AN: Thanks muchly to my beta OperaAngel, who did a great job!

I'm fixing my folio right now which is taking me forever, that might be a good or bad thing because I always seem to write when I'm at my busiest (me being the procrastinator I am) but also might mean I'm actually doing my proper work. Basically, just be patient with me because I have a set outline in place so I know where this is going, just not much time to write it.

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C h a p t e r O n e

Cannonball – Damien Rice

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Four months. Three days. Twenty one hours. Thirty four minutes.

David doesn't like how doctor what's-his-name keeps referring to Somerset instead of him, as if he wasn't even in the room, mentally if not physically. It was demeaning, like he was a school-boy sent to the principle's office after they'd called his parents.

Your son has a problem with authority it seems, he doesn't like being told what to do and he doesn't play well with the other kiddies.

David is overcome with the sudden urge to swing his feet out and launch himself onto the floor in a tantrum, but slouches in his chair at the rebellious impulse instead.

"Mr. Mills?"

Both what's-his-name and Somerset are looking at him now, waiting for an answer to a question he hadn't bothered listening to. If this was the real world, back at the station or somewhere where it mattered, David would have had the decency to look embarrassed at being caught out in his moment of distraction, but here it didn't seem to matter. They already thought he was crazy, he might as well live up to their expectations – get into a bathrobe and start drooling; because what was the use, really?

"Mr. Mills, are we all in agreement?" doctor whosit asks expectantly.

David shrugs noncommittally and looks out of the window over the doctor's shoulder.

"Okay, I guess we're pretty much done here then. If you could sign these documents Mr. Mills we can get started on settling you in." the doctor says handing the documents over to Somerset to look over them first. The action doesn't go unnoticed by David but he chooses to ignore it, thankful for it rather, he isn't sure he could even pretend to be interested in what the documents said.

"I hope you won't think of this as a prison David. If anything it should be more of a retreat for you," David remains stoic in the face of doctor dot dot dot's proud smile, and vaguely thinks the doctor missed his calling as a hotel concierge.

After the formalities that require David's signature over half on dozen pages (and initial here, here and here), a nurse is asked to show the two to the ward David will be calling home for the next month or so.

David counts thirty four doors on his way to the ward, passes two quacks in white coats, five baby-sitters rolling around trays of food and meds, and a room full of crazies watching Wheel of Fortune—and the nurse had talked the whole way there.

". . . and you'll find the nurses station down the hall from the long-term patients ward on your right, if you have any problems and you can't find the nurses assigned to your area you can always find someone there. We do try to make this facility, more like a home rather than a hospital. Oh! And if you keep on following this hall, you'll get to the gardens which are just beautiful in spring, you know . . ."

David vaguely wonders if the nurse even needs another person to have a conversation.

Beside him, Somerset smiles and nods at the appropriate intervals; he is polite and courteous like he has been all day; it makes David want to throw up all over his well-mannered shoes.

He's not sure he can take much more of Somerset, it's not so much that David resents his friend for taking responsibility for him since the not-so-accidental-breaking-of-the-junkie's-face incident, at times like this he's even grateful for it. But there was also his pride telling him that Somerset shouldn't have to look after him, he was a grown man after all. He could handle his affairs well enough. Just because he chose not to at this particular moment didn't mean he couldn't.

"They're all, very . . . informative here aren't they? It looks like this is a well run facility," Somerset comments after they reach David's room and are finally left alone.

"Regular Ask Jeeves'."

"David," Somerset sighs his name like he wants to say something more, but instead stares at his ex-partner with his patented cop look. The kind that made wife-beaters sweat and pick-pocketers pee their pants, but makes David feel like the sarcastic-twelve-year-old he was acting like.

"Are you going to take this thing seriously, David?"

He doesn't know how to answer Somerset because he still hasn't made up his mind about that. He hasn't really accepted that he's here for an undetermined amount of time, hasn't accepted that he might not have a job when he finally did come out.

"Did you hear me, David?"

The time between now and Tracy's death didn't even seem to be real to him, as if it was just a nightmare (the smoking gun in his hand, the ride back to the station from the wrong side of the caged police car, the statement given to the media, the funereal, the anger, the quick-fix therapy, the tedious hours of paperwork, the arguments with anyone over anything, the empty apartment, the face-breaking, the long car ride to a nut-house, the too-white walls he was currently staring blankly at) a nightmare he was just waiting to wake up from.

Because he had to wake up.

So if he was going to find himself tucked up in bed, curled up around his wife any moment now, how was he supposed to take being put into a hospital seriously?

"David?"

How was he supposed to take any of this seriously?

David?

David?

David, it's so dark here, why won't you answer me?

David, why weren't you there? Why didn't you stop him?

He hurt me, David, it still hurts, where were you?

Where are you?

David wakes up in a cold sweat and feels the tears pooling into his ears, his hair sticking to his forehead and the blanket tickling his toes as it lay in a heap at the bottom of the bed.

The dream is already fading in a blur of images and sounds, but the feeling, oh God, the feeling that she was - just - there, is torturous enough to make him stagger to the bathroom and dry heave into the toilet bowl. It's almost as bad as actually throwing up – taking in large gulping breaths of toilet bowl air, it's a vicious cycle that makes his eyes sting.

"Mr. Mills?" a voice accompanies a soft knock at his room door sometime later.

Staggering out of the bathroom with a cold towel to his neck, David only sees the outline of a person's head peering into the room from the gap of the slightly opened door, the bright lights in the hall backlighting them against the darkness of his room.

"What is it?" David croaks sitting heavily on his bed.

Turning on the light, the nurse blinks owlishly at him before smiling as a blush blooms across her cheeks, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to disturb, I mean – that is to say – I was asked to remind you, you have your first session with Doctor Warren at ten."

The young woman quickly closes the door behind her, leaving David slightly disoriented and confused wondering what the time was (the blush and the hasty escape explained when he remembers he was only half dressed in a pair of low riding pajama bottoms.)

The stuffiness of the room suggests it's later than he thought, the glowing numbers of his digital clock confirmation that it's closer to his appointment with his new head-doctor than he would have liked.

Would it really matter if he just didn't turn up? The doctor probably wouldn't even notice if he did, he might even be thankful for the early lunch break, and it wasn't like there would be any real consequences – what could they do?

Put him in a mental institution?

David lays back onto the bed with his face nestled in the crook of his arm ignoring the soft sounds of people shuffling past his room, his thoughts drifting back to the dream he had woken from that morning. He couldn't remember much if it, the details disappearing from his mind as dreams were wont to do, but the echo of Tracy's voice saying his name, whispering across his mind seemed to be important somehow. There was something that he needed to remember, something in the way she had said it – but the more he concentrated, the further away it seemed to be.

David later blamed this moment for the slow torture that would be his first session with his doctor; without anything better to do than have his mind go round and round in circles chasing answers he didn't have, he found himself dressing half-heartedly and walking the doctor's office before he even knew it.

"Why do you think you're here, David? Is it okay if I call you David?" the doctor asks after the initial introductions.

"I have a choice do I? I'd prefer Detective Mills if it's all the same to you."

The doctor smiles at David, as if he was expecting a similar answer if not the exact one he gave, "Alright Detective, why is it you're here?"

David contemplates leaving the question hanging in the air but the silence with someone else in the room is worse than when he's in his room alone – the doctor's stare making him want to squirm in his seat and spill all his secrets.

"Something to do with a chair, and a junkie's face, if I had to guess."

The doctor's maddening smile stays firmly in place as he writes something on his pad.

"Let's talk about that then."

"There's not much to say, I lost my temper and hit a guy with the closest thing that was at hand, it just happened to be a chair."

"And you don't feel that was an overreaction?"

David finds himself staring at the doctor, assessing him with his eyes, trying to figure out the best way to communicate with him that meant he was left alone like he wanted. He figured the doctor wouldn't be a push-over like his last therapist, would probably see through anything that wasn't the complete truth if the looks he was giving David was anything to go by. But that also meant David felt less inclined to talk to him.

In the end he figured the truth, but with the least amount of information he could give would be the best way to go.

"Look, lets just cut to the chase; I know I have anger managements issues, I know it stems from the recent death of my wife, one that I feel responsible for, and I also know you'll tell me it wasn't my fault and I should just move on but we both know that's just bullshit platitudes."

"Well, it seems you know a lot, Detective," the doctor says after a short, contemplative pause.

"I've had to endure therapy before this."

"Ah yes," he says rummaging around on his desk to find David's file, "You were with a Doctor. . . Ryan?"

David only vaguely remembers the doctor he was given after the events of the John Doe killings; a skinny graduate who was thrilled to find out that David's father beat him at a young age (a story he made up on a whim at the start of his sessions with her) and had been so gullible and eager to match his temper tantrums to something she could find in her text books, he was usually able to her divert attention to that 'issue.'

By the time he had 'come to terms' with the abusive relationship with his father, his grief and the issue of his explosive temper had been glossed over with "it wasn't your fault," and "with your background of violence, it's understandable you would react the way you have," and within a month she had deemed him mentally healthy (it was the lie that had just kept on giving.)

"Sure, I guess."

The doctor frowns as he reads through some more papers in the file which gets a smile out of David; he wonders what the graduate had to say about him.

"Well, Detective, we only have a few moments left before my next appointment, but you should know that I'm here for you to talk to. I know there's a lot to get through, some of it," he pauses and looks down at the file again briefly, "I'm sure is involved, but you can talk about anything you want to in these sessions, it's what I'm here for."

There's a knock at the door and, before David can respond, a nurse pops her head in with the doctor's call, "Your next patient is waiting outside, Doctor Warren."

The doctor nods and turns to David, "So, it looks like we're scheduled to meet every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, I'll see you later on this week then."

Opening the door for David the doctor greets his next patient with a warm smile. The detective notices that the nurse hands her over to him like a baton in a relay race, "She's been doing well today, much more lucid and even talking a bit now and then."

David watches from the doorway as the doctor and nurse fuss over the patient they're handling like blown glass, the blonde seemingly ignoring most of what's going on around her as if in her own world.

As he closes the door behind him and walks towards his wing, David distractedly listens to the doctor's muffled voice drifting through the air.

"I'm glad to hear you're doing better, Buffy."

Four months. Four days. Ten hours. Twenty-eight minutes.

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Questions? Comments?