Chapter 10

Again, Tim was sitting in the conference room, waiting for Dr. Andrews. He had come in early and had intended to stay at his desk and talk to Tony and Ziva, both of whom he'd missed to a degree that had surprised him. He had considered going down and talking to Abby...or to Ducky and Jimmy in Autopsy. Instead, he'd done none of those things and had withdrawn to his meeting spot, afraid to see them, afraid to admit to them that he was a loony...just like he had no desire to tell his family that he was the main player in a plot worthy of Hollywood. In fact, the longer he'd had to stew about it, the more worried he became. By the time nine o'clock rolled around, he'd been sitting in the conference room for more than two hours, so nervous about speaking to Dr. Andrews that he was nearly tongue-tied.

The door opened slowly, but Tim, on edge as he was, leapt to his feet as soon as the knob turned and he stared at Dr. Andrews with something akin to alarm.

"Good morning, Agent McGee," she said, her voice calm, noncombative.

"G-Good morning, Dr. Andrews," Tim replied, swallowing nervously.

"Have a seat, Agent McGee. Although I appreciate that chivalry is not dead where you're concerned, I have a feeling that it has less to do with respect and more to do with fear at this point. Am I right?"

Tim plopped back down into the seat without answering. It was all he could do not to start chewing on his fingernails.

"I'm not going to feed you to the lions, Agent McGee. I haven't killed a patient yet."

Tim tried to smile.

"Just let me get myself set up. I thought I'd have a bit of time."

"I didn't want to be late," Tim whispered.

"How long have you been in here?"

"Since...about six thirty."

"Agent McGee, you definitely are not late."

Tim watched her get out her note pad and her recorder...and he just jumped right in. "Gibbs told me."

"I assumed as much, based on your behavior when I came in."

"You wanted me to think. I did."

"Good."

"I think I'm nuts."

"You're not."

"Did Gibbs tell you that I almost had a nervous breakdown in the airport?"

"No."

"I was worried about Jethro...my dog. I thought that...that I had forced him into a cage, a prison...and... and I didn't want that for him."

"What did you do?"

"I called Gibbs and started crying like a baby," Tim said, blushing.

"Since when is crying such a problem?"

"It's not...when it's warranted. It's...it wasn't. It was stupid."

"Do you agree with my diagnosis, Agent McGee?"

"Sure."

"Is that a yes or a no? Are you pretending to agree because you think you have to? Or do you really agree?"

"I...don't know."

"Why not?"

Tim looked down at the table. "I don't feel like...I know anything."

"Tell me why, Agent McGee," she softly instructed.

"I keep...keep feeling things that are wrong. I want to save them, but I can't. What I want to do is not saving anyone. When I forget that, I run the risk of killing myself or someone else. ...and I didn't used to feel this way. I used to...to do my job. Sometimes it sucked, but most of the time..."

"What is it that you're feeling that you consider...wrong?"

"You were right," Tim said, speaking mostly to the table. "I couldn't have stopped someone from killing Tony or Ziva...maybe not even my family. I don't think I'd...I'd hurt them myself, but...but I...I don't think I could have...stopped Louisa...not even if she was threatening Sarah. I feel like I can't do anything...think anything that's right."

"Agent McGee, my purpose in getting you to acknowledge that you have a problem was not to make you think that everything you've done is wrong. It's not even to tell you that you're wrong now."

"But I am! I–"

"No, Agent McGee. What you are is someone in need of time to recover. You went to the therapy sessions you had to attend...but you kept working. You didn't take a vacation. You were confronted with a series of ambiguous cases. You also fed your worries, your fears. ...and you suppressed the possibility that there might be any lingering problems from what you experienced."

"I wondered...a couple of times. I...just didn't...didn't want to...think that there might be anything wrong with it. These are people who...who aren't all bad."

"This latest case is illustrative of the problem you face, Agent McGee. It's a case not of willful destruction of human life, but of a mind fractured by who knows what. It's not wrong to see what happened to Louisa Grady as a tragedy. What is wrong is to try and keep her from facing the measure of the law that she could have faced."

"Is that what I was doing?"

"Was it? Was that what you were thinking?"

"No."

"Then, it wasn't."

"But..."

Dr. Andrews smiled and bent her head to the side until she met Tim's downcast eyes. "You're not crazy, Agent McGee. You're not somehow lacking command of your faculties. You are, as I said, in need of time to recover. You are suffering, I think, from the effects of Stockholm Syndrome...but that in no way means that you have no control over yourself, over your mind, your actions. What it means is that, now that we know there's a problem, we can help you face it."

"How?"

"By taking time. You'll be in need of therapy for a while. We can discuss how best to address your problems. You'll also be out of the field."

Tim hated that part, but he nodded, knowing it was necessary. "For how long?"

"As long as it takes."

"How long is that?"

"Agent McGee, you seem to know already that it may be a while."

"I hoped I was wrong."

"You weren't. You'll still be working, of course, but it's in everyone's best interest if we take your return slowly."

"How slowly?"

"As slowly as is necessary."

"Which is?"

Dr. Andrews' mouth twitched. "Do you need an exact time frame?"

"It would be nice."

"I'm sure...but, Agent McGee, you know as well as I do that things like this rarely fit into a specific period."

Tim sighed and slumped. "Yeah, I know." He drummed his fingers on the table for a few seconds. "So...now what?"

"Now, we begin."

"I thought we already had."

"We did...and you should know that you've already done quite a bit of the therapy on your own."

"What do you mean?"

"A lot of what this therapy involves is helping the patient realize how his own thought processes have changed. It's more about education than anything else."

Tim lifted his head. "I don't understand."

"You know that you have a problem. You have seen for yourself how far that problem extends, haven't you."

He nodded.

"Sometimes, the hardest thing about helping a person suffering from the effects of Stockholm Syndrome is getting them to acknowledge what happened to them and that it was serious...and that they have been deeply affected by it. You have already done quite a bit of that."

"I have?"

"Yes. That means that our focus is going to be on helping you retrain your mind, to help you get to the point where you know rather than just see what is going on. When you are conscious of how your own mind operates, you can change it. Sounds simple, right?"

"I'm guessing it's not," Tim said, with a hint of a smile.

"No, it's not. It's hard. It takes time, effort. You'll slip occasionally. You'll make more progress. Eventually, you'll be fine...but it will be hard, and you'll have to confront, not only your troubles in this respect, but also the loss of confidence I can see you're also suffering. It's a heavy blow to realize that your own mental faculties are not doing what you think they are."

"Yeah."

"So, we'll work on that. I'll start by telling you in no uncertain terms that you are not crazy and that you are not a hopeless case. Understand?" She smiled.

Tim couldn't help but smile as well.

"That's better. Now, we need to get a schedule set up. That way, your supervisor and Director Vance will be aware of what you'll be doing, how to fit your therapy sessions into your work schedule."

Tim nodded.

"Now, it sounds as though Agent Gibbs is supportive."

"Yes."

"Good. What about your other team members?"

"They...they probably will...be okay."

"You should just tell them, Agent McGee. They do need to know...and it will help you to avoid feeling like you're keeping some deep dark secret from them. Having therapy is not a sign of weakness any more than having a cast on your leg is a sign of weakness. Both are signs of parts of you which are in need of healing. The sooner you accept that, the better, the easier it will be. Understand?"

"Yeah." He agreed with her...in theory. That didn't stop him from worrying about it. She could obviously see it, but she didn't address it. Instead, she sat with him and they worked up a viable schedule which she said she would forward to Director Vance, picking times when she would come to NCIS and times when he would go to her office.

Blunt she might be, but by the time they finished, even the prospect of weeks and weeks of therapy seemed much more businesslike and less fearsome...simply because Dr. Andrews wasn't that kind of person. She wasn't very warm, but he felt that she exuded competency from every pore. She had a job to do and she wanted to make sure that she did it...and did it well. That attitude, treating therapy like something normal, gave him the courage to walk out of the conference room and down to the bullpen. The team was out, but he figured he could wait and tell them. Gibbs had been more than supportive. He'd been there...at times when he didn't need to be. Surely, the others would as well...at least accept that he had a problem and was working on it.

He sat, waiting...trying to be patient. He wasn't feeling it, but he tried to be. They didn't get back for another hour. He started to slouch down behind his monitor when the elevator doors opened.

"McGee!"

He hadn't slouched fast enough. Ziva's voice was surprised but, when he tentatively poked his head around and met her gaze, she was smiling.

"Probie!" Tony still had a substantial bruise on his face from Tim's swing, but he, too, looked happy to see him.

"Hi."

"I didn't know you'd be in today."

"...surprise?" Tim said, feeling more uncomfortable than ever, his courage swiftly leaving him.

"Are you back?"

"I guess so."

"Good."

"Are you sure?" he asked, watching Tony set his bag down...but not sit at his desk. Instead, he perched on the edge of it, giving Tim way too much positive attention.

"Yeah. Why wouldn't I be?"

"I did hit you. You're still...bruised."

"Yeah." He grinned. "Do you know how many sympathy points I'm getting with this?"

"None from me," Gibbs said with an emphatic thwack. "Anything new, McGee?"

"Um, not...not really." He shifted his gaze from Gibbs to Ziva who had gone to her desk and was sitting in her chair, but still watching him...smiling. He was really worried about what they'd say when he told them what was going on.

"You sure?"

Tim forced a smile. "Nothing you don't already know." He looked at Tony and Ziva again...and noticed that, far from being confused by the cryptic comments, they were merely looking sympathetic. "You both know, don't you. Gibbs told you."

"Yes, McGee. We do."

"You don't seem bothered."

"I'm not."

"Aren't you worried?"

"Should we be?" Ziva asked, now furrowing her brow in confusion.

"How do you know you can trust me anymore? Look what I've already done."

"Why would that even be in question?"

"Yeah. Is Stockholm Syndrome somehow synonymous with alien abduction? Last I checked, you were still Timothy McGee." Tony walked over and lifted Tim's eyelid, examining him as if looking for signs that he was an android or something like that.

Tim batted Tony's hand away. "It really doesn't bother you?"

Tony backed off, but he was completely sincere. "No. No, McGee. It doesn't bother me. We just want you to get better is all." Then, because it was Tony, he added, "We need an extra buffer between us and the boss."

Thwack!

"Thanks, Boss."

"Back to work, DiNozzo. McGee, let's go and jump through the hoops to get you on desk duty. I'm not going to depend on them to find what we need."

Tim stood, nodding...and smiling, his smile growing less tentative, more genuine. As he walked up the stairs with Gibbs, he decided that he could do it. He could bear the time it would take, and he could get through it. He took one last glimpse over his shoulder. Ziva glanced up from her work and gave him a thumbs up signal. He grinned and returned it.

Then, he ran to catch up with Gibbs.