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“Uh, good and bad,” Ballard said. “I have the usual insomnia some nights and on others I’m so tired by the time I hit the pillow, it’s like I’m knocked out. But even after a few hours I’ll wake up and not be able to get back to sleep.”
“You told me once that you can hear the ocean from your bedroom. That doesn’t help?”
“In the winter, it’s too cold at night to keep a window open. So lately I don’t really hear the ocean.”
“I’m going to send you a link to a white-noise machine you can get online. It has various settings, like ocean, wind, leaves blowing across a lawn. I think it could be helpful, but the bottom line is your sleep mechanisms are not working.”
“I know that. Isn’t that why I came here in the first place?”
“It is and we need to keep trying to figure it out. Is there anything new with your mother?”
Ballard shook her head. “Not that I know of, and that’s my fault. I haven’t had time to call Farley since we last talked.”
“Farley is…”
“Dan Farley on the ID team. He’s my contact and he’s taken a special interest in my case, probably because I’m in law enforcement. Or, I should say, he’s taken a special interest in my mother’s case.”
“Well, maybe you’ll have an update by our next session. We can move on. With this busy week you’ve been having, have you been on the water much?”
“Not at all. I haven’t been on a board since the day my badge got stolen.”
“So, a week ago.”
Talk of surfing made Ballard remember that she had Seth Dawson’s watch and needed to get it back to him.
“Renée?”
“Sorry, what was the question?”
“I don’t know if there was one, but you sort of went away there. What were you thinking about?”
“Nothing, really. I recovered a watch that was stolen from a surfer and I have to get it back to him, that’s all.”
“It seems that you’re so caught up in and busy with work that you’ve had no time for the one thing that you’ve told me keeps your sanity intact: being on the water.”
“No argument there. I miss it.”
“What was it you said to me before about the water?”
“It’s my salvation. I know.”
“If you know that, why haven’t you been able to get out there?”
“I’ve had no time. I see the water when I’m driving to work, but I haven’t had the time to get out and on it. But if it will make you happy, I promise to get out there tomorrow morning.”
“That would make me very happy. For you.”
“I’ll do it.”
“So, I want to talk to you about something I said last week. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I was wrong.”
“About what?”
“Well, I wrote something down and you asked what it was. I had written ‘vicarious trauma,’ and I proceeded to tell you that I thought it was at the root of the agitation and insomnia you’re encountering. I more or less said that you were a sin eater, that you took in all the horrors you saw on your job and kept them inside, and they came out in these symptoms we are seeing: insomnia, agitation leading to a short temper.”
“And now you’re saying that’s not it?”
“It’s part of it. But I want to get into abandonment issues with you. Is that all right?”
