Counting the time he’d spent at the hospital in Germany, his extended stay in the care of the shrinks at Walter Reed, and the time before he’d joined Tremaine Industries, it had been longer than he realized. “More than a year.”
The doc nodded again and made a note. He looked over at Rocco. A minute passed. Then another. “I can spend our time together asking questions, but I don’t think that will help either of us get to the heart of what’s ailing you. How about you tell me what’s going on?”
Yeah, that would be sweet. Sum up his whole existential nightmare in one fucking sentence. If he could do that, he sure didn’t need a shrink. He got up and started pacing. “They said you were a veteran,” he said, deflecting the focus of their convo from himself.
Dr. Kimble nodded. “The Persian Gulf War.”
“What did you do there?”
“Anything I was told. Is that what you did in Afghanistan?”
Was it? He’d been ordered to get close to Ghalib Halim, Kadisha’s dad, by any means possible. Did that mean he’d been ordered to marry Kadisha? Or had he thought up that special hell all by himself?
“Did you follow orders in Afghanistan, Rocco?” the doc asked, breaking into his musings.
Rocco paused mid-stride and looked at him. “Yes.”
“How is your sleeping?”
Had the doc been told he couldn’t get in bed with Mandy anymore? “Fine.”
“Why did you go riding a few days ago instead of having dinner with your friends?”
Fucking Kit. “I felt like it.”
“Why?”
“Did Kit tell you I don’t like having my head shrunk?”
“Do you like being held hostage by your mind?”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
“It’s a simple question.”
“He said you were a sherpa and could lead me out of my head. Are you?”
“Maybe. Once I figure out what’s going on. But I think you already know what that is, else you wouldn’t be so protective of it. What were you like as a child?”
Again Rocco stopped pacing and stared at him. “Odd.”
“How so?”
“I was the only kid on the ranch where my mom worked.”
“Lots of kids are only children. What made you different?”
Rocco shrugged.
“Was your dad at the ranch?”
“No. Mom said he was dead.”
“Was he?”
“I dunno.”
“Did you miss having a dad?”
“The vaqueros were my dads. I never lacked for male role models.”
They talked for a while longer about random shit. Rocco didn’t know what the point was. Maybe the doc was trying to establish rapport with him, put him at ease so they could slowly open the gates of his hell and let all his demons out. When an hour had just about passed, the doc stood up.
“Shall we meet again in a week?”
“No.”
That answer didn’t seem to faze him. He went over to his desk and picked up a stationery box. He handed it to Rocco. Opening it, he saw a slim leather journal inside.
“I don’t journal.” He handed it back, but the doc didn’t take it.
“Do you want to get better?”
Did he? All fucking aside, did he want to get better?
“It’s not for journaling anyway,” the doc said. “I want you to write yourself a letter between now and our visit next week.”
“What kind of letter?”
The doc shrugged. “Anything you want to tell yourself. If you think of more than one letter to write, write more than one. It can be a letter from your present self to your younger self, or from your future self to the man you are now. There’s no wrong way to communicate with yourself. Bring the journal with you.”
“You gonna read it?”
“Only if you ask me to.”
*
Rocco walked up the broken stairs to his hideaway in Mandy’s old barn. He felt raw from his visit with Dr. Kimble. He tossed the journal box onto his chair then walked over to the window. The cool air from the September morning poured into the barn from the dormer window’s broken panels.
He considered his convo with the doc, wondering if the guy was going to be able to sift through his madness and find the real him. His training in the Red Team had included extensive psychological rewiring, so much so that he could play a role better than a method actor. He could become his false identity so completely that it felt more real than his original self. Even now, he was both Rocco and Khalid, the identity he used to interact with some of the team’s informants.
He felt like a tuning fork that couldn’t stop vibrating, couldn’t become a single tone.
He’d played the shrinks’ game to get out of Walter Reed. If Kimble couldn’t grasp the reality of him, he’d do the same. He could act any role; maybe the biggest role he had to act was that of being normal.