Chapter 25.

Johnny was just finishing his lunch when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Johnny—how's it going?"

Johnny had to think about that for a second. "I'd say it's goin' all right, Roy. How 'bout yourself?"

"The cast is off, and I'll be back in two weeks! Everyone who needs to sign off on my return is gonna do it, too."

"That's great! Boy, I'll sure be glad when you're back," Johnny said. Especially if you're the real Roy DeSoto, and not that guy who worked his shifts for the last few months.

"Me too, partner. And I'll tell you something—I know I haven't been the easiest to deal with for the last few months, but it'll be better. I'll be better. I can promise that now," Roy said, as if he'd read Johnny's mind.

"Terrific! Hey—you had that meeting, right? With that senator guy? From before?"

"I sure did—in fact, if you're not doing anything, I have the rest of the afternoon off, and I don't need to be back at the house till six or so—you wanna hit the beach or something, and I'll fill you in? I was going to the beach anyhow, so I've got all my stuff and everything."

"Sure! I've got a date tonight, with a chick who works on the peds unit, but I'm not pickin' her up till seven, so that'd be great. You wanna swing by here, and then we'll drive out together?"

"Sounds good—I'm at HQ, so, I dunno, is fifteen minutes too soon?"

"It's fine—I'm not doing anything. I'll just get some shit together and I'll be ready by the time you get here."

"Okay—see you in a bit."

Johnny hung up the phone. He wasn't totally sure this get-together was going to be easy, or fun, but he knew it needed to happen. He felt terrible about not trying harder to get Roy to talk about why he'd been so closed off at work over the last few months. But he also recognized that Roy had been very clear, at the time, that he didn't want to talk about things. So Johnny had let it go—had let Roy go. He gathered up his beach things, changed into swim trunks and a light t-shirt, and was ready when Roy arrived.

"We taking the Rover, or you wanna take my car?" Roy asked.

"Doesn't matter," said Johnny. "Why don't I drive, just in case your hand gets tired or something. That can kind of creep up on you, right when you get a cast off."

"I believe it—right now, I can't see how I'll be doing CPR in two weeks, quite frankly."

They loaded their things into the back of the white Land Rover, and headed onto the highway. They stopped once, to get some ice and soda to throw into Johnny's cooler. On the way to the coast, Roy filled Johnny in on the progress of his project, and his meeting with Senator Wolski. Johnny listened with interest, and was relieved to hear Roy talking positively about everything he'd worked on, and speaking optimistically about the chances for real change to happen.

"So it sounds like that project is pretty much done," Johnny said as they pulled into the parking lot at the beach. "What's Brackett gonna have you do for the next two weeks, till you come back to 51s?"

"Oh, there's still a couple of things to follow up on with the first project, and I also have a trip scheduled to a department up north that runs their paramedics in ambulances, just to ride along for a shift to see how that works."

"Huh. Seems like that kinda might be the wave of the future," Johnny said. "Might be good, for folks like us, too—I mean, being a rescue man is a job for young guys. And I don't know about you, but every time I get messed up on the job, it seems like it takes longer to bounce back. So just doing paramedic work, without the firefighting and rescue part? That's starting to sound pretty appealing, to be honest."

Roy's eyes boggled. "Gage The Indestructible is thinking of backing down?"

"Not yet, Roy—I just know it's gonna have to happen sometime. Maybe I'll last a little longer now, thanks to you, but someday, I'll have to move on."

"What do you mean, thanks to me?" Roy asked.

They set the cooler on the sand, and spread out a blanket. Roy dug and squeezed in the sand with his newly-freed hand as Johnny talked more about the green sedan from the previous day's MVA.

"And I'll tell ya, Roy, if you hadn't made me take a good, hard look at how I jump into stuff too fast, I'd probably be at Rampart now, instead of on the beach. Either in a bed, or in a drawer. Not sure which one."

Roy shook his head. "Can't say I'm sorry I missed that one. Sounds pretty grim, all around."

"That's a good word—grim."

Neither one of them said anything for a minute or two. They each popped a soda open—it was a blazing hot day.

Roy broke the silence first. "I guess I've, uh, been pretty tough to work with the last couple of months."

Johnny looked through his sunglasses out to the ocean. "I'm not gonna argue with you on that one, pal. But I keep thinkin', why didn't I really see what was goin' on? Why didn't I try harder to pull you out of your shell?"

Roy shook his head, his own mirrored lenses casting flashes of reflected sunlight from side to side. "You did try. In fact, you were trying so hard it was getting downright annoying—to someone as messed up as I was at the time," he amended, as Johnny shot him a look. "But the fact is, I was so—I don't know, turned inwards, I guess, that there wasn't much of anything anyone could've done that I wouldn't have just pushed away."

Johnny didn't reply immediately. The gulls shrieks were loud and piercing during the gap in the conversation. "Ya know, Roy, I've been thinking," he said finally.

"About what?"

"About how, I dunno—it seems like you turned around awful fast. I mean, it's only been a month since you lost it in the staff lounge, and, well—I guess it kinda seems like it would be hard to be really, you know, better, in such a short time. From where you were, I mean. Not that you were totally nuts, or anything, just that you were—" Johnny paused. "I'm gonna shut up now."

Roy laughed. "No, you're absolutely right. It is a short time—and I was pretty depressed. And you're also right to think that I'm not totally, completely, one hundred percent back to where I'd like to be, mentally, and that's not gonna happen in the next two weeks, either."

Johnny's forehead creased over his aviator glasses. "So, how come the shrink is gonna sign you off, then? If you don't mind me asking."

"I don't mind. Here's how I'm looking at it. A month ago, I hit bottom. It was a long, slow fall, and I didn't even realize how far I'd fallen. But, as soon as I hit? I knew I was there. And I was lucky—I had family, friends, and a really darned good shrink to help me start climbing back up. And now that I know I want to climb back up, and I know how to climb, I know I can get back to the top. And Pritchard knows it, too. And you better believe it: if he thought my going back to work would put me or others in danger, he wouldn't sign off on my form. No way, no how," Roy concluded. "So it's not so much about where I am this exact moment, but what direction I'm headed in, and that I have the tools to keep going where I need to go."

Johnny's brow remained furrowed. "C'n I ask you somethin' else?"

"Fire away."

"What was it like?"

Now it was Roy's turn to frown. "What do you mean? What was what like?"

Johnny didn't look away, but was grateful that he and Roy were both wearing reflective sunglasses. "Seeing that shrink. I mean, I don't think I could stand it—the poking, the prying, trying to get me to tell him about stuff that's my personal business—how did you stand it?"

Roy didn't have to think hard about that. "Johnny, this guy works for the fire department. One hundred percent of his clients are firemen who need help with stuff inside their heads. And I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that ninety percent of his clients aren't there voluntarily. He knows perfectly well he can't go getting all touchy-feely and jump right in to the whole deep feelings and emotions stuff—that would be the perfect way to shut people down before he even got started. So sure, he asked me about things sometimes, but it was always up to me whether or not I wanted to keep going with what I was saying. And honestly, I was worried about the same things you just said—poking, prying—but it never felt that way."

"Huh," said Johnny. "I mean, so, he never, like, asked you about your childhood, or that kind of shit?"

"It came up once—but really only in a historical way. You know—about how my Dad isn't my biological father, and I never met my biological father, et cetera, et cetera. Didn't ever really feel like he was poking and prying, though. Though really, not much of what was going on with me seemed to have a lot to do with way back when. Might be different for other people. I don't know."

"Well, but, what did it feel like?" Johnny asked, "if it wasn't poking and prying?"

"I think it's not so much what the action was—poking, prying, pushing, any of those words—but who was performing the action. I mean, it was really Pritchard telling me what I needed to get at, where I needed to look, and then it was me doing the digging. Yeah—that's the right word, too—digging. I forgot about that," Roy said. He didn't mention his conversation with Stoker, because—well, that seemed quite personal. But he wished he could give Mike credit for that word, because it was really the right one. "And I was the one that was doing the digging. Not him. And by that point, I trusted him enough that he could hand me the shovel, and say 'Dig,' and I'd say, 'Okay, where?'"

"So, it wasn't like him doin' somethin' to you?" Johnny asked. "It was more like you doin' it yourself, and him helping you do it?"

"Yeah, that's exactly it. It's not like having a medical procedure done, where the doctor does it and you just have to sit back and take it," Roy said, using an analogy that he knew would strike home with a frequent and reluctant patient. "It's not like that at all—it's not passive."

"Maybe," said Johnny, "it was more like havin' a baby. The patient's the one who has to do all the work."

Roy contemplated that. "Not really," he concluded. "I mean, a lot of childbirth is involuntary. In a typical situation, the baby's gonna come out, whether the mother wants it to or not."

"Okay, so maybe not. How about this—maybe it's like PT. Sure, there's some parts of physical therapy where they manipulate you, push you around, but you can always tell 'em to quit it, and they have to if you say so. But the really hard work—gettin' better again, gettin' things movin', gettin' things strong—they can tell you what to do to get there, and how to do it, but if you don't participate, it ain't just happenin' on its own."

"I think that's a pretty good analogy, Johnny. Not perfect—because just living, existing, walking around—will get you pretty far in physical recovery. So if anything, it might be more work to fix up your head than it is to strengthen a body part that's been immobilized." Roy demonstrated the stiffness and weakness of his hand as he spoke.

"Well, that's certainly a process I'm familiar with," Johnny said, watching the surf. He counted waves crashing onto the beach—five, six, seven. Twelve.

"You know, I've got a lot of shit in my head," Johnny said suddenly.

To someone else, that statement might've seemed out of the blue. But Roy had been half expecting Johnny to say something like that, after all his questions about Roy's work with Dr. Pritchard. But Roy also remembered Pritchard's cautionary words about not "therapizing" his friends.

"We all do, Johnny," Roy said neutrally.

"No," Johnny shook his head. "I mean seriously bad shit, Roy. Like if I don't deal with it, my life is always gonna be exactly the same as it is now. Me, in my apartment, by myself, doing a job I love—no problem, right? But then, one day, when I get too old or too beat up to do it anymore, then what? Then, I'm screwed. 'Cause much as I'd like to think there'll be jobs with just EMS work and no heavy rescue work someday, you know and I know it ain't gonna happen soon enough for us. And you—you can be okay doin' other stuff. Hell, you'll be a great captain sometime. Soon, even. But what about me?"

Roy replied carefully. "No reason why you couldn't do well on the captain's test."

"Roy," Johnny said impatiently, "you know, and I know, that's not all there is to it. We've both worked with good captains, like our Cap right now, and we've worked with shitty captains. And I can barely handle myself, sometimes, let alone five young hooligans."

"Twits, I think, is what we are, right?" Roy joked.

"Yeah, that's Cap's word, ain't it."

Johnny counted more waves, as Roy dug a hole in the sand, digging downwards until the hole started to fill with sea water.

"I think I'll go see him," Johnny said.

Roy knew Johnny wasn't talking about Captain Stanley. "I'm sure he'd be glad to see you. I'll give you his number, and you can make an appointment."

"Okay." Two more waves crashed onto the beach. Johnny abruptly peeled off his shirt, and tossed his sunglasses onto the blanket. "I'm goin' in."

Roy watched as Johnny ran gracefully down to the water, then slowed as the water got deeper. Roy didn't follow. The Pacific Ocean might, just might, be enough space for Johnny right now, he thought, as he pulled his book out of his bag and settled on his elbows to read.

TBC