A/N: I hope this chapter is okay. It's taken me a while to get back to it. I think there'll be one more chapter after this. All suggestions are welcome!
He feels tears pricking his eyes once his grandfather has left. It's not often that the family brings up Linda these days, which hurts, but maybe they're afraid of…upsetting him.
"It's not just the house that's empty…Linda was the one…"
He hears Sean shower, then the creaks and thumps that tell him his son is in bed, and still he sits, with his third glass of whiskey in his hand.
The open bottle is still there—a present, apparently, from the Reagan family patriarch who maybe hadn't seen just how much the mention of Linda had rattled him.
He needs to cap the bottle, put it away, and go upstairs and get ready for bed.
He doesn't move.
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and dials.
"Hey, Danny, what's wrong?"
He sniffles at the sympathy. "You…don't think maybe I'm calling to tell you a joke?"
"Not at 10:30 at night, Danny. How much have you had to drink?" Doc asks patiently.
He sighs. Even his freaking shrink can tell over the phone that he's tipsy…
"Not enough to keep me from being a crying mess," he says, and walks into the kitchen, finds the leftover bacon from breakfast, and the B vitamins Linda swore by as a hangover remedy. He gets a glass of water, swallows the vitamin pill, and tells Doc about his little chat with the Reagan patriarch.
It wasn't in the cards.
O, dear heavens, how he wishes he could draw a new one! A card where Linda was by his side on this couch, instead of him sitting here, alone, facing an apparently bleak future if he follows in his father and grandfather's footsteps.
It's not that he wants a girlfriend, or to "shack up" (that's gross—that's for high schoolers, not for someone well on the wrong side of 40)…
"What do you think your grandfather meant by saying you were 'a little sideways'?"
"I…I don't know, Doc!"
"Can you tell me how you're feeling about everything?"
"I…I made some sort of sympathy visit to the kid's mom. The kid I…"
He curses furiously. "Why can't I say the word, Doc? The kid I…? I've shot perps before—killed them. I…killed people when I was in the Marines, too. It's not like I'm proud of it, Doc! So why…why is this…? It was self-defense! Why am I so rattled?"
"Is this the first time since Linda's death that you have had to fire your weapon and kill someone in self-defense?"
"Yes," he whispers.
"How are you feeling?" Doc asks again.
"Confused, overwhelmed…and wondering why the hell everyone's throwing Linda's death in my face." He sniffles. His face is wet.
"What do you mean, they're throwing her death in your face?"
"I told you, Doc! Erin, the other day, with her, 'Your boys already lost one…' and now Pops…"
"Do you think you would have been thinking about her more, even without their comments?"
"No…maybe…I don't know, Doc! What are you trying to do?"
"I'm trying to get you to admit something—to me, yes, but more importantly to yourself."
"What do you want me to say, Doc?"
"It's not about what I want you to say, Danny; it's about…what you need to admit to yourself."
"What? That I was right all along—that I can't do this without Linda?"
"No—because you are doing it, Danny. We'll come back to this. How are you feeling about everything that's happened in the past couple days?"
"Like I'm overreacting. I haven't…I haven't slept since it happened. I don't even know how the hell Pops knew what happened!"
"Is your father notified any time one of his officers is involved in a shooting?"
"Yes."
Duh…how hadn't he realized that?!
"So…a late-night call to your father, probably would have woken your grandfather. Have you talked to your father since the incident?"
He shakes his head, and regrets it. He and Pops had definitely had a little too much…his head is killing him.
"What would have happened if you had not fired your weapon at the kid?"
"He would have…stabbed me with a screwdriver."
"You did the right thing, Danny."
"So why are we talking, Doc? Why's my grandfather coming to check on me? Why are we talking for the third time in like two days? Why…"
"Because this is the first major shooting you've been involved with since Linda's death, and because you've admitted that you're not sleeping, and because I've gotten two phone calls from people who are concerned about you," Doc says, and Danny hangs up on his therapist.
He does need to sleep, and he has a pretty good guess who those two people are who called Doc, and…he's going to tell them exactly what he thinks of them calling his shrink on his behalf.