[title subtitle=”WORDS Liesel Schmidt
IMAGE Cheryl Casey/Shutterstock”][/title]
“What are you thinking about, Meg?”
The voice intruded on her thoughts, ripping her from the memory she’d just been lost in. And it was such a good memory, a perfect memory of a perfect day. She blinked and looked at the severe little woman sitting across from her. Her mouth was pinched in a moue, showing her displeasure at Meg’s silence and obvious disconnect from present reality.
“You’ve been coming here for a month now, and you’re giving me nothing. You have to speak if you want to get anything out of these sessions. I can’t help you unless you help me.” It was the same thing Meg had heard before, on each of their meetings, near the end of those interminable fifty minutes that were billing her insurance one hundred fifty dollars an hour. But she wasn’t here because she wanted to be. She was here because her job made it a requirement, to deal with whatever grief or stress or shock that came from losing someone like she had. It was protocol, really; but it didn’t make it any easier. Or any less torturous.
Meg shifted on the couch and let out a small sigh. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth to speak. She could almost see the psychiatrist—Dr. Helmut, that was her name—leaning forward in anticipation of whatever words might be coming. She was about to be thoroughly disappointed.
“I’m thinking what a waste of time this is,” Meg said at last. “I’m fine. There’s no reason for me to be here.” She opened her eyes again to look at Dr. Helmut.
The woman shook her head, and amazingly, not one hair moved out of place. She was the picture of control: Her clothes were perfectly ironed and had creases that could slice through a tomato without damaging it, her patent leather heels looked spit polished, her makeup carefully applied and just barely there. She had ramrod posture, almost military bearing. And she wanted Meg to talk.
Dr. Helmut looked as though her tight grip on control was being tested. “You went through something traumatic, Meg. That is why you are here, and that is what you need to deal with. You can’t go back to work until you deal with that, and you know it.”
Meg blinked. Work. Did she even really want to do it anymore? Really, what was the point?
She nodded, keeping her eyes trained on the shrink. Because that’s really what she was, in Meg’s mind—someone who wanted to get into her head and shrink everything down into little pieces that could be examined and analyzed. She wanted to distill everything that Meg had been through into something that could be written down on a piece of paper and worked through with words. So many words. It almost gave Meg a headache just thinking about it. She closed her eyes again.
“That is what you want, isn’t it, Meg?” The disembodied voice probed.
Meg’s eyebrows knitted together in puzzlement. Could the woman read her mind?
She took a deep breath and opened her eyes again, flicking them toward the clock on the wall…And three, two, one…
“I want you to think about that answer and tell me in our next session.” Dr. Helmut rose to usher her toward the door. Meg nodded silently and reached to collect her purse from the floor next to her feet, then rose. She towered over the other woman by almost a whole foot. Not that she was tall, at five foot six inches; but Dr. Helmut seemed to have missed the line when they’d been handing out the gene for height in heaven. It was a weird little thought that made Meg smile slightly, then catch herself.
“See you Thursday, Meg,” Dr. Helmut said. Again, Meg nodded without a word. She walked out the door and onto the porch, a route that completely bypassed the waiting room—something that was supposed to lend itself toward privacy and the anonymity of other patients, like it was shielding them from one another. Meg looked out at the flowers growing in the bed bordering the old wooden porch and almost hated them for being so cheerful looking. If they’d just had to spend fifty minutes in a session with that woman, Meg thought, they wouldn’t look like that.
She walked quietly to her car and got in, pausing to let the warmth of the sunbaked interior wash over her before she turned the key in the ignition. How had she gotten here?
Less than two months ago, she’d been on the fast-track to making sergeant, a hot shot in the department. And then it had happened—two terrible seconds that changed everything about her life. Some kid who’d been on a hair-trigger and had lashed out, pulling her partner over the edge of a roof when he’d tried to talk the kid down and offer a hand. Two seconds that she saw over and over in her head, like a movie reel.
Meg sighed and started the car, checking her mirrors before pulling out of her parking space. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and noticed the lines around her eyes. She looked tired—exhausted, really. And old. She felt old. At thirty-seven, she might not have been young, but she wasn’t old, either.
“I look old, Andy,” she said out loud, knowing how ridiculous it was. “And it’s all your fault.”
Meg shook her head at the silence, the lack of the quick-witted response he would have given if he’d been there. Oh, how mercilessly he had teased her. He would have been all over that one.
Twenty minutes later, she was home, walking into a silent apartment that seemed equally to feel the lack of Andy’s presence. Everywhere felt different, really, like there was a void. The world turned, time went on, people lived their lives without knowing he was gone; but Meg knew. Meg knew, and she felt it like the loss of a limb.
She dropped her keys on the small table by the door and stopped to thumb through her mail. She went still when she came to an envelope with an official-looking sender, the elegant script of a lawyer’s masthead standing out from all the bills and junk mail that usually populated her mail. Her breath caught in her chest, and she felt tears sting her eyes.
They’d always joked about this. Had he really done it?
Meg carefully worked her finger under the flap of the envelope and freed the letter. There were three pages, the top-most being a cover letter from the lawyer.
Dear Ms. Evans,
We have been instructed per the wishes of Mr. Laurie to send you these contents in the event of his death. Please contact our office if you have further questions.
We offer our condolences on your loss.
With regards,
The offices of Maynard, Blenheim, and Stuart
The tears blurred Meg’s vision and began tracing a path down her cheeks. She swiped at them to clear her eyes. Then she opened the letter. Andy’s letter. It was written in his chicken-scratch scrawl, his unmistakably bad penmanship.
Meg,
If you’re reading this, I’m not there anymore. I’m not there to give you a hard time about how tired and old you look after a hard shift or tell you that you need to loosen up and live a little.
I’m also not there to tell you how much I loved you. I never said it, but I think you know. You were my partner, but you were more than that. You were the love of my life. Even though I never told you that, you were. As much as you drove me crazy, I loved all of it. I loved all of you.
I know that you’re probably having a hard time right now, wondering why you’re doing the job anymore. Wondering if any of it is worth it. It is. What we do—what you still do—is important. You are there, on the front line, helping keep the people of this city safe. That matters. You matter. Keep it up, kid. Keep it up and show them, every day, that you care.
Go out there, Meg, and do it for both of us. Make my life matter—make my death matter. And remember what I said. You were loved. You are loved. Even though I’m not there, let yourself feel that. I’ll always love you.
Andy
