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Faith reddened, “Would you like me make up a worse nickname?”
“Buster?” he said, laughing. “Oh Faith, please. Please call me Buster for the rest of my life.”
“Shut up!” she said, slapping him playfully.
He laughed and continued to tease her about the name, and by the time they reached home, she had forgotten all about Ellie.
***
“I’m sorry to hear about your meeting with SAC Monroe,” Doctor West said. “I truly hope this won’t have serious consequences to your career.”
Faith chuckled. “You know it’s going to have serious consequences to my career.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding slowly. “Yes, I apologize for offering that foolish attempt at comfort. Even psychologists are human, I’m afraid.”
“No need to apologize,” Faith said. “I got myself into this mess.”
“Should this result in … well, should the worst happen, I want to assure you, I’ll still be available to treat you.”
Faith smiled. “Thank you, Doctor West, but I don’t think they’ll fire me. I’ve become somewhat of a celebrity in the Bureau over the past couple of years.”
“Solving four high-profile cases back-to-back will do that,” he said with a smile.
Faith nodded modestly. “Anyway, I don’t think they’ll fire me. It’s bad publicity to fire your star agent. What they’ll do is promote me to a cool sounding but unimportant desk job that will look to the outside world like an expansion of responsibility but will really just be keeping me out of the way. Then they’ll leave me there to die or reach retirement age and take my pension.”
“Would it be completely crass of me to say that doesn’t sound like a bad option?” Doctor West offered with a slight smile.
“Terribly crass,” Faith said, “but … there are days where I think that you might be right.”
“How do you feel today?” he asked.
She paused a moment. “I … cannot work a desk job.”
“No,” he agreed, “you can’t.”
“I wish I could, though.”
“Do you wish you could?” he asked. “Or do you wish the job you have now was easier?”
“I wish I could work the copycat killer case,” she blurted out. “I wish I could have that case so I could get this damned monkey off my back. Yes, I know my motivation is wrong. Yes, I know it’s bad that I’m fixated on Trammell, and I know you’re going to tell me that it’s unhealthy of me to project my feelings of fear and helplessness onto the copycat killer, but I can’t stop. I won’t stop.”
“Those are too different things, Faith,” Doctor West said. “To say you can’t stop is to say you lack the ability to cease a certain activity. To say you won’t stop is to say you’re unwilling to cease a certain activity.”
Faith rolled her eyes. “Okay, grammar police. Iwon’tstop.”
“Words have power, Faith,” Doctor West said, refusing to be deflected. “Don’t say you can’t do something when what you mean is you won’t do something. When you say you can’t do something when you won’t do something, you excuse yourchoiceby claiming a lack of ability to choose. In doing so, you not only reinforce poor decision-making, but you also demean your sense of agency.”
Faith blinked in surprise. “Wow,” she said. “That was a lot of really smart sounding words.”
“Every one of which you understood,” he said. “I won’t tell you that it’s not a good idea for you to pursue the copycat case. I won’t tell you it’s a bad idea either. I won’t do either because it won’t matter what I tell you. You’ve already made your choice. The only thing I’ll tell you to do is to take ownership of that choice and every consequence that comes from it.”
“I will,” she said. “I already told you that I know I got myself into this mess.”
“Your professional consequences will pale in comparison to your personal consequences, Faith, some of which you’re already experiencing.”
“Already experiencing? What are you talking about? Wait, are you saying that Michael and I are fighting because of the copycat killer case?”
“I didn’t say that,” Doctor West responded. “You did.”
