Chapter 8

I very reluctantly agreed to ride with Walt in the Bronco for the first appointment with the therapist, while we were ostensibly on patrol together on a late afternoon. It was almost a month since I'd been released from the hospital. DCI had ruled in my favor on the incident which had put me there, and Walt had released my gun and badge back to me.

While I was still officially on light duty and doing physical and occupational therapy for my sore arm, he had placed me on the day shift, my preferred duty rosters be damned. With Zach working days with me and Eamonn and now his senior, Ferg, working nights, and the junior deputies pulling doubles on the weekends, all the shifts were covered. I figured he was doing the duty rosters like that for a reason.

More often than not, though, Walt resumed taking me along on his various investigations.

As he put it, "You'll need more exposure to the population if you someday want to run this place for the long-run."

That earned him a resounding, "Whatever."

I figured he was still in denial. Neither of us discussed the day he would sign off on the therapies and release me from ASD. I wondered if maybe this upcoming therapy we were attending together would be the place to broach that kind of discussion as well as delving into his psyche.

After reading the Cliff Notes Of Mice and Men in high school, I had finally really read it, my personal version of delving into Walt's psyche, and found it even more disgusting than the last time. Maybe having seen the darkness in people over the last fifteen years was catching up to me, but it only solidified my opinion of Steinbeck. Didn't he know how to write a happy ending?

Ferg had moved up a notch on the office directory, and sometimes I caught him staring at it. It was kind of cute, and not creepy like I'd expected it to be. I think he worked even harder having moved up a notch, no matter how it had happened. He had very generously offered the couch in his bachelor pad to me when he found out I had been bunking at the jail, and I had accepted over three weeks ago. It was a small place, but I was grateful to be out of the Longmire Loop.

Cady's house was once more her own domain, my things stored in the basement of the station's storage room, and Ferg didn't refuse the rent money I threw his way. The morning bathroom schedule wasn't a factor because we usually worked opposing shifts.

Walt was another matter. After I'd sobered up, he suddenly began acting professional again, and despite the fact I asked repeatedly, he adamantly refused to sign off until I completed all the prescribed therapies. I wondered if he'd coerced the doc a little bit to prescribe global therapies to that extent, but I wasn't really that upset…I realized how much I had missed riding with him.

The casino wouldn't wait and hired someone else, but I wasn't as pissed off as I thought I'd be. I could always find something else, and the department had nominally gotten back to something approaching normal.

The station did feel comparatively stuffed if Ruby, Eamonn, Zach, Ferg and I were all in the office at the same time with Walt, like for staff meetings, but that was only a couple of hours a week. I was fine again with Eamonn, but we usually worked different shifts, anyway. I wondered if that was the one reason Walt had done the duty rosters himself.

A couple of weeks ago, Eamonn and I had briefly crossed paths at the Red Pony one evening before his shift and after mine.

"Figure it out yet, Moretti?" he asked with a grin. He was drinking iced tea with his burger. I was on my second beer without food. My arm hurt.

I shrugged.

"I told Walt I knew it was him. I saw it the moment he scooped you up and began carrying you down the hill. You were cussing up a storm at him. That's when I knew."

"Yeah, well…" Eamonn the investigator wasn't wrong, but I wasn't going there. Eamonn the co-worker was firmly back in his proper place, as had been Walt the professional. "He said you talked."

"We did. I just don't get the sense it did anything for you two."

I shrugged again. "It's Walt, Eamonn. Give it time."

In addition to making peace with Eamonn, I'd heard two interesting tidbits in the last few weeks, that Dr. Donna was going to trial for her part in the Zoloft ring, and that her license had been pulled. The AMA was evidently not amused. Good stuff, all around. I still bore the urge to have words with her, but filed it away sort of like it seemed Walt had his animas with Jacob.

Meanwhile, there was something wrong between Walt and Henry. I had asked Walt about Henry once, asking whether things were all right, but big surprise, he deflected and wouldn't talk to me. I had evidently forgotten that his private life was none of my business. Maybe this therapy would also draw him out about that. I was sad he and Henry seemed so distant.

We pulled into back of a parking lot, and did what amounted to sneaking in the back entrance to an unlabeled building. Inside were offices in a row. Walt led me to the back office, well away from the rest of the area.

A young man, younger than me, smiled brightly at us from within. I suddenly felt old and broken. Had I ever been this young?

"Right on time! Please come in and have a seat."

Of course we did, but Walt has his own Tells…the bouncing foot, tapping or twisting the hat, smoothing back his hair, and smacking his lips. He was doing all five before the youngster said a word.

I sat down and waited expectantly, relatively relaxed, since I was just the pony they walk with the racehorse to the starting gate, making this possible for him. The youngster started in on about rules and expectations. I sort of tuned out.

"I have both of your lists of concerns, and some of them are the same. Should we start with one of them?"

I shrugged. I admit to being a tiny bit curious what the guy could pry out of Mr. Thinkin' Before Talkin,' but I was just here for the popcorn.

"Let's start with something which should be easy. Both of you tell me where you work."

I did an eyeroll and sigh. Asking me to perform here was not part of the promised package. I made eye contact and formed one of the faces he used to understand pre-Donna, the WTF is this? Face. His flashed a bunch of things, not the least was guilt. My pissed-off meter began to rise.

Walt cleared his throat. "I'm Sheriff of the Absaroka County Sheriff's Department."

"Okay, that wasn't so hard, now how about you, Vic?"

This was an ambush. I was the deer in the headlights. Think.

"I…don't know."

The youngster seemed genuinely taken aback. I guess that was supposed to be one of the easier questions. "You don't know?"

Walt started to say something, but the therapist held up his hand. "No, the rules are not to talk for the other person. I want to hear what Vic has to say."

"I'm considering job opportunities," I finally said. It felt wretched to say. I could feel the hurt radiating from Walt even from a few feet away, even though I had told him repeatedly I was leaving and still looking. He had not been ready to listen, then, and evidently was still not now. I think he believed I had mysteriously changed my mind while he hadn't been watching, and I just hadn't informed him about it yet. I think it could be spelled D-E-N-I-A-L.

"I see. Well, maybe you can tell me where you were working, when you suffered the injury?"

Well, that sounded like a trick question, too. If I answered I had left a letter of resignation effective immediately before the injuries, would my insurance be cancelled?

Walt's eyes burned into mine. I know he had covered for me, but this was part of his pattern, hell, part of mine, too. This simple thing I could not answer.

I cleared my throat and improvised. "I have worked for the Absaroka County Sheriff's Department as Undersheriff for about four years."

"Okay, that was good, Vic. Back to you, Walt, you are concerned about Vic's multiple symptoms, and Vic, you are concerned about Walt developing issues from several acts of violence in the last couple of years?"

"Especially Walt's, over the last couple of months," I muttered.

"Okay, what are your symptoms?"

I inhaled, knowing more medical leave would likely follow if I admitted all of mine. Walt was on his own on this one, but I sanitized mine. "I had some dreams right after the Chance Gilbert incident. I was beaten with a bat while wearing a helmet, and a body bag I thought was Walt was dropped into the cellar where they were hiding us. I had both physical and emotional trauma from that, but I am much better, now."

"Why do you say you are better?" asked Carl, that was the young man's name. Fortunately it was on a nameplate on his desk. It hadn't registered when I thought I was just part of the furniture.

"Well, Carl, the dreams occur much less frequently, and I just passed the physical to return to full duty. They are no longer impacting my quality of life."

"And what are Walt's symptoms?"

He turned into a dick, I thought uncharitably, but I knew he'd been through a couple of years of hell on his own before he'd ever even confided in me.

"A personality change," I said instantly. "We were close, but he started acting differently after one of our deputies was murdered."

"Differently, how so?"

I took a deep breath and didn't look at him. I had been asked, after all.

"The kindness, friendship, empathy he had shown me for three years disappeared, and while he said he wasn't going to miss anything else to endanger deputies, he did not order me to therapy, even after knowing I was having problems with baseball bats. After serving eviction papers for my house, he refused to let me stay at his house. He had me stay with his daughter Cady. After years working together, he announced his personal life was none of my business. He shut me out."

Walt sat there like a wooden puppet while I spoke. He eventually bowed his head.

Carl looked puzzled.

"Why would you not want to live with Cady?"

"Because I thought Walt and I—I thought—he asked me to stay. If he wanted a deputy, he should have asked for that. It was so ambiguous…"

Carl evidently thought he had extracted enough from me.

"Walt, how do you respond to her concerns?"

"I was served a Wrongful Death suit, for a person who I shot and later died in my home. I was later attacked in my own home. As a result, I am under constant scrutiny to follow procedures to the letter, and avoid any improprieties."

"I am not an impropriety," I mumbled, to receive glowering censure from Carl.

I had evidently not followed the rule about letting the other person talk.

And so it went…

At the end of the session I felt drained, churning, diffuse. I felt like parts of myself were flying around untethered. I didn't ask Walt how he felt. He had turned taut and white after about three questions, delivering only monosyllabic answers to most of them after that. Carl might not recognize Walt in shut-down, but I did. I hadn't done much better.

I felt like a beer, but I heard Carl's voice in my head.

Avoid alcohol for a few weeks. It won't help.

We ended up at the Red Pony for iced tea and dinner. I questioned the propriety of that, and he could not answer, but insisted on paying. Maybe he felt guilty for dragging me into it. I did, too.

XXX

For over six weeks the therapy sessions worked our emotional kinks out, bit by painful bit. I think Walt finally realized I had been deeply wounded and acknowledged his own part in the damage.

I began to realize from what little Walt said that he had become like one of Sunshine Sally's turtles, pulling all his extremities in and trying to stay safe and comfortable for a few months during an unsuccessful attempt to self-heal. He never divulged anything about us to Carl in therapy. I did hear more than I wanted to know about Dr. Donna, and intriguing information about Martha.

To him, Donna was Martha, comfortable and safe. He ignored red flags, her possible complicity in the Zoloft ring, and the barbed comments she made to him, both in dreams and reality. In turn, he sought out comfort in the form of physical release. In the end, I kind of felt sorry for Donna, used like that. Of course, she was using him, too, to deflect her own involvement. What was most interesting, the cabin assault wasn't even coitus interruptus…they had barely gotten their tops off when the door had been kicked in…a tiny sop to my imagination, anyway.

Martha didn't want more children. She didn't like his profession. She constantly complained about his schedule, his drinking. After Cady went to college, trying to combat Walt's absences and her loneliness, she developed her crusades and joined endless women's clubs after Cady was grown. So it wasn't all rainbows and roses. That gave me another sliver of hope.

He also talked about Henry, his childhood friend, who had grown distant about the same time Walt had distanced himself for me. I almost—almost—felt sorry for him, that his touchstone for so many things had disappeared about the same time as Branch's death. That had to be hard, to lose Martha all over again, and then Henry…

Walt and I would leave for unspecified patrols at 3 pm and not return to the office, and no one ever said a word. After the sessions, wrung out, we would usually unwind with a glass of iced tea at the Busy Bee, and then, as we seemed to grow more confident of one another again, maybe a Rainier at the Red Pony, but it was not for a date or an evening of drinking. It was for comfort after a grueling afternoon, comparatively brief though each session was in length.

I had also grudgingly attended the more publically scheduled physical therapy and occupational therapy sessions to regain full use of my arm. The therapists proclaimed me nearly healed. Even so, I could feel it, that while I was conflicted whether to stay or go, Walt felt utter panic—relief that I was nearly healed, but terrified I would bring him the papers to sign off on any day.

Ferg had confessed one day when we both happened to be at his place doing laundry, "I don't know whether you know this, Vic, but Walt talked to me when you began sleeping on my couch."

"He did?" I hadn't known that.

"Sort of went around the bush but in the end talked about watching myself around you."

I chuckled. "He did? Did he call me The Terror?"

"Thing is, I'm not entirely sure whose intentions he was worried about?"

That earned a full-throated laugh. I patted him on his shoulder.

"You're safe, Ferg. I'm reformed."

It didn't help that it felt like the friendship between Walt and me seemed to be tentatively renewing, although nothing ever crossed either of our lips. It was understood, like almost everything had always been between us, and not discussed. The therapy had not improved that. I felt like passing a letter to Carl like those needing help on the Rez had sent Hector…and let Carl know that Walt's anxiety was hidden, but present.

But I didn't. I was done with telling on other officers if the conditions were not life-threatening. Carl would have to figure out the dynamics between Walt and me all on his own.