"Hey, Doc! Hold up a minute!" I called down the hallway. He stopped and turned around. "Can I talk to you a minute?"
"Sure. What's up?"
"It's my nephew. He still won't talk. I just wanted to know... is there anything I can do? Get him to talk to me?" I looked back towards the squad room. "And we think he saw something."
"All you can really do is give it time. What do you do now to try and get him to talk?"
"I ask him questions, anything from what he wants for dinner to..." I searched for something else.
"That's all you can do, detective. He needs time, and love. If you give that to him, he'll talk."
"It's been a week and a half," I said, exasperated.
He shook his head. "There's no telling how long it will take him. What he witnessed would traumatize an adult. He's only ten. The amount of damage done to his psyche may never be known in it's entirety. Only time can tell." Seeing the defeat written so plainly on my face he added, "I'll talk with him again, if you think it would help."
"You're the doctor..." I look out the window we're standing next to. "Look, I don't know anymore. I just want him to be comfortable enough to talk to me about this. Sometimes he wakes up in the night, screaming and crying, but he won't tell me anything. All I can do is hold him and wait for him to calm down. He hasn't talked to Olivia, Elliot, Fin or even Cragen. I just thought that by now..." I left the sentence hanging. I shook my head and muttered, more to myself than him, "I don't know what to do."
He looked at me and then, as if making a decision, said, "Bring him in tomorrow. I'll come by and talk to him. After lunch."
I turned back to him. "Thanks." He smiled and walked away. I sighed and looked back out the window, leaning on the concrete sill.