by Ana Ban
There was a sharp prick in my upper arm and I collapsed, the darkness now complete.
Chapter 3
“Mia… open your eyes for me… that’s a good girl.”
The voice was familiar, yet not what I wanted to hear. A hand squeezed mine gently, but it was too soft. I craved the rough fingertips of…
The thought shot my eyes open, and I saw my partner sigh in relief.
“Alec,” I tried to speak, but my voice was coarse. Briefly I wondered what type of drug I’d been shot with.
There was a straw at my lips and I took a few deep, grateful sips.
“What happened?” I croaked. The straw was there again, and I sipped while Alec spoke.
“You went after Donovan. Alone. After I told you to wait,” the anger in his voice was still very much in evidence. He took a breath. “When I got to the alley, you’d already lost your ear bud. I broke the door down and found you lying on a landing. There were two staircases, one going up and one going down. After I called for an ambulance and back up, I waited with you. Do you remember what happened?”
“He… drugged me,” I managed. “I got in the door before it closed, but it was pitch black. He had me pinned against the wall…he said…something.”
The interaction was shrouded in fuzziness, a lovely side effect to being knocked out. The part I did remember, in vivid detail, was my response to his touch, the sound of his laugh… I decided not to even try to explain my purely feminine reaction in Donovan’s presence to Alec. How could I? It didn’t even make sense to myself.
After speaking, I coughed to clear my throat and Alec soothed me. “Shh, it’s all right, you rest now. You’ve been out about an hour, and you need to sleep. We can talk more in the morning.”
“Did they search the building?” I asked just as a doctor came in. Alec must have pushed a button when I’d woken up.
After doing the normal checks, the doctor told me the bloodwork came back with positive traces of Ketamine. I was familiar with the name as an anesthesia, and it would explain my fuzzy memory. They were doing more tests to be sure that was all that was in my system.
Once the doctor left, I stared at Alec, waiting for him to answer.
“They found nothing.”
“Nothing?” I asked, incredulous.
“They searched the entire building. It was all empty rooms.”
“Obviously, there’s a hidden passage or underground tunnel,” I began, but stopped at Alec’s expression. “What is it?”
“We’re off the case, Mia.”
“What?” I began to sit up, enraged. “How could they do that!”
“You know perfectly well why. You acted emotionally, putting yourself and me at risk. You’ve not been thinking clearly.”
I sank back into the pillow, fury rolling through me. “What else?”
He sighed heavily, knowing he couldn’t hide from me. We knew each other too well. “Therapy is no longer optional.”
Closing my eyes, I took deep breaths to calm myself. “Great,” I mumbled. “Desk job and psychotherapy. What are they having you do?”
Alec’s eyes tightened; he was obviously unhappy with the next part. “I’m being reassigned.”
His words hit me like a blow to my chest. “New partner,” I murmured, not quite believing it.
“For now,” he clarified, though it sounded more like wishful thinking to me.
I nodded, unable to look him in the eye. “I think I’ll rest now,” I said, staring at the wall.
He stood, and I felt his hand squeeze mine again. Then his lips pressed into my forehead, briefly, before he was gone. Curling into a ball, I felt a single tear fall down my cheek before giving in to my exhaustion.
The doctor’s office was in the middle of a strip mall, sandwiched between a hairdresser and a psychic. I thought, just briefly, that I’d probably have better luck at the psychic.
A bell jangled as I pulled open the door, and the receptionist glanced up at me with a tight smile.
“Can I help you?”
“I have an appointment at 1:30,” I told her.
“Have a seat. Dr. Engel will be right out.”
Nodding, I slid into one of the plaid cloth chairs near the window. There were several magazines scattered on a low table, but I ignored them to gaze out the window.
I’d been released from the hospital yesterday morning, and after taking the rest of the day off, I had a long meeting with the chief this morning. Oddly, he didn’t seem upset with me, more concerned. That worried me more than if he had just yelled. He wasted no time in setting me up with a shrink.
After a few minutes, the door opened and a woman who looked to be in her forties walked out, her pale red hair pulled back into a pony tail.
“Detective Gonzalez?”
Standing, I approached her to shake her hand. “Mia, please.”
Nodding, she gestured into the office. “Have a seat.”
The inside of the office was sparsely decorated with a single bookshelf behind a wooden desk. Four chairs were positioned in a loose circle in front of the desk, so I chose one and sat.
Dr. Engel sat beside me, perching a notebook on her lap.
“So, Mia,” she began. “Can you tell me about why you’re here?”
“I was asked to do sessions after making a poor decision in the field.”
Dr. Engel studied me. “Would you elaborate on that?”
Shifting in my chair, I explained, “I was on a stake-out with my partner. We were covering two different doors, and I spotted the perp at mine. We’ve been chasing this person for a year and a half. So, I went after him. My partner asked me to wait, but I didn’t want to miss the opportunity.”
“That doesn’t seem like a big offense.”
“It happened twice. In a row.”
“Even still,” Dr. Engel leaned forward, bracing one elbow on her knee. “Why else are you here?”
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” I admitted.
“Since when?”
Letting out a short laugh, I answered, “Since forever.”
“I see,” Dr. Engel leaned back again, jotting a few notes down. “Has it become more severe? Do you believe it’s affecting your judgement?”
“I was something of an insomniac before I joined the force,” I told her. “Most nights since I just feel restless, never feeling refreshed after sleep. The last couple of years have been worse, and my partner seemed worried that my lack of sleep was affecting my judgement.”
“When you deprive yourself of sleep, your physical state can become akin to being drunk, which, as I’m sure we both know, can absolutely affect your judgement. I can prescribe you a medication which will assist with keeping you asleep at night, but in our sessions together I’d like to uncover the root of the problem.”
“I don’t like taking drugs,” I stated firmly.
“That is something I’m aware of, but may be the only short term solution we have. It’s also why I would like to continue sessions with you, to solve your sleeping problem instead of just covering it up with drugs, as you said.”
And, if I didn’t follow Dr. Engel’s advice, I would also be looking at more than just a desk job. Paid leave was not the vacation it sounded like.
Resolving to do whatever it took to get back in my chief’s good graces, I nodded my consent.
Chapter 4
I was set up to see Dr. Engel once a week. This seemed excessive to me, but was willing to do whatever it took to get back to my real life.
When I arrived back at the station, Alec was waiting for me, brows raised.
“How did it go?”
“Fine,” I told him quietly. “I’ll pick up a prescription tonight that is supposed to help me sleep. She promised me it wasn’t a permanent solution.”
Alec seemed relieved, and squeezed my shoulder before returning to his desk. Sighing, I made myself comfortable and immersed myself in paperwork.
After work, I stopped to pick up my prescription
at the pharmacy. I stared at the bottle a long time that night before finally shaking out a pill and downing it with a glass of water. Half an hour later, I was asleep.
It was a struggle to open my eyes, but as a glaring noise penetrated into my brain, I realized my alarm was going off, as it had been for several minutes. Reaching out to feel for the snooze button without having to open my eyes, I cut off the noise before curling back up with a groan. My eyes felt heavy, as if I were waking from sedation, and my body felt weak.
There were many reasons I stayed away from medication; this feeling was a major one.
On the up side, I had slept a solid seven hours. The downside of that, is now my body craved more. Forcing myself to get up, I trudged to the kitchen to pour myself a steaming mug of coffee. I drank it down, black, scalding my throat in the process, but I didn’t care. Immediately I refilled the cup, waiting for the caffeine to kick in.
Dressing mechanically, I made my way to the precinct, lacking the motivation that had been my driving force for the last eight years. A demotion- which is not what the chief was calling it, but it was nonetheless- had left me as a shell of the person I was just three days ago.
Instead of dwelling on that fact, I just did as I was asked, and soon the paperwork and therapy sessions became routine.
On my second session, I’d been using the sleeping medication for 6 nights. Though I’d been sleeping, I still felt groggy upon waking instead of refreshed. When I asked the doctor if that would change, her answer didn’t give much encouragement.
“Your body will adjust, but you may always have that lingering feeling of grogginess in the morning. Once I feel confident we’re on the right track with your sessions, we can reduce your dosage to half a pill.”
I nodded, accepting that, for the foreseeable future, I wouldn’t feel like myself.
“Tell me about your family,” Dr. Engel prompted.
With a sigh, I answered vaguely, “I don’t have any family.”
She pursed her lips, waiting for me to go on.
“My father died when I was 13. My mother died when I was 16. No brothers or sisters, and the little bit of extended family I know of doesn’t speak to me.”
“That must be a lonely life,” the doctor commented.
It was irritating, the typical blame-the-parents for everything that’s wrong in your adult life.
“Not really,” I snapped. “My work is fulfilling, and I have good friends.”
“Mia,” Dr. Engel nudged gently. “I’ve seen your file.”
My eyes dropped to my hands clasped in my lap. Of course, she’d seen my file.
“Then you know why I’d prefer not to talk about it.”
She nodded. “All right, we’ll leave it for today. Tell me about your romantic relationships.”
Rolling my eyes, I felt myself getting snippy, so before answering, I took a deep breath. “They’re pretty much nonexistent.”
“Do you blame your work for that?”
“No,” my voice hardened. “I blame myself.”
“Why is that?”
“Because work is my priority, and I haven’t met someone who made me feel differently.”
“How often do you date?”
Shrugging, I answered, “Occasionally.”
She paused again, and I knew that meant she was waiting for me to open up. Though this was necessary to get my life back, it was still frustrating.
“The last person I dated was Cole. We were together about six months, dating casually. We’d go out to dinner, or the movies, when we both had time. I thought he was understanding about my work. Turned out, he wasn’t.”
“It can be difficult to forge a relationship with someone who doesn’t fully understand your commitment to your work. It’s a commendable trait, but I hope you realize that there is more to life than work?”
“Like I’ve said, I just haven’t met someone that was more important to me than my job. When I do, it’ll be different.”
“Hmm,” she murmured, writing notes on her pad. It was becoming difficult for me to reel in my annoyance. “Do you think it really will be different?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Mia,” she paused in her writing, making eye contact with me. “We all have a tendency to have the ‘one day’ attitude. One day I’ll eat healthier, one day I’ll meet the man of my dreams, one day everything will just magically fall into place. I believe you have a good head on your shoulders, a realistic mind set. The truth is, we get what we put into things. Your work is fulfilling because you put your everything into it. How do you think your relationships would be different, if you gave them the same effort and attention?”
I opened my mouth to respond, but shut it again. It wasn’t that I couldn’t see the truth to her words- I did, and I understood the concept. “What if I choose to date men who I know I have no future with on purpose? Knowing that I’m not ready for a bigger commitment yet?”
Dr. Engel seemed satisfied by my response, nodding and jotting down more notes. “That could very well be true. But, I’ll tell you a secret. None of us is truly ready for the things that matter the most.”
Her words rang through my head the rest of the day, and as I finished my shift I saw Alec come back in for the day. His new partner was Detective Malone, who’d been on the force for about five years but had just made detective. Alec and I had made detective within a couple of months of each other, so I was sure he was enjoying passing all his knowledge on to the younger man.
Approaching them, I greeted them both by last name. “Woods. Malone.”
“Hey, Detective Gonzalez,” Malone smiled eagerly.
“Mia, please,” I spoke gently. Alec watched the exchange with a bemused expression.
“Yes, ma’am. Mia. And you can call me Adam. We were just going over a case, but I can give you a few minutes if you want to talk…” He gestured between Alec and I, and I smiled gratefully.
“I won’t keep him long,” I promised.
Alec raised a brow at me once Adam was out of earshot. “He’s like a lost puppy dog.”
Letting out an appreciative laugh, I answered, “He’s sweet. I hope he can stay that way with the things he’ll see in this line of work.”
Alec nodded. “That’s always a difficult thing, watching good people become hardened over time.” He studied me for a moment, and I’m not sure exactly what he saw. I was feeling a little raw after therapy. “How was your session today?”
One shoulder rose up before I let it drop. “Fine. The doctor’s really good at digging.”
“I’m sure that’s hell for you,” Alec gave me a lopsided smile.
Offering him a small smile back, I squeezed my hands together nervously. “Here’s the thing, Alec…”
Before I could finish my thought, we were interrupted, the urgency in Adam’s voice undeniable. “Alec! We have to go, now!”
Alec reacted quickly, glancing at me for just a moment. “I’m sorry.”
Waving him off, I backed away from his desk. “Go, it sounds important.”
“We’ll talk later,” Alec called over his shoulder as he followed his new partner out the door.
Shoulders slumped, I walked back to my desk. I had finally been ready to admit to my feelings for my partner, but if his sudden departure wasn’t a sign to keep my mouth shut, I didn’t know what was.
Chapter 5
“How have you been sleeping?” the doctor began with on our fourth meeting.
“Like a rock,” I told her. “Thanks to the medication.”
“Are you feeling more alert during the day?”
“Yes and no,” I told her honestly. “I’m still a bit groggy when I wake up, and it takes me a while for that feeling to dissipate. I don’t really ever feel like I have a lot of energy, but I’m consistent.”
“Did you have a lot of high and low energy before the medication?”
“I suppose you could say that. Doesn’t everyone?”
She paused in her
note taking to meet my eyes. “Our sessions aren’t about everyone else, they’re about you.”
“Fine,” I sighed. “Want to hear about my dreams next or something?”
“Have you been having dreams?”
“Not since I started taking the medication.”
“Before that?”
I shifted in my chair once. “Pretty much nightly.”
“What were they about?”
“Nightmares, mostly. Disconnected realities, nothing that ever really made sense. There were a lot of times I’d wake up feeling like I’d run a marathon.”
“Do you sleep walk?” She asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you talk in your sleep, or sleep fitfully?”
“I’ve lived alone since I was 16,” I told her.
“None of your romantic partners ever spent the night?”
“No,” I told her, feeling uncomfortable again. She was very good at that. “Like I said before, I’ve never met anyone who I trusted that much.”
“I think we can start cutting your pill in half. Give that a try for a week, let me know next week how that goes. If you’re starting to not sleep again, you can always take the whole pill,” Dr. Engel told me.
“That sounds good to me,” I told her emphatically.
“Is there anything else you’d like to talk about today?” She asked after studying me for a moment.
“Not really,” I told her, but knew it was pointless to deny. “I’ve just been feeling a little useless lately.”
“That’s understandable, going from field work to office work. Is there anything else that’s making you feel that way?”
I smiled ruefully. “I’m working regular hours now, which leaves me with more time at home than I had before. I spend my down time working out, but paperwork just doesn’t fulfill me the same way.”
“That’s a common issue for workaholics. I see it most often in retirees, who go from working 70 hour weeks to suddenly having free time, they realize they have no outside interests or hobbies. Did you have any interests when you were younger that you could try again?”