PART THREE



June 2003



"How do you sleep?"

"Fine."

"Liar."

Sam sighed. Were they back at this again?

"Yes, we are."

"Why are you even asking?"

"Because I'm your therapist, and you look very much like you did when you first came back to see me in May."

It had nothing to do with last May, Sam thought.

The insomnia had disappeared after a while. He had taken pills to sleep, he had talked things through to death with her, and Toby had stopped hovering after a few weeks, when Sam had stopped looking exhausted.

Yet, he knew that she had a point. He looked bad - bad enough that his coworkers were looking at him worriedly. Again.

"I'm tired. Lot of work," he stalled.

"Then why didn't you say so right away?"

He bit his lip before the 'Because' that was on them could slip away.

She was there to help, he reminded himself. There was no need for him to act like a third grader.

He looked at her. She stared back at him, unyielding.

This session was going to be fun, he could feel it.

"I'm sleeping," he said.

"How many hours a night?"

"Six."

She went back to waiting for him to realize that resistance would lead him nowhere.

"I'm sleeping," he said again, "It's just. It's possible that I'm having nightmares."

She frowned a little. "Possible? You're not sure that you're having nightmares?"

"I'm having nightmares," he amended. "And may I say that you sounded very much like my boss just then?"

She smiled and he groaned, "Oh God."

"What was that?"

"Now you're going to ask me if I told him."

"Well, since you mention it," she said, making a note, "Does he know about it?"

"No." 'Not yet' might have been a more accurate answer, since his boss seemed to have developed an uncanny sixth sense where his deputy was concerned. "And I don't tell him each time I sneeze either."

"Okay," she said, dropping it. Momentarily, he was sure. "How often do you have these nightmares?"

Every night, several times a night. But the good news was, he could fall back asleep after them. In fact, sometimes, he didn't even wake up.

She made a note and he said, "I know what you're going to ask."

"Do you?"

"You're going to ask, 'Any idea why you have these dreams?' Or maybe, 'What are they about?'"

She didn't answer, and he sighed, "And now you want me to answer, of course."

She nodded, smiling.

"They're about the attack, obviously," he said.

"Not about Rosslyn, this time?"

"No, not. not this time." He had had a few Rosslyn-related nightmares in May, around the anniversary. He did every year. They usually didn't last for long, though.

"Okay, so they're about the attack," she said. "Are they about the actual events, or are they variations?"

"Depends."

He should never have brought it up.

"Tell me about them," she said.

"Sometimes, I wake up in the parking lot, there are people around, and they don't hear me calling for help. Sometimes, there's nobody around. Sometimes, they're about the hospital. When I. when I rejected the transplant, I was running a fever, and I was pretty out of it. Sometimes, they're about that."

"Which ones scare you the most?"

The fever ones weren't fun.

He didn't remember much, just that the others were with him, that he was scared of dying, and that he was feeling himself slipping away a little more every time he surfaced.

He hated those ones.

But the ones that scared him the most were the parking ones.

"Why these ones more than the others?"

"I was with strangers, I felt. alone."

He shivered, and hoped she hadn't noticed.

"Why do you think you're having nightmares now?"

He shrugged. "Anniversary coming up," he guessed.

He was beginning to wonder why he had these nightmares now. Was it because soon, it would be a year since the shooting had happened? Or was it more twisted than that, was it because he had expected to have nightmares as the anniversary came up, and that expectation had made him have them?

"You were expecting them," she said, as if reading his thoughts. A scary possibility.

"Yes." It didn't make it any easier, but at least he had braced himself.

It wasn't the nightmares per se that bugged him. It was what he thought about when he was awake.

"Sam?"

"What?"

"Are they debilitating?"

"No."

"Do they cause panic attacks that you're not telling me about?"

"No."

"Flashbacks?"

"No."

"And they're not preventing you from sleeping?"

"No." He smiled. "No big deal, right?"

"No, not right, but. you tend to divert the attention from your bigger problems by throwing small ones at me."

He blushed a little. He knew how to maneuver her, but she was learning fast how to maneuver back.

"What's really going on?"

"I'm just. I've been thinking a lot."

"Sam." she said.

"I don't know how to. I don't know where to begin."

"Grab the first thing that goes through your head," she suggested.

"They never caught the guy."

There had been no hesitation in his voice.

That had been the first thing that had gone through his head. Or rather, that was the thing that never left it.

"Okay."

"He's still out there, somewhere. Or he could be dead. Or he could have been caught for something else."

"And how does that make you feel?"

He got up and went to the window. It was sunny outside. Warm. He was officially on lunch break, and he was beginning to get hungry.

Once upon a time, he mused, the sun had made him feel safe. Back then, the summer had been 'his' time of the year, the time when he had felt optimistic, energetic, joyful. Too bad it all had come to pass, he thought bitterly. Too bad that guy had stolen that from him, too.

Now, he was left wondering whether this guy would ever come back in his life, and under what circumstances.

Now, even the bright sun didn't make him feel safe anymore.

"Sam, how does that - "

"Scared," he said.

"Why?"

"Because there's someone out there, there's potentially someone out there, with a gun, and who already shot me once."

"Do you think he'll come after you?"

"Unlikely," he admitted. "There's no reason he should. I wouldn't even be able to ID him if I was asked to, so why would he even bother?"

There was bitterness and defeat in his voice, he realized belatedly, and he shot her a look to see if she had noticed.

She had, naturally.

She was good, that way.

"I think we need to talk about that a little more."

He shook his head. He wasn't ready yet. Soon, but not now.

She hesitated, made a note, and asked, "Okay, we'll come back to it. What else do you feel when you think about your attacker still being free?"

Guilt, he thought.

"Anger," he said.

"Toward whom?"

The shooter, obviously.

Himself - why the hell did he stop at that place, at that time? Why hadn't he brought something to eat on his boat, so he wouldn't have been so hungry? Why had he even taken the boat out that day?

Whoever was in charge, Up There.

Whoever had said that every citizen had the right to carry a weapon.

The world at large - scary place, full of indifferent people. And why the hell hadn't anyone pushed *him* down, saved him from the bullet?

He fleetingly wondered if it was part of the reason why CJ hadn't come to see him more often last summer. Did she feel guilty, because he had saved her life and she hadn't been able to do the same for him?

And was it anger at his friends he was feeling right now?

"Why are you angry at your friends?"

A very pertinent question indeed.

"It wasn't their fault," he said, as if he had to defend them.

"I wasn't saying it was. I was saying that you can't control what you feel, and wondering if you wouldn't be feeling some anger directed at them."

He was still staring through the window. There was a tree in the parking lot of the hospital, a huge tree, in the middle of all the cars. He wondered why it was there.

"Sam?"

"They weren't there," he said. "They're always so protective, so intent on preventing me from getting hurt. And they weren't there. I was alone, I needed them, and they came as soon as they knew there was a problem, I know that. But they weren't there."

His voice was hoarse and he took a deep breath, hoping that he wasn't going to cry here.

"What else?"

"Nothing."

"What else?"

Her voice was soft, yet there was no refusing to answer her.

"They didn't see that I had problems, with the PTSD. It's stupid, because I did everything to hide it from them, but they didn't see it anyway."

"Were you trying to get back at them, by not telling them that you had a problem?"

He spun on his heels to face her, horrified - at the idea that she would think he was capable of doing that. At the idea that, maybe, he was. "What? No, absolutely not! I wasn't. No!"

That wasn't something he was going to explore now.

"Okay," she said.

"I didn't want them to be worried."

She waited.

"That's all there was to it."

She waited.

He snapped, "Fine, I'm mad at them, are you happy now?"

"Why are you mad? Aside from the fact that they weren't there during the shooting?"

He breathed deeply, and began to pace the office.

"I. I want to feel angry. Not necessarily at them, but damn it, I'm entitled to a little anger here."

"So what?"

Another good question. Why was it such a big deal to him? Anger was a natural reaction after this kind of experience, he knew that perfectly well

"So, I don't know, they're always expecting me to be nice, soft spoken. Forgiving. I can't, not now. I mean, I'm mad at them, but I'm not. I don't hold it against them. I hold it against the shooter."

"And you think that they don't expect you to be angry at that man?"

"I don't know. I think it would disturb them."

"Why?"

"They see me as someone ." he trailed off.

"Nice," she completed.

"Yes."

"I have two questions."

He sat back in front of her desk. "Shoot." She looked at him and he grimaced. "No bad pun intended."

"Why do you think they see you like that? And, do you see yourself the same way?"

His eyes went from her face to the wall behind her.

Did he see himself as a nice person?

No, not so much. He lost control sometimes. Sometimes, he would get angry at someone, and before he would knew it, his fist would be raised - or would have collided with something. Or someone. How many of the shouting matches he had with Lisa had ended with him throwing his beer bottle, or a book, or whatever was near him, against a wall?

He had fought Billy so many times, in high school.

And Kevin. He still shuddered when he thought about that night.

How close he had been to beating his former friend up. How close he had been to smashing his head against the sidewalk, until that anger that was boiling inside him had finally gone away.

His friends would probably have been horrified if they had known that.

God knew he was.

He hid that side of himself from the others. He kept his temper in check, he kept his feelings tightly under reins. He tried to project an image of calm efficiency, of professionalism, and it worked most of the time.

"Sam?"

"I think they don't realize at all how easily I can get mad," he said.

"You've never talked to them about that, of course."

"No."

"Do you think they'd react badly?"

"I don't know."

"Do you think they'd stop being your friends?"

"No."

"That they would judge you?"

"Not. not overtly."

"But you're scared of what they might think?"

"Wouldn't you be?" he shot back. "I mean, if I talked to them, if they learned how quick I am to get mad, or how easily I'm."

He stopped, unwilling to go on.

She stared at him. "You're what?"

"Never mind."

"You're what?"

"Nothing!"

"You're what?"

He shrugged. "Well, let's say it then. Back in the hospital, I was always so whiny, so despondent, so. " Pathetic, he thought, but didn't want to say it. "I was busy waiting for someone to die, and yes, I know that accidents happen, but I think I'm entitled to feel a little bad about benefiting from someone else's death. She was twenty, for crying out loud."

He saw she was about to say something, and he didn't know if he could stand another 'It wasn't your fault' speech so he went on, his voice higher. "Even now, I'm scared all the time - that I'm going to die, that I'm going to hurt, that someone's going to attack me, that I might lose control, that they might see me as I am."

"What are you?"

"A coward," he spat.

She leaned back in her chair, and he swallowed nervously. He knew that look on her face. She had sensed that there was something else.

"Why?" she asked. "Aside from all the reasons you've listed, why do you see yourself that way?"

He stared at his shoes.

"Why?"

"I didn't even try to look at the guy. I didn't even try to fight."

"It was the smart thing to do."

"Why?"

"What do you think he would have done if you had fought him?"

"I don't know. Kill me, I guess."

"Did you want to die?"

"No!"

"So what?" she asked.

"He shot anyway."

Not fighting hadn't helped, the guy had shot him, for nothing, and now he was free, whereas if Sam had tried to do something, anything .

"You had no way of knowing he would shoot," she said logically. As if it had ever had anything to do with logic, Sam thought. "From all you knew, he was going to take your car and drive away."

"And leave, free to attack other people."

There was a silence. "So that's why," she said softly.

"Yeah."

"You're scared that he went on attacking people, that he killed someone."

". Because I didn't turn to see him."

"He would have killed you," she said.

"You can't be sure," he pointed out.

She rolled her eyes. "And you can't be sure that he wasn't killed himself."

"That's the whole point," he said. "I'll never know."

"No, you won't."

"So what?"

"So you begin to deal with it."

"Sounds like fun," he said dryly.

"You talk to your friends."

"No."

No, he wasn't going to tell them.

And what would he say anyway? 'Oh, by the way, I'm a whiny, pathetic little coward, I bet you weren't expecting that one, now were you?'

"Sam, I really think their answer would surprise you," she insisted.

"Why would I talk to them?"

"Because you're not a coward."

"Right."

"And I'll never be able to convince you of that, but your friends might. And if they react the way I think they will, then maybe you'll be able to start dealing with the fact that you're not a coward. That you're just a man who survived a horrible situation. That you did what you had to do in order to survive."

"I didn't fight," he said again.

"He would have killed you."

"He shot anyway."

"You're alive."

He nodded slowly. "Yeah."

She nodded back. "I don't have any orders to give you, obviously, but I think it would be a good idea to talk to them."

"I don't know."

"Will you at least think about it?"

He nodded.

"Good. We're done for today."

He checked his watch.

"Yeah, I'll. I should go back to work."

She nodded, he rose to his feet and they shook hands, as they always did.

"Think about it," she repeated as he went away.

As if he had any choice, he thought.

As if he would be able to stop thinking about it.