GWOT 2 Diagnosis

Sunday afternoon (which for me is a busy day), a note appeared on my scheduler. Dr. Rize wanted to meet with me, said she needed some exercise, and suggested a hike.

I cleared the training I'd planned and blocked out the time.

If my senior intelligence agent wants a personal meet, knowing how busy I am, it's got to be for a good reason.

I didn't know how right I was.

###

Dr. RIze was wearing shorts and a tank top that left little to the imagination.

I was wearing trench killing gear, light version. No trenchcoat, no helmet ... but a patrol rifle with its ammunition bandolier.

It was our usual garb.

As we walked, I turned off 'my' radio - selected at random from among the security pool, because I'm paranoid - and then pulled the battery, because I'm a realist.

As soon as we were out of sight in the low hills, I gave her a hug and felt her up.

She did the same back. It wasn't affection. It was checking for listening devices.

Then she dropped her first bombshell.

"This is not about the work. This is about you."

I was surprised. Then I was angry. She knew I would be.

"It's OK to be angry at me. Let yourself be angry. You're going to be a lot angrier."

By unspoken mutual agreement, we were wandering towards the bomb shed. We walked through the crater left by the last attack's satchel charge.

"Wyatt has been sorting through your company's records. He found your personnel file. And your medical file."

Yeah, she was right. I was pissed.

But I could recognize it as something outside me, and try to handle it.

She took a sip of her water bottle.

She didn't say anything else until we were seated at the picnic table, inside the range of 'no electronics' and in sight of the alert beacon.

"How long have you known you have PTSD?"

I blinked.

"All. My. Life. Doctor," I growled.

Now I had to thank the VP HR and our brief affair. If she hadn't taken the edge off, so to speak ... I don't know.

But I didn't lose my shit. Somehow.

"And until now, you've been entirely untreated for it."

"Have you tried to access mental health in this state, Doctor? When any asshole with a piece of paper on the wall can take your job, take your freedom, put you in a cell?"

"You really don't like psychologists, do you?"

"No, Doctor, I really don't. Is this a professional conversation?"

"Yes, absolutely," she said calmly.

It takes a level of moral courage to face down a heavily armed killer while wearing a few pieces of cloth and a firm expression.

And that is exactly what she was doing.

"Say your say," I sighed. Quivering.

"Before the Firecracker, I probably would have referred you for a commitment. I would have been wrong to do so, but that was my training. But I was a naive little arrogant bitch. I certainly hadn't had any reason to think about giving a blowjob to a .45 yet.

"If there's anything I have learned from these months of hell, it's that people are so very resilient. Tough motherfuckers. Me, you, your team, the client Employees, the SLE. You know, I had the same conversation with him two weeks ago."

My ears perked up.

"I told him that on paper, he was at high risk for suicide. He told me that he'd been blowing his own .45 three times a week for the last month. I asked him why he hadn't pulled the trigger.

"He said it was the people. Not the job, fuck the job. And also you'd set the example. 'Unless you have deployed every weapon, your death is false.' Said he'd heard that for you, then looked it up. Samurai fortitude.

"You, [Echo 18]. You're the reason he hasn't decorated the walls. And me too. And a couple of your staff.

"We need you. We need you so very badly. I have to ask you, what do you need?"

I started to stare into the middle distance.

A squirrel with a slingshot could kill us both. Possibly even if he got Dr. Rize first.

"Doesn't matter."

"Yes. You matter. It matters."

"No, Doctor, what I need or what I want doesn't fucking matter. I've got 3300 reasons to stay alive, and you're only one of them."

"You sleep, sort of. You eat, when Brooke makes you. You work out, on a treadmill in the DC, because you can check emails and generate power at the same time. That's not anything you need."

"You're going to push this, aren't you."

"Yes. I'm going to push this all the way."

She took off her clothing and sat across from me stark naked.

"Brooke talked to me last week. So did Sharon. About you."

Flesh was just flesh. But her allegation hit me like a tire iron.

Sharon -hated- Dr. Rize with a passion. She already had appointed herself Betty's killer if necessary, either because she was arrested or because she was turned. Or just possibly if it were convenient.

Brooke simply avoided contact with her. Brooke's grief was her own, her only remaining possession, and she would do nothing to deprive herself of her last connection with her wife. Her grief for her horrible demise.

"What did they say," I monotoned.

"They both felt you were spiraling down. Deteriorating. Brooke said it took more and more to get you to eat. That she was delighted that you'd slept with the VP, until she realized it was fucking you up. Sharon just said your temper was getting shorter and shorter and people were seeing your fuse burn short.

"Either way, you are now, genuinely, at the point where if this were peacetime, I would recommend an emergency hospitalization for acute mental health emergency.

"Do you realize you are almost the last person on your team to get to this point? Almost everyone else has had at least one breakdown. Mo had his working a device, if you recall. Brooke damn near shot prisoners. I won't tell you what Sarah did with a grenade. Arturo punched out a Response Team manager."

That one I hadn't heard.

"We can't do meds. Not safe. We can't give you time off, you have to work. Food and sleep and sex are a little help... but not enough."

"Why did you take your clothes off, Doctor?"

"I don't get enough sun. Also, I felt it lended the conversation the touch of surreal it needed. See anything you want?"

"Not really."

"Pity. I had to figure out for myself why I kept throwing myself at you ... and missing. A little misplaced mothering."

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I shouted as I drew my firearm and started to muzzle her.

Then rammed back into holster, shaking.

There was no way she could pose a physical threat to me. She was harmless. Naked. No possible weapon.

The greatest possible sin for a warrior with honor is to hurt the harmless.

"I'm so sorry," she said quietly. "But I had to know. And now I do."

I was lost in a flashback. Only the wood under my arms and the blue sky above anchored me to this reality.

In my mind, I was a little kid and she was pulling down my pants again.

"Is she dead?"

The question made perfect sense in context.

"Yeah. Car accident when I was fourteen. Going through her stuff, Dad found the photos. Accused me of raping her. I made him look through all of them. He beat the shit out of me and burned them while I was lying there. I crawled out the door to the neighbor's. The police carried me back. To more."

She blinked.

"When I got my health back, I ran away. Fell in with bad company, then better company. Somehow didn't catch any charges. Dad kept trying to get me back. Got some guys to beat him up. Best two grand I ever spent. Changed states, knocked around, did a lot of odd jobs. Ended up in this business. Taught me everything I knew, half the education I'd never gotten, how to deal with people. Mostly."

"And you never got help."

"Dad took me to a shrink. He was queer. I was a perfect victim."

"Oh god."

"I survived. I suppose they're alive somewhere. Only because I didn't want to go down for a murder rap, and if they died, I was the obvious suspect. I studied murder for years, looking for a way.

"That's why I'm good at it now, I guess. Training and aptitude. I am my father's son after all.

"Pretty sure he doctored the brakes on the car. No proof of course."

Dr. Rize was stricken.

"I'm so sorry."

"You should be. You asked. I put band aids over this sewer. Then we all got dunked in the fire. Band aids burned off. I'm just another monster now."

"NO," she said suddenly and with utter conviction.

"What?"

"NO NO NO. You are NOT a monster! You are a Goddamned genuine hero."

My mind keyed in on the one thing I could hear.

"Damn God. Fuck that son of a bitch. I have no use for Gods or governments."

"Why would you? Neither were there for you when it mattered. So you try to rescue everyone because no one was there for you. But that little kid is waiting for a miracle.

"You'll probably die before he gets one. Then he's truly damned."

"What. Little. Kid."

"You."

"I killed and ate my inner child. He was tasty."

"No, [Echo 18], he's still in there. Waiting for backup."

"That never came. 'SWAT never rolls.' Sucks to be a hostage. When you're fucked, you're fucked. And that little kid was fucked. Took me a decade to figure out I was straight."

"And our well meaning VP of HR took your last crutch and yanked it out from under you. Why didn't you kill her?"

"Not her fault. She didn't know."

She put a hand on my arm. Her touch burned.

"Not YOUR fault. Not then. Not now. You should have been dead how many times over by now?

"You're not suicidal," she realized suddenly. "You're indifferent. But you've had to fight harder to stay alive than ever before, because now your life matters."

"Yeah."

The one word was an admission of surrender.

She had me bracketed, between wind and water.

Now for the twist. I'd rolled her, turned her for the cause. Now she had all the pieces she needed to turn me. Turn the tables.

"I am an expert clinical psychologist. I am utterly without scruples, moral or otherwise. AND I AM ENTIRELY ON YOUR SIDE."

Huh?

"Brooke and I had a talk. If we don't come back with you smiling, she's going to unleash Sharon on me. If I don't get you functional again, the SLE's going to throw me out on my ass. If you don't get your A game back on by tomorrow, Homeland's going to sidewalk us all, or just start pulling fingernails at random until they find me.

"So I'm fucked. Unless you and I can save that little kid. Now."

"What do you suggest?"

"Mo and I talked about mine disposal. Bad events in your head are like land mines. Little ones, big ones. Easiest to avoid them. The more they go off, the harder it is to handle. But you can rig a charge to set off a charge."

I shuddered.

"This is going to be the second worst experience of your life," she said.

I started taking off my equipment.

We both needed to be naked.

###

In every profession, there are some technical details that need to be kept behind a merciful veil.

The public doesn't need to know. The unprepared person can be spared.

Only a pediatrician needs to know why anal and vaginal dilators are manufactured in pediatric sizes. Only a mortuary assistant needs to know why you have to so carefully clean the deceased, and how to place the plugs. Only a nurse needs to know what the last few breaths sound like.

I knew all these things.

Dr. Rize was going beyond the veil. What she was doing to me was at one level clinical roleplaying, at another level outrageously inappropriate and a violation of patient client ethics, and at yet another level profoundly right to do.

You can make a key by picking the lock.

###

The tears ran down my face as I sat up.

Dr. Rize stopped hugging me.

After the horrible things she had said, and the insignificant touches that meant nothing to someone not sensitized to them, and my raging and screaming and crying, we were both physically uninjured. But utterly exhausted.

"She was playing me like a violin. And so was he. And then him."

"You got it."

She had played the music. But unlike my abusers, she had carefully explained at each step what was actually going on. The tricks, the traps, the games.

Two figures appeared on the path. The sun was starting to set.

Brooke and Sharon, in guard battle gear, patrolling up.

"Time's up," Brooke said in her troubled voice. "Need to get back to site."

"Help me get him up," Betty said to Sharon.

Now I realized why I'd never trusted Sharon. Not fully. And I should have.

I started to say something and they shushed me.

We quickly dressed and the four of us headed back.

###

Somewhere in between the tears and the sweat, my soul returned from where it had been hiding, all these many years.

"What use is a priest who doesn't believe in God?" I'd heard once, a slur against psychologists.

I would never use that as a slur again.

A priestess who didn't believe in God had fought the Devil for my soul.

Brooke didn't loose Sharon on her.

The SLE didn't throw her out.

Two out of three ain't bad.

Tomorrow, Homeland.