AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“The skin grafts have gone well,” Jessie said. “The one I had two weeks ago seems to have taken and they told me that unless there’s a hiccup, that will be the last one. More good news—most of the scars can be hidden by clothing.”
“Well,” Lemmon said, “this shouldn’t matter, but if the grafts make you self-conscious, I can assure you that you still present as an Amazonian warrior woman. Almost no one cares about your scars. All they see is a young woman pushing six feet tall with an athletic body, bright green eyes, and lustrous brown hair. Know that this Hobbit-sized senior citizen with coke-bottle glasses and challenging curls would still change places with you—at least physically—despite everything.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Jessie said uncertainly. It was one of the odder compliments she’d ever gotten.
“You’re welcome,” Lemmon said, seemingly tickled that she’d managed to make Jessie slightly uncomfortable, “And your head? How’s that doing?”
Lemmon was referring to the ongoing concussion symptoms Jessie had been dealing with since the spring, when an obsessed killer named Andrea Robinson had kidnapped her on her wedding night and held her captive in an abandoned mine shaft, which she eventually blew up with both of them in it. Jessie survived, but the lingering effects of the explosion, plus several additional blows to the head in ensuing months, including in the car crash, ultimately required emergency surgery to reduce the swelling in her brain.
“No changes since we talked last. “Jessie updated. “I saw the neurosurgeon last week and had another MRI. She didn’t find any new issues since having to do the procedure just after the car incident. I still have intermittent headaches pop up out of nowhere, but they feel almost normal compared to what I was dealing with a few months ago.”
“What about the dizziness and confusion?”
“Those have largely subsided as well,” Jessie assured her. “I think I’ve had two mild moments of dizziness in the last month and haven’t gotten confused once.”
“But the doctor is still concerned about a recurrence?” Lemmon pressed.
“It’s the same concern she always has,” Jessie answered. “If I have another concussion, the whole issue could blow up again. That’s why she wasn’t excited about me meeting with Captain Parker about returning soon, even though I promised not to put myself at risk. She’d much rather I stick with my other gig.”
“You mean lecturing at UCLA?”
“Right, I’m still teaching the weekly seminar in criminal profiling,” Jessie said. “So far, so good. And I guess we’ll see how the HSS meeting goes tomorrow.”
“How does Ryan feel about that meeting?” Lemmon wanted to know, “and the possibility of your returning to the LAPD?”
Ryan was Ryan Hernandez, Jessie’s husband, who also happened to be her partner at HSS, and was for a time her boss too, before he resigned as captain of Central Station, where HSS was based.
“Hasn’t he told you himself?” Jessie wondered, referencing the counseling sessions that Ryan also had with the psychiatrist.
“I can’t discuss what he says to me with you, just like I don’t tell him what you say,” Lemmon reminded her. “But we can talk about conversations you two have outside of this office. Besides, since you stopped having joint couples’ counseling sessions with me, I have to get the juicy bits from you individually.”
“Again,” Jessie teased, “that doesn’t feel like the most professional thing for a therapist to say.”
“Now you’re just stalling,” Lemmon noted.
“Fine,” Jessie said with a sigh. “Actually, ‘stall’ is the right word to use. I feel like we’re in a holding pattern. Just like before the car accident, I know that he still has apprehensions about me returning to work, but he doesn’t want to be too vocal about them. I think he’s trying to treat me with kid gloves these days.”
“Why is that?”
“Lots of reasons,” Jessie answered. “For one thing, I think he’s still sensitive to the fact that I was almost murdered in my hospital bed by a disillusioned, deranged fan. Plus, there’s all the physical recovery stuff I’ve been dealing with. And then there’s Hannah, of course.”
Hannah Dorsey was Jessie’s much younger half-sister, who she’d only learned about two years ago after the murder of the girl’s adoptive parents, and who had lived with her until she left for college at UC Irvine two months ago.
“What about her?” Lemmon asked, an increased note of concern in her voice. “Is she okay? I haven’t spoken to her in several weeks.”
“She’s good,” Jessie said quickly, trying to assuage the apprehensions of the psychiatrist, who had also worked with Hannah on a myriad of social and emotional issues. “Getting excellent grades seems to be adapting to dorm life well. It's me. Even though she was only in the house under my guardianship for a couple of years, there’s definitely been some empty nest syndrome since she left. The house is quieter. I miss her company, not to mention the amazing meals she’d make for us. I even miss her sarcastic quips and eye rolls.”
“But Irvine is less than an hour away,” Lemmon said. “I assume you’ve visited her.”
“Sure,” Jessie acknowledged, “but it’s not the same thing. Anyway, all of this is to say that Ryan and I are treading water, although I guess that’s a lot better than over the summer, when I felt like I couldn’t trust him, and he felt guilty all the time.”
Lemmon nodded, obviously recalling the difficult couples’ therapy sessions where they tried to work through the fact that Ryan had kept a threat against Jessie and her loved ones secret because he was skeptical of its credibility, as well to not stress her out. The threat turned out to be real, and Hannah and Jessie’s best friend, Katherine “Kat” Gentry, had almost been killed as a result. The lingering resentment she felt over his decision had only recently begun to subside.
“Have you discussed this ‘treading water’ feeling with him?”
“I have,” Jessie said. “He thinks the best option is to move forward with an optimistic perspective about what’s possible.”
“That seems reasonable,” Lemmon replied. “Why do I sense hesitation from you?”
