Sharona's day was already off to a bad start, and she hadn't even gotten out of bed yet. She'd woken up expecting her alarm clock to start blaring a couple of minutes later like usual. Confused when it didn't, she rolled over to check the time. The digital clock read 7:27 A.M, almost an hour past the time her alarm should've gone off. With a groan she realized she forgot to reset it to its normal time after she pushed it back an hour for the weekend.

"Goddammit," she muttered, threw the covers aside, and rushed to the bedroom door. I'm not gonna be able to drop Benjy off at school early enough to get to Adrian's on time, which means he's not gonna shut up about me being late the entire day…

She was surprised she slept in since normally she woke up before her alarm anyway, but she guessed she was just tired. She was up late last night helping Benjy with a school project he'd forgotten about until the last minute, and Adrian had called her in the middle of the night three times within the past week. Sharona had sympathy for the late-night anxiety her boss's disorders caused him, and she did her best to calm him down over the phone. But if he called her at 2:00 AM over something as ridiculous as a spider one more time, she swore she was going to quit.

Benjy did not have any of her sympathy at the moment. He'd come to her maybe an hour before his bedtime last night, informing her he had a science project due the next day that he'd somehow neglected to mention until that moment. One trip to the store for supplies, four hours, and a lot of yelling later, it was done. After the night they'd had, she hoped the experience was enough to scare him into never procrastinating on his schoolwork again, but she wasn't holding her breath.

She stood outside her son's room and banged on the door a few times. "Benjy, are you up?" When there was no answer, she opened the door and saw him lying in his bed. "C'mon Benjy, we have to hurry." She shook his shoulder gently. "I forgot to set my alarm last night so we're running late." When shaking him awake didn't work, she resorted to pulling the covers off of him. "We've only got a few minutes. You already got to sleep an extra half hour later than usual."

"But I went to bed late."

"And whose fault is that?"

He groaned in protest, but even half asleep he knew it was no use arguing. "Alright, alright Mom. I'm getting up."

"Good," she responded. "Now get dressed."

He trudged toward his dresser. "I am!"

Satisfied that her son was actually doing what he was supposed to, Sharona went back to her bedroom. She threw on a blue top, jeans, hoop earrings, and a necklace, and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. There was no time right now for makeup, but she could probably do that later. She went into the kitchen to find something that she and Benjy could eat for breakfast on their way to the school.

Benjy trudged into the kitchen carrying his backpack and the loathed science project. "What's for breakfast?"

"Here, just take one of these." She put a granola bar in his hand.

He made a face of disgust. "I don't like these, they taste like cardboard."

The glare she gave him could have melted glass. "Well, it's your only option, so you can either eat one or starve until lunch. Look, I'm sorry, but we don't have time for anything else. I'm going to be late getting to Mr. Monk's house, and he's not going to be happy."

"Will he really care that much if you're just a few minutes late?"

Sharona sighed, remembering one day when she was seven minutes late due to a road closure near Benjy's school. He'd been so upset about it that it was practically all he'd talked about that day. "Yes, he will. Now go get in the car."

Sharona stood at the door of apartment 2G fumbling with her keys. A few seconds later, she opened the door, and saw Adrian standing there in his brown pajamas. "You're three minutes late," he said.

"Yeah sorry, forgot to reset my alarm last night and I accidentally slept in. Benjy had a school project he forgot about until the last minute, and I was up late helping him with it."

"You didn't answer when I called your cell phone."

"I was just about to pull into the building when you called, so I figured I'd see you in a couple of minutes anyway. Why did you call?"

"I wanted to know why you were late."

"Well, now you know." She walked past him into the kitchen and set her purse down on the counter. "What do you want for breakfast?"

"Chex is fine," he answered, seating himself at the dining room table. He spent a few moments straightening out the stack of napkins in front of him.

Sharona grabbed a bowl, a spoon (being very careful to only touch the handle), and a cereal box and handed them to him. Adrian preferred to count out his pieces of cereal to the exact number he wanted instead of having it poured into the bowl. That was fine with her as long as it meant he would actually eat it. It wasn't that long ago that getting him to eat anything had been a struggle.

It wasn't until a few seconds after she turned back to the kitchen that she noticed him staring at her, head cocked slightly to one side. "What?" she asked.

"You're not wearing makeup."

"Oh, yeah, I didn't have time to put it on since I was running late. What's the big deal? You've seen me without makeup before."

"It's just different."

"Actually, I was going to ask if you wouldn't mind if I used your bathroom to do my makeup. Don't worry, I'll put down paper towels and make sure everything stays perfectly clean."

Monk tensed his shoulders. "Um…"

"I promise, I won't get anything on anything, I know how important it is to you that the bathroom is clean."

He thought about it. "Okay, just—just be careful, please," he insisted. It spoke volumes about the level of trust he placed in her.

She gave him a smile. "Thank you. I really do appreciate it." She grabbed her makeup bag from her purse and a roll of paper towels and headed for the bathroom. She caught Monk watching her with concern as she went. "Don't worry about the bathroom, just focus on counting your cereal," she told him.

By the time Sharona came out of the bathroom, Adrian had finished his breakfast and put away the cereal box, and was hand washing the bowl while the spoon waited in the sink for its turn. His earlier worry about the bathroom was apparently forgotten.

She knew from experience that washing the bowl and spoon could take a while with his system, so she went into the kitchen and stood against the counter. "How are you feeling this morning?" she asked.

He paused and gave a vague shrug. That was the closest to positive his answer to that question ever got.

"You sleep okay?"

He nodded, his attention still fixated on the bowl and sponge in his gloved hands.

"Any nightmares?"

He shook his head.

"That's good," she said. "You haven't been having them as often lately, have you?"

Monk didn't seem to hear her. His hands continued washing the bowl, but his eyes were now focused on something outside the kitchen window.

"Adrian?"

His shoulder twitched. "I think I want to try again."

She really could not follow his train of thought sometimes. "Try what again?"

"Going—um… maybe going… outside."

Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. They had tried leaving the apartment twice before. The first time they hadn't even made it all the way down the stairs before Adrian changed his mind and refused to go. The last time had ended with him having a full blown panic attack in the lobby of his building. Granted that was a few months ago, and he'd made some really good progress since then. "Adrian, that's great! Are you sure?"

"I think I'm—I think I'm ready." He looked at her with uncertainty. "Do you—do you think I'm—do you think it's a good idea?"

"Absolutely. Do you want to do it today?"

"Yes. After I'm done with this though. I still have to wash this four more times, and then I have to wash the spoon ten times, and then I have to dry them and put them away."

She pursed her lips together. "Alright. After you're done with that, get dressed and we'll do it."

"Okay," he said, shifting all of his focus back to scrubbing the bowl in his hands with a renewed determination.

They had barely even stepped outside his apartment door when Adrian started to lose his nerve. "Sharona I can't—I can't—I don't want to do this… I can't do it…"

Sharona wasn't sure if it was the lack of sleep that was making her start to lose her patience, or the hours she'd spent waiting for him to get ready. This was an important moment, and she didn't want to undermine it or make it harder by getting angry or impatient with him, so she took a deep breath and turned him to face her. "Adrian, look at me. You know as well as I do that if you ever wanna get back on the force and find Trudy's killer, you're going to have to be able to leave the house. And you have to start sometime, so it might as well be today. You can do it for Trudy, right?"

He gave a halting nod. "I can do it for Trudy."

"There you go!" she said, smiling. "You're going to be fine, we're just going to go for a walk down the street. We can go as far or as short a distance as you want, as long as you actually go out. Okay?"

"Okay."

"Alright then, let's go." She took his arm, and they started the walk down the stairs. She heard him muttering quietly, counting the number of stairs from his floor to the lobby. A few of his neighbors stared at them, and based on their expressions, they were aware he was the cop who went nuts and hadn't left his apartment since his wife died. It was a good thing Monk was so preoccupied with the stairs, since it kept him from noticing their judgemental looks and their whispers to each other. They could go to hell as far as Sharona was concerned.

They reached the lobby, and she led him to the front door.

Adrian looked at her, his eyes searching for reassurance. "It'll… it'll be okay?"

Sharona gave him a warm smile and put a hand on his arm. "It'll be okay. I promise. I'll be right next to you the whole time."

He nodded and turned back toward the door. His hand hovered in front of the handle, as though the germs caused some kind of magnetic repulsion.

"You want me to open it?"

"Yes. Please," he whispered.

Sharona took his arm in hers and pushed the door open. He was already tense, but she felt his entire body freeze up next to her as the outside world confronted them. He squeezed his eyes shut, and his free hand flew up to cover his ear.

"You're doing great Adrian, just open your eyes."

He hesitated for a few moments, breathing heavily, and she worried they were about to repeat what happened last time. But he finally did as she said, and squinted from the sunlight as he opened his eyes.

"Good! Now let's do this one step at a time." She could feel him shaking as they took the first step over the threshold together. "There you go, you're outside! How does it feel?"

His eyes darted around, like he was taking in everything around him all at once. His hand covered his ear again. "It's loud."

"Yeah it is," she agreed. "C'mon, let's get going."

Monk was careful not to step on the cracks in the sidewalk, and he counted and touched each of the streetlights as they walked by. Both habits set them at a slow pace.

"How're you doing?" she asked after they'd gone a couple of blocks.

"I'm fine."

"I'm so proud of you Adrian, I didn't think you'd make it this far!"

As if on cue, Adrian suddenly stopped, his attention arrested by something farther down the sidewalk. His shoulder twitched.

"What is it?" Sharona asked.

Monk didn't answer. Instead, he broke away from her, heading toward whatever it was that had captured his attention.

She started to panic and ran after him. "Adrian, what are you doing?" A wave of relief came over her as he stopped and picked up his prize: a crumpled up flier of some kind. He was throwing it into a nearby trash can when she caught up to him. "Don't run away from me like that!" she scolded him.

"Someone littered," was his only response as he rolled his shoulders back.

"People litter all the time," she told him. "What are you gonna do, try and pick up all the trash in San Francisco?"

Monk wasn't listening to her. He stared at the discarded paper inside the trash can, and a look of horror came over his face. Sharona followed his gaze, and made the same realization he did: the paper he just threw in there was covered in dirt. Oh no, she thought, must've been from the park across the street.

Adrian looked down at his hands, and she could see the panic rising in his eyes. "Sharona! Sharona—dirt! There's dirt on my hand! Sharona I have to wipe this off!"

"Okay! Just hang on a second." After digging around in her purse, she found a package of wipes and handed him one. "Here you go."

He wiped at his hand furiously for several moments, groaning in frustration. "It's not enough!"

"Adrian, I can see your hand, all the dirt is gone! I promise."

Monk shook his head. "No no no I can feel it, it's still—there's still some dirt there, Sharona, I need to go home, I need to wash up…"

"Alright, okay, we can go home. It's going to be okay," she assured him. She turned so they were face to face. "I'm really happy for you Adrian, this is a huge step," she told him. "We'll have to call Dr. Kroger when we get back, he's going to be so proud of you! And I would bet Trudy is too."

"Can we just go home already?"

"Sure." They linked arms again and headed back to the apartment, Monk setting a much quicker pace than before.

"How was school today?"

Benjy leaned back into the passenger side seat and buckled his seatbelt. "Fine. Mr. Johnson liked my science project. I'll probably get at a B."

Sharona put the car into drive and started making her way out of the school parking lot. "Congratulations. If you'd started sooner than the night before, maybe you could've gotten an A."

Benjy at least had enough sense to apologize. "Sorry."

Sharona sighed. "Well, just don't do that again. Hey, guess what happened today?"

"What?"

"Mr. Monk and I went on a walk."

"Really? He went outside?"

"Yeah! It wasn't for very long, but he left his apartment."

"Wow. Do you think he could come over to our house sometime?"

"Sometime," she said, "but I don't know if he's quite ready to go that far yet."

Benjy looked thoughtful for a moment. "Mom," he asked, "will Mr. Monk ever be like… a normal person?" He and Adrian had met plenty of times now, and they seemed to get along well. Benjy was always curious about Monk and why he was the way he was. Sharona did her best to explain Adrian's issues to him in a way that was appropriate for a ten-year-old.

"Well," she told him, choosing her words carefully, "there are some things he'll probably always have trouble with, but he will keep getting better. He already has gotten a lot better from how he was."

"Maybe he'll be able to come over sometime and help me with my next project."

Sharona smiled. "Maybe he will."

Sharona was almost ready for bed when the phone rang. She couldn't help rolling her eyes a little when she saw the name on the caller I.D. "Hello?"

"Sharona, it's me. Adrian Monk."

She sighed. "Yes Adrian, I know it's you. What's wrong, are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm okay," he answered. "I just wanted to check if you remembered to lock the door before you left."

He could not be serious right now. "I locked it as I was leaving. Why can't you check it yourself?"

"I'm already in bed. I have a whole system for getting in bed, and if I get up I'll have to do it all over again."

"Well don't you check that the door is locked before you go to bed?"

"Yes."

"So was it locked when you checked it?"

"I think so." He sounded unsure.

"Then there you go, it's locked."

"But—"

"Adrian, I need to go to sleep, and so do you. You had a big day. I promise, the door is locked. I'll see you in the morning." She hung up before he could protest any further, and settled into bed.

The day hadn't turned out as horrible as it seemed when it started, she thought. The feeling that she had forgotten something began to nag at her and kept her from drifting off to sleep, and she realized she still hadn't reset the alarm clock. She got up to fix it, groaning but glad to not repeat this morning's mistake. As long as Adrian didn't find another reason to call her in the middle of the night, she might actually get a decent night's sleep.