Conflict of Interest

Chapter Forty Three

Kim

The days passed slowly. When I'd assured Carrie back in the hospital that everything would go back to normal, I hadn't fully believed it myself, and I'd been right not to. Some events marked the passage of time, the making of progress. McVale was in custody in two days. I was back to work in three. I was required to go to daily meetings with a department shrink, the type of routine therapy that I was now getting used to, now that I'd been shot, Allison had been shot, and several people close to me had been victimized.

In the first meeting, not even the word bomb was dropped. We discussed my life, my job, my friends. He on many occasions tried to get into my head, but I'd always considered myself relatively normal with decidedly few Freudian pathologies. I knew myself to be reckless, but I wasn't a masochist. I always had trouble connecting on an emotional level, but I wasn't a sociopath either.

In the second meeting, he asked if I was ready to talk about '"the trauma." I'd replied that I'd lived through it and was certainly able to talk about it, but even my willingness to do so seemed to be a red flag. Everything I said was a wrong turn. I would say something, something benign and commonplace, and he would write something down in his dreaded brown notebook. And I would think, What can he possibly be writing? How the hell have I indicated that there's something wrong with my head? I only told him what time I left for work in the morning. I hated these meetings because my every word was being analyzed and, in effect, judged. It was almost like talking to Carrie, except the know-it-all persona wasn't cute on him and never would be.

"When did you first realize that the assassin had a gun?"

"I heard the safety click off, and I know that sound too well. There's nothing like it."

He nodded and wrote in the notebook.

"And that's not weird," I added. "I'm a cop."

He smiled, nodded again, wrote in the notebook. I pictured it. Client is highly defensive.

"What do you remember thinking in that moment?"

"I was just thinking about her," I said honestly.

"About whom?"

"Carrie," I said. "I mean, I'm honest with myself. I know I work in a dangerous profession, and I can live with that. When I'm in harm's way, I can deal. But when it happened to Carrie, I just started thinking, and I realized that I don't know what I'd do without her. I can't even remember my life before I knew her."

I stopped talking, but continued thinking. And I don't think I want to. Is that weird? That's messed up, isn't it? Oh my God, this is why I'm with a shrink. This is why he keeps writing in the notebook. I'm a head case. I'm completely insane.

"Tell me about her."

"We only have an hour," I said.

"Well, briefly."

"No can do."

He smiled kindly, clearly not liking my roadblocks. "One of those people you have to get to know?"

"More like you have to see it to believe it. She's, like, frustratingly perfect."

"Maybe she's just perfect to you."

"She's never had a bad hair day," I tried illustrating. "She's always right, and even when she's wrong, she'll twist the argument so that she's still right. She wears these ridiculous heels everywhere and I've never seen her trip. She has a witty remark for everything everyone says. She knows how to fold a fitted sheet. Her nails don't chip. She can parallel park on the first try. She cracks eggs with one hand. Her conviction rate is, like, a hundred and five percent."