Disclaimer: See chapter 1

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Linda Kimura left Abby's room making her last checks of the evening. All the anthrax infected patients were doing well. Their lungs had all improved; lesions were decreasing in size, some almost disappearing completely. She passed the nurses' station on her way to Dr. Reid's room, not seeing Shirley nudge Beth and wink. She entered Reid's room to find it empty. She knocked on the bathroom door but there was no response. She hadn't ordered any tests that he would have been taken for especially at this time of night. She turned back toward the nurses' station. "Do either of you know where Dr. Reid is?" she asked.

"He's likely in the day room," Beth offered. "He goes there when he can't sleep."

"We keep offering him a sedative," Shirley added, "but he refuses to take anything."

"Okay, thanks," Linda said as she headed for the day room, so named because during the day, the floor to ceiling windows that walled two sides of the room allowed sunlight to stream in. Now, of course, it was illuminated by fluorescent lighting, the darkness outside allowing a beautiful view of the city by night. She saw him sitting alone on one of the leather sofas that furnished the area along with some easy chairs, coffee and occasional tables. He looked to be turning a coin over and over in his hands. In front of him on the coffee table sat a large cup of Starbucks coffee. She pointed to the cup as she approached him, "No wonder you're not sleeping."

"Rossi," Reid said in response. "He paid one of the guys across the street to bring me a cup when his shift ends. I think my body's immune to the caffeine at this point anyway."

"Then why aren't you sleeping?" she inquired as she sat beside him on the sofa.

He reached for the coffee and took a sip, "Occupational hazard," he replied. "The things we see and do on the job don't always lend themselves to pleasant dreams and a good night's sleep. My team is in Wyoming. Three little boys have been abducted, molested and murdered. I should be there with them helping find this bastard and instead I'm stuck here."

"If this job takes such a toll, why do you do it? With your credentials you could do almost anything you wanted."

"When I was at Harvard, Jason Gideon, a former member of the team, came to recruit for the FBI. The way he spoke about the BAU and what they did appealed to me. That sounds kind of funny I suppose. You know how people say, 'I love my job'. This isn't a job you ever enjoy but it's one that has to be done and the aspect of solving the puzzle, I guess, is what appealed to me. I had a lot of education and I wanted to use it to make a difference. I approached him after the lecture and we struck up a friendship. He helped me get into the BAU. He got them to bend the rules for me actually and was my mentor until he left about a year ago. Eventually this job gets to everyone. Hotch told me once he sometimes wonders how many more times we'll be able to look into the abyss before we won't be able to recover the pieces of ourselves this job takes. So far with me, even through all that's happened, not yet. Maybe I'm just too hard headed or stubborn to give up. I thought about it once but I couldn't."

"I don't think that's it," Linda responded. "I think it's your heart. You're sitting here recovering from a nearly fatal anthrax infection and yet you want to be back out there. I think your heart just can't give up on people you think need you." His eyes looked skeptical at her words. "Anybody I know…anybody, would have gotten out of that house as fast as possible but you stayed, despite the danger to yourself. That says a lot more about your heart than your head."

"I've always been valued for my brain, and that's okay. God gave it to me; I might as well use it to help people. I'm not what people normally think of as an FBI agent. I'm not physical like Morgan. I'm not experienced like Rossi or self assured and confident like Hotch. I don't have JJ's way with people and Emily's communication skills and Garcia, well you've met Garcia, you know what I mean. But I'm smart and analytical. I know a great deal and can see patterns more easily than most. So, I have my own uses within the team."

"And don't forget you're magic," she gestured to the coin he was playing with. "Is that part of a magic trick?"

He closed his hand tightly around the medallion and was quiet for quite a while, while Linda waited. "No," he eventually said barely above a whisper, "it's not part of a magic trick although it holds its own magic for me." He turned and looked at Linda noting the confusion in her eyes. Now was the moment. After this her respect for him would be lost. He inhaled a deep breath. "It's my one year medallion from Beltway Clean Cops." There, he had said it. He waited in the silence that followed for her to speak.

"Narcotics?" she finally said softly.

Reid only nodded, "How did you know?"

"Your refusal to be given any narcotics made me slightly suspicious."

Reid only nodded looking down at his hands.

"If you want to talk about it," she reached out and put her hand on his arm, "anything you say to me is totally confidential."

Of course it was, he thought, she was his doctor and nothing more. "It's not easy to talk about," he told her.

"I don't doubt that. Gar…Garcia told me something had happened to you on the job and you were in a bad way for a while after."

She could see the irritation in his eyes that his teammates had shared so much about him. Finally he took in a deep breath and stated, "A bad way, well that's a kind way of describing it."

The hand she'd put on his arm hadn't moved and gently squeezed. He looked into her eyes and saw only kindness radiating from their brown depths. "We were searching for a serial killer in Georgia…" The events of Georgia poured out of him. He told Linda Kimura every detail. To a passerby it would have seemed like he was making up some gruesome macabre bedtime story, not something he had actually lived.

"I…I found that I wanted the oblivion the Dilaudid offered. It made me forget that Mike and Pam Hayes were slaughtered before my eyes. It made me forget that if I'd picked them they'd be alive today." He paused for a moment. "If it had just made me forget, I probably could have lived with it, but it never ends there does it?" he said with disdain. "I was deceptive with my teammates. I took my anger and frustration out the hardest on Emily. She was new to the team and I guess it felt okay. It wasn't okay. I was turning into someone I didn't like to look at in the mirror." He paused again. "So after about four months, I stopped. I was doing okay until I saw this kid killed right in front of me. I tried to talk the killer down but I couldn't and he just shot the kid. I couldn't shoot him because his daughter was in front of him blocking my shot. I just wanted to forget. That's when I went to Beltway Clean Cops. This little piece of metal means a lot to me. It's like a lifeline, a reminder that I can do this; that I have the strength within me to overcome. It's also a reminder of all I have to lose if I fail. I don't intend to fail." He sat there for a moment staring at the medallion, afraid to look up, afraid of what he would see in Linda's eyes. At last he raised his brown eyes to look into hers. He saw no contempt or disappointment in them. He saw tears, tears that flowed freely from those brown orbs down her cheeks and onto her top. Reid put the medallion in the pocket of his robe and reached a shaky hand to the soft skin on her cheek to wipe away her tears.