"Can you tell me what brought you here?" Dr. Garner had said, once the first session had properly begun. "Not the very beginning, but was there a specific incident that made Mouse and Erin push for you to come see me?" Jay clenched his jaw and closed his eyes, saw Terry's bloodstained lips, took a deep breath.
"There was a shooting. I wasn't— I was working security, escorting a lot of cash, and they trapped the truck and we were exchanging fire, and," he swallowed thickly, "Terry, my- my friend, he got hit." He paused, blowing out a long breath, leg bouncing, jittery. "I got him to cover, tried to stop the bleeding… he was still alive when they took him away."
He expected Dr. Garner to say something, was ready for the knife of her apology (sometimes he understood this trigger of Mouse's all too well, but it wasn't panic for him, only anger, only grief), her 'sympathy,' her 'condolences,' but as he grappled with the remembered rage that had him grabbing roughly at the ex-DEA agent that day, she was silent. The anger bubbled inside him, the festering wound of Terry's blood on his hands, the ultrasound of a baby that would never know its father, the letter from the police academy that sat in his nightstand, his boot pressing against a murderer's throat burning in his chest.
"He survived a goddamn war!" The words burst out of him, louder than he meant, scraping roughly out of his throat. His eyes burned, but the tears didn't come. He clenched his fists and glared at the floor and waited because he couldn't speak anymore, not just then. The silence stretched on until it began to prick at Jay's skin, and then Dr. Garner spoke.
"I imagine that was very difficult for you, to lose another friend." Jay closed his eyes, and nodded, throat tight. "I imagine it also stirred up some memories." Jay laughed humourlessly at that.
"That's what Mouse said." He opened his eyes to look at her, watched her lips twitch up into a faint, encouraging smile.
"Sounds like a smart guy."
"Yeah. Yeah, he is."
His words hung in the air for a moment, and Jay knew that he had just confirmed what she and Mouse had said about memories, if not in so many words. Bombs and gunfire and screams flickered in the back of his mind as he waited with dread for her to ask, to drag the war into the room with them. The machine-gun staccato of his heart screamed 'I'm not ready, not yet, not yet, don't ask me that,' and the moment before Dr. Garner opened her mouth stretched out, and then snapped shut.
"What else can you tell me about the shooting?"
A reprieve—sort of. He tapped his fingers against the blue of his jeans, didn't look at her while he spoke.
"His wife was – is – pregnant. They'd just gotten the ultrasound, showed it to me that morning. And… and he'd gotten into the police academy. Lissa said, said he looked up to me." He opened his mouth again, then shut it, falling silent.
"Alright," Dr. Garner said, and he could hear her shifting slightly in her chair. "You've given me some facts; what do they mean to you?"
Jay ducked his head, thinking of Terry's acceptance letter in his nightstand drawer and its heavy weight in his chest and the fuzzy black and white image of a child that would grow up without a father and words he already knew he shouldn't say tumbled from his lips.
"It should have been me."
"Explain that to me."
"What?" Jay's head came up, brows furrowing—whatever words he was expecting, these weren't them.
"You say it should have been you. Tell me why."
Jay opened his mouth, closed it again, stared at her. She sat patiently, watching him neutrally and it became clear that she wouldn't speak until Jay answered the question.
"He… He'd only just gotten his life on track, he had a family, he was gonna be police, he had his whole life to live still—"
"And you didn't fight to get your life on track?" Dr. Garner interrupts gently. "Do you not have a family? Mouse and Erin at the least. You are a well-respected Detective in the CPD, you also have your whole life ahead of you. What makes Terry's life worth more than yours? The value of one life over another… it's not an equation that ever has a right answer, Jay."
It's utterly strange to Jay, to hear someone speak so frankly about this. Usually, people just say "don't say things like that," as though not speaking it aloud would make the feeling any less true, as though silence was a solution to the broken pieces inside… and what irony, Jay realized, what irony that he could see that so clearly in that moment when he has spent a lifetime choosing silence when it matters. He thought of the words that slipped from Mouse's lips when he fired a gun for the first time in years. He thought of the way Mouse began to break silences, little desperate rebellions against their quiet pact that left room for painful words only in the shadows of the night. He should have said that. He should have offered Dr. Garner the things that flitted across his mind.
Instead he said, "Sometimes it does."
Dr. Garner tilted her head, studied him. "Does it?"
Jay thought her words should make him feel small, scolded like a naughty child, but they didn't. Her voice was too kind, too neutral, too curious and sincere.
"Yes. There's a code for police. Priority of life. Victims and innocent bystanders are top priority, then emergency workers and officers, then offenders."
"Of course." Dr. Garner nodded. "That determines priority for protection in tactical situations. It gives police guidelines, a structure to help them make decisions. But does it really determine the worth of someone's life? Officers aren't lower in the priority of life line because their lives are worth less. They're lower because they've knowingly and willingly accepted the risk that comes with their jobs, where victims and bystanders haven't. And offenders have accepted the risk that comes with breaking the law. But would you ever say that Erin or Mouse's lives are worth less than a victim's?"
"Mouse isn't an officer," Jay said distantly, reflexively. Dr. Garner watched him with soft eyes, a curve to her lips that was kind, understanding, almost, maybe, amused.
"A technicality," she said, then dropped back into expectant silence. Jay thought of Erin's smile, Mouse's steady gaze, and he knew the answer, knew it deeply and immediately, but still he felt an itching irritation, a sense that he had been outmaneuvered.
"No," he said finally. "No, they're not worth less." Then, softer, quieter, almost without permission, he added, "They could never be worth less."
Dr. Garner leaned forward ever so slightly, and Jay felt in some way that it was the springing of a trap even as he knew that this woman was not his enemy.
"And you? Are you worth less?"
He wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell her that there would always be lives worth more than his, worth more than his broken and dirtied spirit. There would always be cleaner hands and kinder hearts that deserve in ways he doesn't. But she has strung his logic along, and he knew that if he said yes she would bring it back to Mouse and Erin, knew that if he said yes then he was somehow saying their lives were worth less. So he gritted his teeth and swallowed hard.
"No." He almost meant it.
Dr. Garner leaned back, subtle satisfaction and a knowing glint in her eyes.
"I want you to say it to yourself—"
Jay grimaced reflexively and she chuckled ever so slightly.
"This is your homework. When you feel like that, like it should have been you, or like your life is worth less, I want you to say to yourself, out loud, 'I deserve to live.' I want you to say it until you believe it."
I deserve to live. The words rang sourly in Jay's head, bouncing off the blood of brothers he left behind in the sand, off the memory of the ultrasound, of the funerals and the weeping of the families, and it felt impossible that Jay could ever really believe that he deserves it more than the ghosts for whom he grieves. But he thought of Erin and Mouse, and Jay nodded anyway.
I deserve to live.