“They found something wrong with my ear,” Matt said.
“All of these things combining, in the Dr. Amy Payne theory of what’s wrong with Little Brother, to compel you to join the police force to prove your manhood, that you’re a warrior.”
“Jesus!”
“And then you met another man, who became your mentor, Inspector Peter Wohl. Another warrior role model.”
“Okay.”
“Now, being as intelligent as you are, you could not have been unaware, in Amy’s theory, that Role Model One, Commissioner Coughlin, had arranged for a job for you that was not really police work. You weren’t walking around dark streets in a uniform with a gun and a nightstick, in other words. And you subconsciously understood this to mean that Coughlin and Wohl, Role Model Two, didn’t think of you as a fellow warrior, but rather as sort of a wimp who had to be protected.”
“She told you all of this?” Matt asked.
“And then you shot the Northwest serial rapist, trying to prove that you were indeed a warrior and a man.”
“I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I shot that sonofabitch because he was trying to run me over with a van.”
“But still, even after this warrior act, neither Coughlin nor Wohl was convinced that you were a warrior. The proof of this, your subconscious believed, came on the memorable day when the real cops, the real warriors, were about to face down the bad people and they sent you a block away to safety, allegedly to protect a journalist.”
“I must be crazy, I’m starting to think she may be onto something.”
“I’m not finished. She’s given this a lot of thought.”
“Go on.”
“And again you risked your life to prove you were a man, a warrior, when a bad guy appeared in the alley and you faced up to him.”
“He was shooting at us! What was I supposed to do?”
“You’re an intelligent young man. You should have ducked, run away. You were driven by the need to prove your masculinity.”
“My God!”
“And going off at somewhat of a tangent, Dr. Payne feels that your interest in so many members of the opposite sex is really a manifestation of your need to prove your manhood, carnally. And that, of course, is another proof, she feels, that you doubt your own manhood.”
“And all this time, I thought she was my friend.”
“She spoke to me as one physician to another. Give her that much, Matt. This was not idle gossip.”
“What else did she have to say?”
“You next began to prove your manhood by becoming a detective, and then a sergeant, in the latter case studying obsessively because it was obsessively so important to you that you do well-preferably better than anyone else- on the examination.”
“Anything else?”
“You told her, I think, that you were having nightmares about what happened in Doylestown?”
“And ten seconds after I did, I realized it was a mistake.”
“You ever have them about the other shootings, Matt?”
“What the hell, the cow’s out of the barn. Yeah. Most of them are about Doylestown, but every once in a while I have one about the guy who tried to run me down in the van, and now I suppose I’ll have them about the guy I just shot outside La Famiglia.”
“You said, ‘The guy in the van, the guy I just shot.’ But ‘Doylestown’?”
“I didn’t shoot anybody in Doylestown,” Matt said. “The guy we were after shot the girl who took us to him.”
“That’s all she was to you?”
Matt thought that over, then shrugged.
“No. I thought I was in love with her. I had to prove my manhood, I guess.”
Dr. Stein grunted.
“Amy thinks that your weeping over the girl in Doylestown was the first manifestation of your impending, uncontrollable psychological problems, and she feels the nightmares tend to confirm that theory.”
Matt looked at him but didn’t reply.
“You then were promoted to sergeant, and given your choice of assignment, and chose Homicide, primarily because Homicide is considered the ne plus ultra of warrior assignments in the police department.”
Matt shook his head.
“The warriors-Amy’s term-are Highway, the Bomb Squad… not Homicide,” he said.
Dr. Stein shrugged but did not respond directly.
“Where you were immediately plunged into things beyond your capacity to deal with,” he went on, “and to which you applied all of your best efforts. That, she believes, would have, so to speak, pushed you over the edge in and of itself, but then you became involved in this last incident, two nights ago, and that finally produced the inevitable result. You experienced an emotional meltdown, so to speak.”
“Well, I guess she’s got my number, doesn’t she?”
“She believes she has correctly assessed the situation.”
“And what does my all-wise sister think I should do about it?”
“That’s pretty clear to her too. She thinks you should face who you really are, and that done, take the appropriate action, which would be for you to resign from the police force, go back to law school, and assume a more suitable life for someone with your psychological makeup.”
“And you agree, right?”
“I didn’t say that. Are you interested in what I think?”
“Yes, of course I am.”
“I don’t want you quoting me to her, Matt. I’d like your word on that.”
“Sure.”
“Your sister is a fine psychiatrist and a fine teacher. Perhaps for that reason I was terribly disappointed in just about everything she had to say, and certainly with her theories. They weren’t at all professional-although she is so good that some details were valid-but rather the near maternal musings of a loving sister. Furthermore, she should have known that, and that you should not even think about treating someone you deeply care for. It clouds the judgment. In this case, spectacularly.”
“You’re saying she’s wrong about everything?”
“Just about everything.”
“She makes a lot of sense to me,” Matt said. “So what do you think is wrong with me?”
“I told you when I first came in here. You’re like a thoroughbred racehorse. You think you have a bottomless pit of energy from which to draw strength, physical and emotional, and that you’re unstoppable. You don’t and you are.”
“I’ve found out that I’m stoppable, Dr. Stein. Did she tell you how I came apart?”
Matt mimed the rising of his trembling hand and slapping it down.
“In detail. Including how you wept and allowed yourself to be comforted as she held you like a mother. In short, Superman, you showed typical symptoms of emotional exhaustion. The treatment is basically rest and the admonition ‘Don’t push yourself so hard from now on.’ ”
“That’s all?”
“I think you ought to see Dr. Michaels a couple of times. He said he’d be happy to, and you won’t be the first cop he’s talked to about something like this, because you are by no means the first cop something like this has happened to.”
“Come in, Doctor,” Aaron Stein said to Amy Payne. “We have to discuss the patient in 1411, and your relationship with the patient.”
“What did Keyes Michaels have to say?” Amy asked.
“Dr. Michaels and I agree the patient was suffering from understandable emotional exhaustion, from which he-being of sound mind and body, so to speak-will recover rapidly with no lasting ill effects.”
“Well, I don’t agree with that, Aaron.”
“As his attending physician, and after consultation with Dr. Michaels, I have decided that further hospitalization is not indicated, and I have ordered his release.”
“Without consulting me?”
“That brings us to that, Doctor,” Stein said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re Matt’s sister, Amy, not his physician. You seem to have forgotten that. It’s unethical-not to mention stupid- for a physician to treat anyone with whom the physician has a familial or other emotional connection. It clouds the judgment. You know that. Or at least knew it. You seem to have forgotten.”
“All right,” she said after a moment. “I was wrong. Sorry.”