking open the hard liquor and switching on the hard rock on our MP3s." Neal grinned at Janice, waiting for a reaction.

Janice tilted her head to one side and smiled back. "Neal, I've been around for a long time. I can pretty much guarantee you there isn't anything you could say that would put me off. Play all the games you want but don't think for a second that every time you open your mouth, I don't get even just a little more insight into what's going on in that head of yours. Plus," Janice leaned a little closer and used her motherly tone, "I'm so happy to hear that you use protection. Too many young people today are way too casual when it comes to unprotected sex."

Neal felt his face begin to blush so he looked down to avoid the embarrassment. He began to play with the cast on his wrist. The cast had originally been white, but it was now adorned with brightly coloured drawings and messages.

"So Neal. How did you break your wrist?"

Neal checked the clock then signed heavily. "Fine. Anything to make you happy Janice. Kate gave me a lift home one afternoon after we'd spent a couple of hours checking out the Late European Post Impressionists Exhibit at the Met. Kate had all these heavy folders on the floor of the car, on the passenger's side where I was sitting. I had to hold my feet up to my chest all the way back." Neal demonstrated by pulling his feet up while still perched on the arm of the couch. "Anyway, we pulled up at my house and I was about to get out when I remembered my half eaten donut. Kate had bought it for me and it would have been pretty insulting to just leave it in the car so here I am, on my way out, I spun to grab my donut and that's when it happened. As I moved to hop back out again, my foot snags on a couple of the heavy folders and I end up falling out of the car head first. Instinct took over and I used my hand to stop my head from hitting the bitumen. And there you have it." Neal held up his plastered wrist.

"Sound like it could have been a lot worse."

"Oh I don't believe that. It's a Colles fracture and it's been a real pain in the…it hurts." The teenager made his way to the office door. "My hours up, Janice. It's been real. Same time next week?" Neal had his hand on the door knob.

"Actually Neal, I've asked your dad to bring you back in two days. I think it's time we stepped up the sessions. I'd like to start wrapping things up."

"Nooooooooo." Neal groaned out way too dramatically and collapsed on his knees.

"Yes. See you then."

-W-C-

"You still having the dream, Peter?"

"…Yeah." Peter sighed deeply, leant forward resting his elbows on his thighs and rubbed his face once over the palms of his hands. "You making any progress with Neal?"

"We all move forward, Peter. It's whether it's positive or in the direction we need it to take us. That being said, he's having his cast off in two weeks so that gives me a time frame." Janice made another note in her book. "So tell me, has the dream changed?"

"No. Some nights it's more vivid than others but it's always the same plot and always has the same ending."

"Does it affect you in any way during the day?"

"A little. Apart from being a bit more tired than normal, sometimes I have these," Peter waved his arm in the air looking for the right word, "moments where I zone out and start felling as though I'm in the middle of the dream again."

"That's a fairly common side effect." Janice removed her glasses and waited till the agent made eye contact. "Peter, have you considered that the issues you're having now may be related to the incident from last winter?"

The agent shook his head. "No. This is completely separate. That business with Keller is over with, permanently. I sorted that out way back then."

"Peter, you put a bullet through the head of a guy who held a gun to your son and you're seriously trying to tell me that the compulsory one hour spent with the Fed Therapist has cured you of any influence on your mental state for the rest of your life?"

"Well…yeah…that's what I'm…Look. I'm good. It's no longer a problem for me. In fact, it never was!" Janice was missing the point and didn't really understand. How could she? "I don't have any issues with that, I dealt with already. I dealt with it in my own head, I dealt with Keller and… I dealt with Neal." Peter became lost in thought.

"You dealt with Neal?" Janice checked her notes. "As far as I knew, Neal had very little recollection of the event. He's all but blocked it out of his memory."

"Neal's pretty good at the ole selective amnesia thing," Peter scoffed. Janice didn't comment while she waited patiently for Peter to answer her question. "Yeah, that's what I meant. I made sure he was over it and then I was able to move on."

"So in other words," Janice flipped a few pages in her notebook and referred to some additional notes, "After finding out that he couldn't really recall much of what happened with Keller, you happily brushed aside the fact that he stole a gun from you, accosted one of your agents, went alone to a warehouse full of criminals and fired a gun at someone who was threatening to kill you."

"In a nutshell, yeah." Peter didn't smile. He never smiled with Janice. Always too serious.

"And you don't think your worries now could be connected to a very real possibility that had you sorted through the issues thoroughly after the Keller incident, you may have been able to avoid what you're both going through now?"

Peter shook his head slowly. "No Janice, I don't think that." The agent rubbed at his temples while Janice looked expectantly for an answer. "I tried. A week after the incident, I picked Neal up from the park on the way home, fully intending on discussing his 'inappropriate behaviour.'" Janice raised her eyebrows at the term but Peter just shrugged. "He seemed to be doing alright so I thought it was probably the right time to talk about what happened. But when we pulled up outside the house, Neal put his hand on my arm and it was shaking. I asked him what was wrong, thinking of course that it had something to do with the punishment he was probably expecting, but apart from the shaking, he also had this frightened look in his eyes which was totally out of character. He looked at me and asked if I knew how long Keller would be going away for. Well, that totally threw me for a six. I just assumed he was fully aware of what happened."

"How did you respond?"

"I told him that he would never have to worry about Keller again. So we didn't discuss anything when we got in the house and later that night when I came up to his room to say goodnight, he was already asleep, looking so much like a child without a care in the world. Satchmo, his dog, was resting on the end of his bed and he' dropped the book he must have been reading on the floor. It all seemed so normal, I didn't want to do anything to ruin the moment.

Instead, I rang a friend of mine, Dr Andrew Bryant to discuss what Neal had said about Keller and he said it was most likely a residual affect of the shock and that it would all come back to him in his own good time. He also suggested," Peter appeared slightly embarrassed but continued, "that we take Neal to a therapist to monitor his mental state."

"Which you didn't?"

"No. Neal didn't bring it up again and… you know what they say about not waking a sleeping baby."

"Yes, I know." Janice closed up her book and sat it to the side. "So I guess I have to ask, did you know Neal was still in contact with Kate?"

Peter nodded. "Kate would write to him ever week like clockwork. They weren't hard to miss, the letters were clearly marked Department of Corrections." Janice almost detected a slight grin on the agents face. "The funny part was that the letter always arrived on a Thursday."

"Neal's late day at school."

"Yeah. Ironic wasn't it. The one day he can't get home before us to filter the mail, Kate sends him a letter." Peter got lost in his thoughts, remembering. "Every week."

"Did you open them?"

"Of course not." Peter snapped out of his trance and shot a glare at Janice.

"Tempted."

"Hell yeah.

"So every week like clockwork?"

"Yes. Every Thursday and then one week… they just stopped."