Page 75 of State of Denial

“What is happening here?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Do I need to be worried?”

“Not at all.”

“Right… You’re saying you’d rather spend your days at the White House than at work, and I’m not supposed to worry?”

“I don’t want to add to your plate. It’s already full to overflowing.”

“I’d push the rest of it aside if my wife needed me, and she knows that.”

“She does know that, but you need to keep your eye on the ball here.”

“I’m an incredibly accomplished multitasker, as my wife also knows.”

Sam smiled at the sexy innuendo. “Yes, you are, but I’m working out some things in my mind about the job. I’ve got to figure that out before I decide anything.”

“Where’d this come from all of a sudden?”

“I don’t think it’s sudden. It’s a bunch of things kind of coalescing into this existential sort of crisis. Stahl trying to kill me twice, Arnold dying, the ongoing war with Ramsey, my dad dying, Conklin sitting on info that would’ve solved my dad’s case, the injustice we’ve uncovered with the cold cases, my broken hip, Spencer dying…” When she glanced at him, she saw him watching her intently. “All combined, it’s taken some of the shine off the place for me. It happens to other people on the job all the time.”

“But not to you.”

“No, never to me. In fact, I used to scoff at people who’d say they were burned out. Like, how can you burn out on a job that’s so much fun?”

“You’re the only person who thinks the murder beat is fun.”

“I’m not the only one. People who do my job are a different breed. We’re wired differently. We cope differently. It’s how we can do it in the first place without going crazy from what we see every day. There’s, like, a shield that protects us from the emotional fallout, and lately, I’ve been feeling like my shield has gone missing. Dr. Trulo is the one who said Spencer’s death might’ve been the thing that finally made that happen.”

“I can see how that might be possible. Can you?”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“You were like a woman possessed trying to get answers for Ang and the kids. You didn’t take one second tofeelthe loss of someone you cared about.”

“No, I didn’t. I tried to keep that separate from the case, and then once we figured out what’d happened, it overtook me like a tsunami. Angela’s husband isdead. Jack and Ella’s father isdead. Spencer isdead. She’s having another baby. It’s all so… big.”

“Yes, it is, and it also forces you to think about what you’d do if it happened to you.”

Sam put her hands over her ears. “Don’t even say that.”

He tugged on the arm closest to him. “I don’t expect anything to happen to me, but your sister losing her husband gives you a front-row view of what it would be like. That’s all I’m saying.”

“You may be right about that,” Sam said with a sigh. “I keep reliving the hours in the hospital, when it became clear he wasn’t going to survive. That’s the part I can’t get out of my head.”

“It’s your biggest fear come to life right in front of you.”

“Is it terrible for me to admit that part is the most upsetting to me?”

“Of course not. We all know you cared about Spencer and appreciated how good he was to Ang and the kids.”

“I did, and he was.”

“I think it’s perfectly normal to put yourself in her shoes and to wonder how you would cope if it happened to you.”

“I refuse to ask myself or anyone else that question. I’d never survive it.”

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