Not Exactly Allies
Page 59
CHAPTER 58 – MENTAL HEALTH EXPERTS
Dennis Uppington and Janice Pendergrast underwent post-trauma counseling, sometimes separately, sometimes together.
It took no time at all for Janice to lose patience with her counselor and chew him out. She also made it quite clear that she didn't like the idea of being forced to accept counseling, much less with a psychologist not of her own choosing.
"It's probably reasonable, you know, given that we've forced other people to take counseling and have hardly let them pick their own counselor," Dennis said.
"That's different," Janice said.
"I'm hard pressed to see how."
"Do you like him?"
"No."
"Do you think he's competent?"
"I'd rather not say."
"Chicken."
"I prefer to think of it as diplomatic. Besides, I'm going into this thinking that I don't have to adopt any of his suggestions I don't like."
"I hadn't thought of that," Janice said.
"Maybe it would help to think of him as obtuse but temporary?" Dennis said.
Janice laughed.
Dennis hadn't meant it as a joke, but found that he was delighted that he'd made her laugh. Not knowing what to say, he stood there grinning at her.
She looked into his eyes, and seemed to like what she saw. "Would you like to go get something to eat?" she asked.
"Where would you like?"
"Your place. I could cook."
"Uh, my place is rather a mess at the moment," Dennis fudged, mostly because he was afraid of Janice's fledgling cooking talent, which had enthusiasm on its side but needed a lot more steering, in his considered opinion.
"And my place has Naomi," Janice countered.
"My place works."
"Good. I can help you clean it up. Clean places provide better working fields for forensic teams if anyone should ever break in, you know." (Emma Hugh had pointed this out to her. Janice, after thinking about it, thought everyone should be informed of this, and had started a website to get the word out, and was otherwise engaged in a campaign to make the world better equipped for crime detection.)
"Let's get steaks on the way," Dennis said in a fit of enthusiasm, before he remembered that Janice went in and out of rabid vegetarianism, and he didn't know which phase she was currently in.
"I don't know how to cook steak," she said, apparently concerned about the culinary skills involved, not the items to be cooked.
"Courage, m'lady. I'll teach you. I happen to be good at steaks," Dennis said.
"You're on," she said.
Dennis could have jumped up and down and hollered like a schoolboy who just made the winning play at the year's biggest game. Instead, exercising what he recognized as admirable and manly restraint, he lifted her hand to his lips, and kissed the back of it.
She blushed.
"I'm just suggesting dinner, buster," she said.
"Absolutely."
"And that doesn't buy you any access," she said.
"This may come as a surprise to you, but I'm from a long line of rock-foundation Anglicans who believe in the sanctity of marriage. So don't think you're going to seduce me tonight, either. I have my standards."
"You're a twit," she said.
"But an honest, clean one, or that's what I aim for, at least," he said.
"I'm hungry. Where are we getting this steak?"
-
Dr. Orchard couldn't quite come to grips with the idea that his beloved Pammy had been married and hadn't told him. It must have been a loveless marriage, and she'd come to him in her need, knowing he would discover the root of her unhappiness, given enough time.
He refused to listen to the idea that she'd sought his favor because the secret passage she most wanted to use had an outlet in his office. No, no, it wasn't true. Everyone else was wrong. That she'd covertly wined and dined with him in France was all the proof he needed that she cherished their friendship.
He was given what was called early retirement, but, for the time being at least, he was quietly moved to a wing of a government hospital that generally had fewer visitors than guards.
There didn't seem to be anyone who wanted to visit him, except the hospital chaplain, who was not to be daunted by people who clung to false notions as if they were the very reason for being. "Fighting delusion is what Christianity is all about," he liked to say. "That some delusions are more obvious than others is rather beside the point," he liked to add.
The psychologists at the facility rather resented the chaplain's presence, all the more so because he (inexplicably, in their view) brought more patients to normal function than they did. That he cheerfully bore up under their resentment was something the mental health experts tolerated with the sort of ill grace for which, if the situation had been reversed, they'd have sent him up on hate crimes.
-
A man was brought over from MI5 to take Orchard's place at MI5 1/2.
The new man's written recommendation was glowing, but between the lines it seemed to say that he was being transferred because he couldn't get along with people in his department. Chief Stolemaker called the fellow's most recent supervisor, who insisted, in so many words, 'he's a good psychiatrist, really he is, and all he needs is a change of colleagues, really.'
Stolemaker went up a few levels and lodged a mild protest. He was assured that the MI5 man was the best they had to offer. Really. Live with it.
"That's the trouble," Stolemaker said. "Bad head doctors get people killed around here."
"So, help us get better people to go into the field, and we'll talk to you then," he was told. "In the meantime, live with it."
Stolemaker set himself to figuring out how to restructure the agency so that internal review had more safeguards built into it. He didn't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but he was determined to change things.
-
Richard was delighted to be rid of Dr. Orchard. He'd never liked the man, and the more contact he'd had with the fellow over the years, the more animosity there'd been. But it had always been a personal dislike. It bothered Richard that he hadn't figured out the man was susceptible to outside influences. He told his wife so.
"Bah," said Emma. "Orchard had a reputation for being easy to manipulate."
"No, he didn't."
"I'll amend that. Orchard had a reputation amongst women for being easy to manipulate."
"Maybe by women," Richard groused. "I don't know a man who didn't find the fellow impossible to deal with."
Emma grinned, and swept her husband into a hug. "But, darling. He fancied himself to be totally rational. Nobody but nobody is more susceptible to outside input than a man who thinks he's rational and is proud of that fact, especially one whose idea of reason is based almost entirely on formal studies of college students who volunteer to be guinea pigs."
"Which of course tells you something about college students who volunteer to be guinea pigs, but nothing much whatsoever about adults, children, or college students who have better things to do," Richard said.
"Absolutely. Change the subject, luv."
"Why?"
"Because I'm in your arms and don't want to think about men who treat everyone's emotions but their own as symptoms of something."
Richard leaned down and kissed her. He made it a long and tender kiss. When he came up for air he said, "There. I couldn't think of an intellectual subject I wanted to discuss, so I opted for pure emotion. I hope that meets your criteria for changing the subject?"
She pulled him back into a kiss, which he correctly took as a yes.