In session
"If I make you scared
if that's what you do
If I'm unclear can I get out of this with me and you?
If you feel scared or a bit confused
I gotta say, this sounds a little beyond
anything I'm used to."
-Scared, The Tragically Hip
Gus Broussard was not who Samantha expected to see coming into the spacious, comfortable office. The New Orleans native was tall and curvy and stunningly attractive with wavy blond hair pulled tightly back and sparkling green eyes, dressed conservatively and stylishly in a beige business suit, heels and a burgundy blouse. Sam had a certain image of a therapist set in her mind. Someone like the doctor from The Sopranos or a middle age man, stuffed suit type like back in the Phoenix PD. The type that seemed more interesting in dozing off during your life history or doodling on their note pads and offering up little more than one word answers or shakes or nods of the head. She certainly did not expect a total knock out with loads of self confidence, possibly younger than herself. And it only made her feel even more nervous and self conscious once the handshakes and introductions were made and she took a seat on a comfy chair in a cozy meeting area in the middle of the office.
Gus could sense how nervous and uneasy the thought of spilling her guts out to a complete stranger was to the young, pretty little CSI sitting across from her. And she couldn't help but think that this young woman looked better suited to be teaching a class room of children than working on the bad streets of New York City. But Mac had told her despite the wholesome, girl next door appearance, Samantha Ross was a determined, head strong woman and an amazing cop. And that he couldn't afford to loose her because of personal issues.
Samantha avoided eye contact as much as possible. Her eyes darting around the room, pretending to be intriqued by photos and diplomas hanging on the wall. Biting her fingernails and shaking her legs. Gus expected resistance. It was quite obvious this girl wanted to be anywhere but there.
"First off," Gus began in her Louisiana drawl. "I want you to know that no one is forcing you to be here. You don't want to be here, then don't come. No skin off my nose. Just means I have an extra free hour to catch up on paper work."
"I have to be here." Sam said, finally looking at the therapist. "Chief Sinclair made me do this so I can keep my job. He made Mac send me here. I didn't choose to come. This is the last place I want to be, talking to a stranger. And it's nothing personal. I just don't tell people certain things about me."
"No one is holding a gun to your head or tying you to a chair to stay. And if you choose to be here, I don't even care if you do any talking. You can spend the whole hour of every session just looking out the window if you want. That's your prerogative. Fact is, you're here for eigth sessions and there's no way out of that. So, why don't you think of how you'd like to make your time here beneficial. To you."
Samantha nodded, considering. "I'll do that." she said and looked away again.
Several minutes passed by. Neither woman spoke. Samantha sat with her leg shaking nervously and her eyes on the window, looking out at the city scape, while Gus sat patietly, organizing files.
"I'm not crazy you know." Samantha finally spoke first.
"Did someone suggest you were?" Gus asked.
"No... it's just I feel that way sometimes.Like my brain is going to explode and my life is out of control."
"Why did Chief Sinclair send you here?" Gus asked.
"Because I have issues."
"What kind of issues?"
Sam sighed and looked at Gus and nodded to the file in her hands. "We'd be here all day and you'd need a hell of a lot more paper if I was to tell you."
"Give me one thing to start off with." Gus suggested.
"I threatened a co-worker." Sam admitted.
"Threatened?"
"Do you not have that written down in my file there?" Sam asked irritably. "It must be in there."
"I want you to tell me." Gus responded. "Hear your side of the story."
"She was spreading rumors about me and people I love and I put a stop to it. I told her to keep her mouth shut and I may have told her I'd kick the crap out of her if she didn't."
"And would you have?"
"Probably."
"Because...?"
"Because she was talking shit about me and... I'm sorry. Pardon my mouth. She was talking crap about me and I couldn't take it and I wanted to stop it."
Gus wrote feverishly. "Is there another way you could have dealt with it? Without resorting to violence?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I guess."
"Have you ever felt like that before? At another co-worker, a loved one...?"
Sam snorted. "At least twice a day, every day."
Gus just nodded.
"I get irritated really easily. Stupid comments from stupid people really bother me. And people try and suffocate me and close me in and I just snap. Say mean things to people who don't deserve it. Want to smack the shit out of them. You know, people trying to treat me like this fragile little girl."
"What people do this?"
"My brother, for starters. He's younger than I am, yet he has this big brother vibe about him. He nags me constantly about my personal life, gets on me about the way I'm handling situations, wants to practically lock me in the house. Protect me. Like I used to do to him when we were kids."
"Who else?"
"I don't know... my father. Step father, actually. He came to New York to check up on me and went all military on me. He was just worried about things that have been happening lately and wanted to make sure I was okay. I get that. But when he gets like that... unbearable. Totally unbearable."
"How about a spouse? A significant other? How do they make you feel?"
"My boyfriend... he's great and I love him to death and he wants to help me and protect me, but he can be really possessive and overbearing. And when he starts that suffocating thing he does and treats me like a little kid, I can't take it. And then I say mean things to him and he doesn't deserve it. Half the time, I don't even know I said it until it comes out of my mouth and then I feel like shit 'cause I can't take it back."
"Do you ever get violent?" Gus asked.
"With him? Yeah, right. He's over six feet and two hundred pounds. Even if I wanted to, he wouldn't let me get away with it. He says I have anger issues."
"Do you feel he's right?"
"Honestly? I can't remember a time when I haven't been angry."
Silence fell between the two women. Gus busy jotting everything down, and Sam starting out the window, absentmindedly playing with the simple gold chain around her neck. Lost in thought.
"Are you angry now?" Gus asked, after several minutes had passed.
"A little." Sam admitted. "Not at you because you're just doing your job. But I'm angry at Lindsay for putting me in a position that landed me here. I'm angry at Sinclair for making me do this and I'm angry at my mother for making me the way I am."
"Are you angry at yourself?"
"I'm angry that I let myself get this way. That I didn't stop it sooner. That it had to come to this." Sam had been fighting back angry, bitter tears for the last few minutes and now they flowed freely down her cheeks. "Because now I feel I can't change and I want to change me."
Gus stopped writing and reached for a box of tissues in the middle of the small table between them and tore some out and handed them to CSI. "In what way do you want to change?" she asked gently.
"I want to be happy." Sam replied, dabbing at her eyes. "I want to be less angry and stressed out. I want to get rid of this hangup that I feel I don't deserve to be happy. I want to laugh more and have fun with people and I can't do that. I can't let my guard down enough. I pretend really well and I don't want to pretend anymore. And I wish...I wish I could be somebody else. Just become an entirely different person. I know that sounds stupid. But it's how I feel."
"It's okay to feel that way." Gus said, getting up and going to a table along the far wall and pouring a glass of ice water from a jug that rested there. She went back to the seating area and held it out to Sam with reassuring smile. "But in the long term, it's not healthy for you or whoever you're with. You have to own yourself. You have to think about consequences before you make choices. Not regret them afterwards when it's too late to change anything. Nothing is more painful than regret."
Samantha nodded and sipped the water.
"When did the anger start?" Gus asked, sitting back down.
"I was young. I can't remember the exact age."
"What happened?"
"My brother and I..." she took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Adam. His name is Adam. We were abused. Badly. By our birth father. I think he started on me when I was about six. He used us a punching bag. Would lock us in the basement with no food for two days. It was your basic physical, emotional abuse. He put it in our heads that it was our fault he was the way he was, that we were bad kids and we deserved to be punished. And we believed it."
"Did you have a mother?"
"She did nothing to stop it. And we were just kids! I protected Adam the best I could. But sometimes, it wasn't good enough."
"Do you tend to get involved in relationships that are abusive?"
"Those types flock to me. My ex fiance, was just like my father. I came to New York to get away from him and he followed me here and he was going to abduct me and do God knows what to me. He even came to the lab with a gun to threaten me!"
"How about your relationship now? Do you find it abusive?"
"Complete opposite. He's not like that at all. He's not the type to hit a woman. He's a really, really nice guy. He treats me like a princess. It's the first time anyone has treated me like that. Its hard to get used to."
"Are you happy? With him?" Gus asked.
"I am. I just have a hard time accepting that I deserve to be happy and to have someone like him. It's weird. I must sound like a real nut job to you."
"Not at all. Let's talk about your past effects the present. With men. What else can you tell me that is different with this relationship than the previous?"
Sam thought about it, slowly sipping the water. "It's the first time in forever that I've trusted a man. And its the first tie someone has complimented me and made me feel good about myself."
"And intimacy wise? Are there any reluctance issues?"
"At first I wasn't ready for that step and he understood. He didn't pressure me or anything."
"Often with violent pasts, we see high risk behaviours." Gus said. "Do you see anything with yourself? Substance or alcohol abuse?"
"I wouldn't say abuse. But when I drink, I tend not to know when to stop. I've never done anything really stupid other than being sicker than a dog the next day or sleeping on the bathroom floor. I've never gone home with strange me. Although, there was this time in college I got pretty trashed and I kinda fooled around with my roommate. And my roommate was a girl."
Gus' eyes widened a little as she jotted it down.
"Not that I'm a lesbian or even bi-sexual." Sam added quickly. "It just happened."
"Anonymous, promiscuous, or rough sex?"
"No, no and yes. A big yes."
"You enjoy rough sex?'
"More than any other kind." Sam admitted.
"If you sit back and think about it, do you enjoy it because you genuinely like it, or because you feel you deserve to be hurt and feel pain and be degraded?"
Sam considered it. "Can I get back to you on that? I've never thought about it."
"Of course. How about other behaviours? Eating disorders?"
"Hell no. I love to eat. Food is my friend. I just know when to stop and how to burn it all off."
"What about self harm? Cutting yourself, pulling you hair...?"
"Stuff like that has never even crossed my mind. So do you think that I have all these issues because of what happened when I was a kid?"
"I do. And now, I'm going to tell you to throw all of your past mistakes and problems out the window because it doesn't mean a hill of beans now. I know that you've had a tough go of it. You've been trough a lot and I'm sorry for that. But this is the present and you have to live in the present. Think about your decisions and choices and if you're making them because of the past. Here's what I want you to do. A little bit of homework before our next session. I want you to get a journal..."
Sam blanched. "Oh God... I am not the diary kind of girl. I'm more the read someone else's diary kind of girl."
Gus smiled in amusement. "I want you to journal your feelings. When a certain situation hits, how you feel at that time, negative or positive, and how you dealt with it, successfully or unsuccessfully. Write down random thoughts or ideas you're having. Our next session, you get back to me on any anxious or scared or angry moments you had during the week and how they affected you and how you coped. And the intimacy issues. Think about that."
"You mean you actually want me to come back?" Sam asked. "I didn't annoy you?"
"I'd like you to come back." Gus said. "Would you like to come back?"
Sam nodded. "I would. I'm not crazy, am I?"
"No." Gus assured her. "You're just human."
The clock across the room read quarter to four. Carmen was using the mobile browser on her cell phone to check the daily headlines through CNN when the door leading into the waiting room swung open. She looked over, a smile spreading across her face at the sight of the familiar, unexpected face stepping into the room. Don Flack in a pair of baggy adidas tear away pants and a plain white t-shirt, baseball cap and running shoes.
"What are you doing here?" she asked. "Didn't you just finish another double?"
"I did." he said and dropped his tall, bulky frame into the chair beside her. "Clocked out two hours ago."
"Don't you sleep?"
"I went home, showered, lied down for a bit and now, here I am. What? Why are you staring at me like that?"
"I can not get over how different you look in normal clothes is all. Unreal. So what are you doing here?"
"Sam was stressing over coming today and I figured I'd come and see how things went. She's trying hard to deal with a lot of stuff. I just wanted to support her."
"Awww...Flack..." she rubbed his shoulder. "You are a man in love."
"Keep it down. I have a reputation to uphold." he joked.
She smacked the back of his head, hard enough to hurt and aggravate the massive sunburn he had.
He bit back a loud curse word and rubbed at his stinging neck.
"What's up with Sam's hair?" Carmen asked. "It's cute and she looks great with it, but what made her do that? Some kind of soul cleansing thing?"
"Maybe. All I know is that when I left for work last night, she still had all her hair. She gets to the scene this morning and it's all gone. Used to reach her ass nearly and now it barely reaches her chin. It was beautiful and long and now it's gone. And don't tell her this, but it kind of reminds me of Lindsay."
"Jesus Flack, get a grip." Carmen said. "It's just hair. And you should have your ass kicked for that last comment."
"It's all good in the end. She donated what they cut off to that Locks of Love charity. You know, the people who make wigs for kids that lost their hair from chemotherapy."
Carmen smiled. "That is so Sam. Always thinking about someone else." she closed off the browser on her phone and yawned. "Well, if you're here..." she stood up and stretched. "I don't need to be."
"Maybe we should both stay." Flack suggested. "Avoid her having some abandonment crisis."
"So now you're addressing her abandonment issues." Carmen commented, returning to her seat.
"You don't think I realize she has issues? Lots of them? But I love her regardless."
She playfully pinched his cheek. "Flack, you're goin' all sappy on me here. Where's the big, bad, scary homicide detective we all know and love?"
"Hey, that badge and gun come off, this is me. It's just my job, Carmen. Not my life."
"You are a study in contradiction, Donald Flack Jr." she looked closer at him. There was something different about him that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Then it clued in. Less hair at his neckline, poking out of the bottom of his hat. Almost no hair, actually. She grabbed the hat and yanked it off. "Oh my fucking God..." she said.
"You like?" he asked and rubbed the top of his head. He'd gone and gotten his hair shaved a half inch shy of a brush cut.
"Jesus fucking Christ. What did you do?" Carmen asked.
"I've had my hair this short before. No biggie. And it's hot out so..."
"Short enough to see your scalp? What the hell? Did you do this to spite her?"
"I most certainly did not... okay, maybe I did."
She slapped his arm with the hat and dropped it in his lap. "You are an asshole. That's petty. And childish."
"I bet ya she freaks when she sees it." Flack said and put his hat back on.
"Twenty says she doesn't."
"You're on." Flack said and they shook on it.
Carmen picked up a brown paper bag from the chair beside her and pulled out a sprinkle donut. "Here..." she held it out to him. "If you've been working nights and she's on days, you need this more than I do."
"I don't eat donuts." he told her.
"Bullshit. I've seen you eat and you'll eat anything."
"Carmen..."
"Come on. Eat it."
"I seriously don't..."
"I said eat it!" she snapped and shoved it into his mouth.
"Happy?" he asked, taking a bite.
"Yes. I''m a therapist, too. I hand out donuts to those who need them."
"I'm in need for something but it's not a donut." he said with a sigh.
"Sam's right. You are a perv."
"How'd you even know that's what I was talking about?"
"'Cause you and Speed are exactly the same. You're men. Keep eating that donut and you'll feel better soon. Speed had one earlier, too"
"Yeah? What you put in it? LSD? Meth? E?" he asked.
"For you, viagra."
"Fuck you, Devine. That is one problem I don't have."
"Appareantly. You need something that does the complete opposite."
"Exactly." he said.
The door to the office area opened and Sam and Gus came out. Both Carmen and Flack were surprised that while Sam's eyes looked red from crying, she was actually smiling and laughing about something she and Gus were discussing.
"Looks like yo have some fans here to support you." Gus drawled. "I'm Gus Broussard." she offered her hand to Carmen as she stood.
"Carmen Devine." she shook the taller woman's hand. "I work with Sam at the lab."
"She's my best, dearest friend." Sam declared, and it nearly brought tears to Carmen's eyes to hear it. Carmen put an arm about her friend's shoulder and kissed her cheek.
"Detective Flack." Gus shook his hand. "Nice to see you again and under different circumstances. Samantha, same day, same time next week. I'll have Estella write it down. Remember what I said to think about."
"I will. Thank you."
"My pleasure. Talk soon. Take care." Gus smiled warmly at the small group before disappearing back inside.
"So," Flack said, giving his girlfriend a warm, tight hug and a small kiss. "You okay?"
Sam nodded. "I'm fine. It was... therapeutic."
"How'd it go?" Carmen asked.
"Better than I expected. I have to keep taking the lorezepam for the anxiety and the zoloft to even out my moods, but she thinks I should be able to ween myself off of them soon."
"Well, as great as that sounds, you might want to take a couple drugs now." Carmen said and pulled Flack's hat off.
Sam's eyes widened at the sight. "Okay..."
"Had to find a way to hide my grey hair." Flack said. "You hate it, don't you. You're pissed off. Tell me you're pissed off and you hate it."
"Actually, I like it. A lot. Makes you look even hotter." Sam gushed,
Carmen grinned victoriously and held out her hand to Flack. "I told you so. Give me my twenty."
He sighed heavily and took out his wallet and peeled off two tens and passed them over.
"Women." he grumbled as they left the office and he dutifully followed behind.
"So tell me again why we are here and what exactly we are looking for?" Flack asked, as they browsed an aisle of a card and stationary store at the New Rochelle Mall. He'd offered to take her out for dinner before returning her to the lab. But they had to make a pit stop first.
"A journal." Sam replied, gesturing to the turn displays of colourful note books. "Gus wants me to get a journal. To jot things down. Like how I feel in certain situations and how I dealt with things. Stuff like that. Random thoughts. Where I want to be in one, five, ten, fifteen years from now."
"Where do you want to be fifteen years from now?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound like he was fishing, anxious to hear the answer to see if it matched up to his idea at all.
"Stinking rich and living on Park Avenue." she said.
He snorted. "Yeah...right. Good luck with that. So what you need is a diary."
"Journal." she corrected. "There's a difference."
He thumbed through some on the display. "You want some cutesy, girly thing with kittens and flowers and butterflies and shit like that?"
She stared at him.
"Well, sweetheart, they don't have any with skulls and crossbones and ammo on them." he said.
"Something plain." she told him. "Do they have anything plain?"
"Closest thing to plain has either little pink hearts in the corners or one with clouds. Wait, there is a solid hot pink one."
"Pink? Me? Get real, Donnie."
"I forgot. How wrong of me to think you'd want something feminine. Ross." he knew her distaste for calling people by their last names, and had discovered just how much she despised when he called her by hers. But he just couldn't resist.
She pinched his ass.
"Quit groping me in public." he said. "Or I'll be forced to take ya in a store with a dressing room and take ya in there and take advantage of you."
"And that's a bad thing because?"
"Good to know I'm not the only one suffering from no sex in forty eight hours. It's killing me. Here..." he held out a journal to her. "It's solid purple. Take it or leave it."
"It'll do." she said with a sigh.
"It's a diary. Who cares what it looks like." Flack reasoned.
Sam snatched it out of his hand. "Journal." she informed him.
"Journal, diary, same damn thing. Question now is, do I get to read it?"
"No. Why would you?"
"Well if you're gonna write stuff in there about me, I figure I should be allowed to look at it."
"Who says I'm writing anything about you?" she teased.
"Because you love me and there's lots to write about." he replied.
"It's not suppose to be porn, Don." she said and headed for the cash.
"Come on..." he followed her. "That's not the only thing we do."
She snickered.
"It's not." he insisted. We do other things, too."
"We do? Like what? And something else other than work."
"Okay." he conceded. "So maybe that is all we do. But it's a new thing, a novelty and we have to make up for all the crappy sex we had before we met. And we're doing something else right now. And I'm taking you out to eat. That's gotta count for something."
"Mm hm." she responded as they waited in line for the checkout.
"Well then you tell me what you want to do and we'll do it." he suggested.
"I want us to go out on dates. Like a normal couple. Go to dinner, the movies, the theatre..."
"We talked about the whole theatre thing." he reminded her. "You know I'm not the theatre type of guy and you said that was fine. And we agreed you'd go to a Mets game if I took you to the museum to see the Titanic exhibit when it comes next month. What more do yo want from me? My left leg? Arm? A kidney? With our schedules we're lucky if we have twenty minutes in three days to go and grab a coffee."
"I just want to feel like this is more than sex to you." she said.
"You did not just say that. You honestly think I'm in for the sex? If I was in this just to get laid on a regular basis, I wouldn't have taken you apartment hunting on my day off, I wouldn't have shown up to support you today, and I sure as hell would not have put up with your step dad's bullshit."
She stared at him.
"Oh yeah. The Sarge? He paid me a little visit at work today. Showed up at my desk and gave me the whole hurt my daughter and I crush you talk."
They stepped up to the cashier and he handed her the journal and his VISA.
"What did you say?" Sam asked, alarmed.
"I told him the truth. I love you and I want to protect you and I'm not going to hurt you."
"And?"
"And he told me if I was bull shitting him, I'd be peeing through a tube."
"Don... I am so sorry."
"Don't worry." he signed the sales receipt and handed it to the cashier and returned his credit card to his wallet. "I handled my own."
"Oh God. What happened?"
"Nothing. Nothing happened. Whatever you and him talked about when you went to dinner the other night, whatever you said, it worked. 'Cause he was there to tell me he was giving me the benefit of the doubt because you seemed to really like me."
They left the store hand in hand, him carrying the small bag.
"He also told me that it was up to me to take care of you now." Flack added.
Her face brightened. Her eyes twinkled. "Really?"
He nodded and stopped to kiss her softly. "That makes you happy?" he asked.
She nodded. "It's what I wanted. For him to give you a chance. I needed him to understand how I felt about you and I needed him to accept you. I told him if he didn't, that I didn't know what the state of mine and his relationship would be."
"You actually said all that?"
"Yep."
"You'd sacrifice your relationship with him for me?"
"He's had me for fourteen years." she reasoned. "It's time for him to share."
"Yeah? Well I don't share. With anyone." he said.
"Didn't you ever learn in school that it's nice to share?" she teased.
"I never was a scholar. I think I was absent that day."
"Was that between all the time you spent using phony x-ray glasses to look through girls skirts? The nuns beating you down for it"
He hung his head and shook it slowly. "Stella." he said and sighed. "What else has she told you?"
"Enough." Sam replied.
"How much is enough?" he inquired.
"Enough that I have blackmail material for a while. So I can get whatever I want. For a very, very, very long time."
"Blackmail, huh? What is it exactly that you want?"
She smiled broadly. Devilishly.
"Baby, all you have to do is ask for that." he said and pulled her into him for a searing kiss, holding both her hands down at their sides.
She smiled when the kiss ended and her body was starting to tingle. "That was nice." she declared.
"Put that in your diary." he said.
Aphina: Speed and Sam will have an interesting relationship that keeps people wondering if there's more to it than meets the eye!
Madison Bellows: Weird thing is, I was watching The Sopranos at the time I wrote the trunk of the car crime scene and not once considered a mob hit. The bob. I know. But it was either that or shave it off. Carmen hits on the 'cleansing" thing.
Bluehaven4220: hope the start of the therapy hit the spot for now!
laplandgurl: There just might be some Angell bitch slapping to come. Her and Sam do not exactly get along. For obvious reasons.
Mauveine: For some reason, I sense a Danny and Sam fan base growing with other people. I see them more as brother and sister type. Same with her and Speed. Although the closeness she develops with Speed (and he with her) will leave people asking a lot of questions very soon. And Flack. He is the king of classic lines.