Cameron Andrews Box Set

Chapter 3-2

“Yes. But I’m not at liberty to tell you until you’ve gone through some evaluation and training. I’m sorry.”

“I understand.” Cameron stared ahead through the traffic.

“Relax, Cameron. Let’s get to know each other before I have to get tough. It’ll be a lot easier that way.”

* * * *

When Cameron walked into the office the next afternoon, Russ gave her a raised-eyebrow look.

“I noticed that your car didn’t move all night.” he said, keeping his eyes focused on the report in his typewriter.

“You my mother?” Cam asked. She sat down and thought back. It had been a very pleasurable night. After a wonderful pasta dish that Maggie swore she’d picked up at a deli, Cam and Maggie had talked about everything they could think of; their families, where they grew up, who they’d dated in high school, what college had been like for them, why they were doing what they were doing. Cameron was still aware that she was being interviewed, tested, evaluated, but Maggie was so open with her life that Cameron had almost no qualms about being open and honest in return. This woman was good at her job and knew how to draw the most out of people. They’d both been surprised to discover it was almost three o’clock in the morning, at which time, Maggie had declared that it was too late, and they were both slightly too inebriated, to drive around town. She’d shown Cam to her guest room and kissed her lightly on the lips, then disappeared into her own room, shutting the door behind her.

“Well?” Russ broke into her train of thought.

“Well, what?”

“Your date.” Russ always wanted details. “Well?” he demanded.

“I like her. Nothing happened.”

“You didn’t spend the night with her?”

“I didn’t say that. I said nothing happened.”

Russ shook his head. “Radcliffe, my dear, you’re either getting slow in your old age or there’s something wrong with this picture.”

“Nothing wrong. Just taking it slow. She’s a classy lady.”

“Slow, huh. When’re you seeing her again?”

Cameron smiled sweetly at him. “Tonight.”

* * * *

The two weeks after she had first met Maggie passed quickly. For Cameron, it was a time of burning the candle at both ends. Each night, when her shift was over at the precinct, she’d grab a quick bite to eat then meet with either Maggie or with Craig’s assistant, Wendell Adreopolous, at some predetermined place for a training session. And each night, from the different meeting places, she’d been taken by some circuitous route to a safe house where she underwent several hours of training or testing. The nights with Wendell were never the same. One night it’d be investigation techniques, another, technical surveillance devices, the next, a review of pertinent laws and prior case studies until he’d finally drop her back where she’d left her car and she crawled home to bed. Her mind was reeling. She hadn’t worked this hard in graduate school, but then, she hadn’t had a full-time job at the same time either.

Her sessions with Maggie had gotten harder and had filled every other night. Question after question after question. And then start all over at the first one. What was Maggie looking for with her questions? Why ask the same ones over and over again? Cam couldn’t figure out what this was all leading to. The only thing that made it seem easier was that bed in the guest room of Maggie’s apartment, which had become her second home.

She was weary. She’d explained her family, she’d explained her education, she’d explained her job, she’d explained her relationships…well, most of her relationships. She’d never be able to explain Karen.

Beautiful Doctor Karen Amos. They’d met while Cam was working in Virginia and Karen was in her last year of medical school. A gorgeous blond with a body that left most fashion models in the dust. Men immediately assumed that she was straight and fair game and that they’d found an easy mark. That was, until she unleashed her magnificent mind on them and left them with their mouths hanging open. Karen was more intelligent than anyone Cam had ever met. She inhaled the written word and could spit it back out fully digested and defined at a moment’s notice. She adored opera and ballet and loved to jog and play volleyball. She loved living and she savored the day that she could find a cure for something or make someone’s life easier.

Karen and Cam had lived together for over three years. Cam had even made the commute every day from Baltimore to Langley, Virginia just because Karen did her residency at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Cam thought it better for her to commute on her regular nine to five schedule, than for Karen to have to worry about driving home after late night or double duty shifts at the hospital.

Karen had brought Cam to Baltimore. It was then that she’d decided to apply to the Police Academy rather than sit behind a desk and stare at cryptic notes day after day.

Karen. Cam hadn’t thought about her for a long time. Oh, she’d passed through Cam’s mind now and then, but Cam had learned not to let her dwell there. She’d spent two years trying to decipher that relationship and still hadn’t gotten past square one. She’d probably never be able to forget that day.

* * * *

It had been a hard afternoon. Cameron laid her crutches against the wall as she lowered herself onto the couch. Something was wrong. Karen had been distant and quiet ever since they’d returned from the ceremony.

Cameron had just been decorated with the City’s Medal of Valor. The newspaper and TV reporters had been buzzing around, trying to get her to say a few words: trying to analyze who this new hero was, this woman who had saved the lives of two little children who were being held at gunpoint by their mother’s crazed boyfriend. Karen had helped her weave her way through the crowd of well-wishers and finally get to a place where she could sit and relax without someone snapping a flash bulb in her face.

That was three days ago. Cameron couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Now Karen wanted to talk.

“What is it, Honey? What’s up?” Cam asked as Karen sat down across from her in the overstuffed chair.

Karen took a deep breath, her eyes still not meeting Cam’s.

“I can’t do this anymore,” was all she said.

Cam rolled it around in her mind. “I don’t understand.”

“I can’t be there for you. I can’t go on like this. I need you to move out.”

The words hit Cam right between the eyes. She was totally unprepared. Three weeks before, they’d been making plans to go up to Provincetown for a couple weeks later in the summer. Then there’d been that hostage situation and Cam had ended up in the hospital with two bullets in her; one in her backside, another in her leg.

“I know this is a bad time for you, but it’s something I have to do. I’d move out, but this is hospital subsidized. You’ll have to go. I can’t put it off any more.” Karen pushed on. She still hadn’t looked at Cam. “I’m going to D.C. for a couple days. I’d really appreciate it if you could be gone when I get back.”

“What?! I don’t understand. Is it something I did? If it is, I’m sorry. I could try to fix it.” Cam broke out in a cold sweat.

“It’s not something you did, Cameron. It’s who you are. I can’t live worrying that the next time the doorbell rings, it’ll be someone telling me I have to go and identify your body. Every time the police radio in the ER reports that a policeman has been hurt, I start to shake. I can’t do that anymore. I don’t want to have to be there for you.”

“You don’t need to worry so much,” Cam pleaded. “I’m careful. I’m not going to get hurt again.”

Karen’s anger flared. “You can’t promise me that!” she spat at Cam. “You’ve been on the Force for less than two years and you’ve been shot twice. Either time could have been fatal. You put yourself in danger without ever giving it a second thought. It’s who you are. It’s how you think.” Karen finally looked Cam in the eyes. “I don’t want to be on duty in the ER the next time they bring you in.”

“Well…maybe I can get a desk job, at least for a while. I can’t go back out on the street, yet, anyway. Maybe there’s something…”

“Cam, you can’t!” Karen stopped her. “I’ve known this ever since you started talking about joining the Police Force. I’ve dreaded it. I thought I could handle it. I can’t.”

Cam let the silence stretch on for a few minutes.

“I could be more careful, maybe go into forensics. I don’t plan on being a street cop all my life.”

“Please.” Karen put her hand up to stop her. “If I thought you could do that, I’d jump at the chance.” She shook her head “I’ve known you too long…and too well. There’s a lot of anger inside you. It’s who you are. It eats at you when you sit behind a desk. One of these days it’s going to erupt and swallow you. I can’t be around when that happens.”

Cam wiped her hand across her mouth, as if she could reach inside and find the right word to make this all go away.

“I’m sorry, Cameron. Please don’t make this harder than it already is. I’ll expect you out by next Thursday.”

With that Karen got up and walked out of the apartment.

* * * *

Maggie’s question interrupted Cam’s reflection. “So what happened?”

“That was it. She wouldn’t return my calls, wouldn’t answer the door, my letters came back marked “Return to Sender.” Cam got up and started pacing again. She could feel herself start to perspire. “I understand her words. I just can’t, maybe I just won’t, understand her actions. I’d just gotten out of the hospital. I was still on crutches. There I was. The whole City of Baltimore is turning out to honor me with the City’s Medal of Valor for saving these kids’ lives. They think I’m the hottest thing going. Imaging that! A woman doing what the men were standing around only talking about. I’d been wounded rescuing this little boy from a hostage situation, and my lover tells me she can’t stand it when I get hurt, so we’ll have to end our relationship.”

“Why? What made her do that?” Maggie pushed, “Don’t you think, perhaps, that she was afraid?”

“Afraid? I was the one that was out there in the street getting shot at.”

“And she was in the Emergency Room both times that you were shot while on duty. Maybe she was afraid of losing you.”

“Losing me? She pushed me away.”

“Losing you. As in ‘watching you die.’ Do you think that maybe it was easier for her to push you away on her own terms than risk the chance that one day they’d bring you in on a stretcher and she’d have to be an unwilling, and perhaps helpless, witness to your death?”

Cam stopped. Maggie made it all seem so logical, so easy to understand.

She sat on the couch. The clock above Maggie’s desk said 2 A.M.

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Maggie suggested. She knew that Cam was practically out on her feet.

“In a minute.” Cam shook her head. “I want to think this through. All she ever said to me was ‘I don’t want to have to be there for you’. Maybe she wasn’t talking emotional support. Maybe she was talking as my doctor.” Cam put her head in her hands.

Maggie watched her with admiration. This was a courageous young woman. Maggie knew she’d pushed many of Cam’s buttons and yet, every time she did, Cam took the challenge and came out a stronger person.

It was Maggie’s job to find the weak spots. To push and prod until she and Cam both knew where they were, then to shore them up and strengthen them.

It was also her job to help Cam break down walls so that when she had to put up new ones, she’d be able to do it without bumping into herself.

In the past two weeks, she’d put Cam through many years’ worth of psychoanalysis. She’d known people who’d seen their psychiatrists twice a week for seven or eight years and hadn’t made the strides Cam had in seven or eight sessions.

“What do you fear most?” Maggie’s question seemed to come out of the blue but Cam knew that it was the last question of the night. Maggie always ended with that question to give her something to think about until they met again.

“Tonight? Tonight I fear…what my family is going to think. If I can’t tell them what I’m doing, well—I’ve never kept anything from them. Hell, the night I came out, I went right home and told my grandmother that I was a lesbian.”

Maggie smiled. “How’d she take it?”

Cam was embarrassed. “I don’t remember. I was drunk at the time.” She laughed with Maggie. “I vomited in her rose bushes. I think she was angrier at that than anything else.”

“Well, that’s one way of sidestepping a confrontation. A good avoidance technique is sometimes the better method.”

Cam smiled under Maggie’s dubious praise.

“What else are you afraid of?”

“What else? You mean two fears in one night?”

“This is the graduate level course, twice the work.”

Cameron hesitated, thinking it over.

“What about you sister?” Maggie asked. “From what you’ve told me, I think she looks up to you. You took over as mother. How will she handle this? What if it looks like you’re doing something terribly wrong?”

Cam frowned. “I don’t know, Maggie. I have to believe that what I’m doing is more important. She’ll still have David and the boys, and our grandmothers. They have a very tight family. I miss being with them sometimes. I just have to believe that they’ll be there for me, no matter what.” Cam stopped. “You know, sometimes I think that Mom’s still around, looking after us. I think she’ll keep everything together.”

“Maybe. Think about it.” That was always the assignment Maggie left her with. “Actually, from what you’ve just said, you have thought about it. Try to feel it. How do you feel about it?” For Cameron that may have been the hardest assignment of all.