VI.
The first night in the hospital, I was so out of it from fear and nightmares and drugs that I couldn't really ask questions or think very coherently at all, my thoughts going mostly in an endless loop and rarely connecting with anything to hold on to. The second night I was able to string thoughts together a little and finally thought to ask about how the others found me, though they were all fairly evasive and cautious with details. It wasn't until the third night that anyone admitted that they had been watching me struggling in that coffin, that they could see me choking and crying and trying my damndest not to crack. I think I said something like "Oh" when I found out and didn't say much after that. And I had even more nightmares that night than I had the night before.
Privacy has always been very important to me, and I understand enough about psychology to understand why. Ever since I was nine years old, I've tried to mold myself into something that I'm not, to show a brave face, a strong, resourceful Nick, a Nick that didn't cry and scream and convulse. I wanted the world to see a happy, go-lucky, even naïve version of me; I didn't want them to see me as damaged, as insecure, and afraid. It took me 29 years just to admit to anyone else what had happened to me when I was a kid, and that hadn't even been easy; Catherine had to practically browbeat me into saying anything at all. But when I told her about the babysitter and I said, "It's what makes a person, I guess", I at least sort of meant it. I managed to rebuild after what happened then and I moved on and I was doing okay. And then Nigel Crane came along and took all my hardworked privacy away.
Crane had holes in my ceiling, and he stayed up there in the attic watching me, watching me all the time. He watched as I ate, as I watched TV, as I showered, as I slept. He watched me when I was most vulnerable and unable to defend myself. He watched everything all the time, and after he was gone, I could still feel his eyes, watching, always watching, even after I moved to a new home. I would stay awake at night, my heart racing, and I'd have to turn on the light to make sure that there weren't holes in the ceiling, that the eyes I was imagining weren't real. I could never really relax with the feeling that someone, anyone, was watching the real me, not that brave Nick that I pretended, but the real Nick, the real me, who had been broken long ago and never really fixed. I didn't want anyone to be able to see me like that again; I didn't want anyone to see me.
And then Grissom and Catherine and Warrick and Sara, Greg and Hodges and Ecklie and Archie, Mom and Dad, everyone else in the lab. . .they all saw me. They all watched me as I was trapped in that coffin, trying to resist the urge to blow my fucking brains out. Every single one of them watched me and saw me, and in the space of 24 hours my privacy was gone, shattered, as if it had never existed in the first place. Every single one of them saw me as me, not the fake Nick but the real Nick: damaged.
VII.
Both Catherine and Grissom suggested that I see a therapist for a while about what happened. Catherine suggested it while I was still in the hospital, bringing it up out of the blue when we weren't really talking about anything at all. She didn't draw out the conversation, didn't spend hours harping on the subject, but she did make it obvious that she thought it'd be a good idea. I think she, even more than the others, would be especially relieved if I sought help; she mentioned that this wasn't the only incident I hadn't dealt with in my past, and that seeking some help would be the smart course of action.
Grissom's approach, of course, wasn't remotely like Catherine's. He didn't bring it up at all, not until my first week back at work. I was in a bad mood about something and I blew up a little at Jacqui. . . I didn't mean to, really, but I hadn't slept much and I was irritated (I apologized later). Grissom happened to overhear me yelling and he called me into his office to "check in on how the case was going". We sat in silence for a long time before he began talking about some rare spider, some entomological wonder, that had these fascinating panic responses. I started to tune out a little, so I missed exactly how the metaphor worked, but by the end of it I was the spider, and the spider might want to think about seeing a professional for psychiatric help. Every time I see Grissom now, I think to myself 'I am the spider', and it makes me laugh a little in my head. That alone makes me think Grissom and Catherine are probably right about seeing the shrink.
It would be a good idea to see a shrink, to talk about what's happened. It probably would be the best choice for me to seek out help. I know all this, I even agreed with them when they told me, but I still haven't called anyone yet and I don't think I mean to. I just can't stand the idea of talking about it anymore, of actually trying to explain what being in that box was like.
They had a picture of me on the news for a while; it was pretty sensational stuff, even if you didn't fudge the facts. They called me the 'cop who was buried alive': I guess explaining what exactly a crime scene investigator was might take up more than the 30 seconds you had before commercial break. Every now and then, I'd be walking outside and people would recognize me on the street, would actually point out and whisper, "Look, it's that guy". And every time I ever seriously thought about picking up the phone to call any shrink, I'd picture those strangers' faces in my head, pointing their fingers at me. I'd visualize my dad as he cried over me in the hospital, my co-workers, who couldn't look me in the eyes anymore if they passed by me in the lab. I'd see Catherine sobbing behind one hand and Warrick needing to be forgiven, and I could picture every one of them watching me break down when I was trapped in there, watching me fall apart again and again. I could imagine them all seeing me and knowing and I just couldn't pick up that phone, couldn't call someone to make an appointment to talk about it all over again. I didn't want anyone else to know; I still don't want anyone else to know. I'm trying to pick up the pieces, trying to keep from feeling so exposed. Because that's how I feel whenever I think of them all watching me in that coffin: I feel exposed, and I feel dirty, and ashamed of how they all know.
That's been pretty hard to deal with. I thought that would be the worst of it all. But I know now that I was wrong. There's something else I have to handle, something's that worse than even this.