3Author's notes:
Dedicated to: space_oddity_75. Thanks to: Beccatoria, aka 'my fabulous beta', for brilliance, perceptiveness, clarity, infinite patience when I was uncertain to the max. And to Icudoc, for medical vocabulary.
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Everybody falls in love with their therapist. The reverse is somewhat less common, and generally frowned upon.
Of course, she isn't his therapist. That is part of the problem. Late at night, when disasters-in-waiting seem their actual size, she knows that he is well beyond therapy.
Daylight shrinks her fears. He keeps it together well enough, mostly. He's efficient on the job, despite the constant adjustments he has to make between his reality and everyone else's. He displays an unusual degree of self-awareness for a schizophrenic. She still wonders, sometimes, if it's all an act. Elaborate, deliberate eccentricity: another kind of insanity.
If she blew the whistle on him, what would happen? They'd dope him up, cart him off. Invalid him out of the force, most likely.
Better to keep silent; keep him close.
She watches, closely. Covers for him, he isn't even aware how often.
Sometimes she feels as dizzy as if they still stood on the edge of that roof: holding hands, the sheer drop waiting at their feet.
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How do you love a madman?
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Gently. Fearlessly.
.
.
With a great deal of fear,
fear shuddering your breath,
sweaty hand clutching,
saying,
here I am,
- stay.
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How do you love a madman?
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With strength, because his
will be spent building traps,
and you'll have to go out, into dark woods,
when iron teeth have closed on his leg.
Bring a crowbar;
let him lean on you as you take him home.
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How do you love a madman?
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Helplessly. Watching
as he figures out riddles, figures
a world
that exists as a riddle
to him. Your world;
and you, just a piece of the puzzle.
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When the newspaper is one long letter to him, when songs on the radio spell out the meaning of his life, she feels like tearing her hair, hitting the walls, screaming as loud as she can. Madness begins to seem a sensible option. She sees in him the coiled suspicion of living in a test created by your own subconscious, and knows that some day, something will give.
If she bangs her head against a wall, will he feel the pain?
(She's a part of him, he says.)
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Her love is layered of impossibilities.
Impossibility to smile, speak openly.
(He's her superior officer. Also, mad.)
Impossibility to look, to touch.
(He's mad. Also, her superior officer.)
Impossibility to believe.
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Impossibility not to
smile
speak
look
touch
.
.
believe.
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He's doing the Times crossword puzzle - rather, sits staring at the Times crossword puzzle, solved in a hand she doesn't recognise. None of the words make any sense. She knows the rigidity of his shoulders, knows reality has dropped out from under him.
"EMG - EEG - SDH - ICP - CSF," she reads, "MRI - VER - PCNS - HRCT. What kind of a crossword is this? Surely this can't be how it's supposed to go?"
She has read, once, that there is a noticeable lag for communications that have to travel a long way via cable, or up into space. Talking to Sam can be like that. Speak. Wait for your words to travel up into the sky. Wait some more.
Eventually, a slight shudder passes through him, loosening his stiffness almost imperceptibly.
"High resolution CT," he murmurs. "What are they expecting to find?"
"What?"
He looks up, his face open, expectant. "Something's happening, Annie."
With an effort, she reroutes what she hears to an area of her mind that cannot parse it. Puts on her face a mask of mild puzzlement. It's a signal he understands. His shoulders slump the tiniest bit and he puts on a mask of his own. His eyes find the manila folder under her arm, and he sighs deeply.
"Lay it on me. It's only my lunch hour." Long-suffering conscientiousness laced with annoyance, precisely calculated to convey a copper disturbed in the midst of rapidly cooling bangers and mash.
Impossibly, she smiles.
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Footnotes:
The medical abbreviations and their meanings:
EMG: electromyelogram
EEG: electroencephalography
SDH: subdural hematoma
ICP: intracranial pressure
CSF: cerebro-spinal fluid
MRI: magnetic resonance imaging
VER: visual evoked responses
PCNS: peripheral nerve conduction studies
HRCT: high resolution computerised tomography
