Gretchen sighed and put her phone into her pocket. “Don’t take this the wrong way—”
Josie cut her off. “Whenever someone says ‘don’t take this the wrong way,’ I know I’m going to take it the ‘wrong’ way.”
Gretchen laughed. “Listen, since last month, since your sister’s case, you’ve been a little off.”
Josie felt anger bubble up inside immediately. Defensiveness. She bit back a sharp reply, waiting for Gretchen to elaborate. The light changed and Josie punched the gas, heading up the long hill that was home to Denton Memorial Hospital.
Gretchen said, “You’ve been a little brash. Quicker to anger. A little more…”
She drifted off and with a sinking feeling, Josie knew the word she was avoiding. “Emotional,” she supplied.
Gretchen said nothing.
“I haven’t been—” Josie began but stopped herself. Gretchen was right. A month earlier her twin sister, Trinity Payne, had been abducted, and Josie had taken point on the case. It had been especially complicated because of Josie and Trinity’s relationship. They hadn’t even known they were sisters until a few years earlier. For Trinity, being reunited was a happy occasion, but for Josie, it came with the realization that her entire life had been a lie, and that the trauma she had endured as a child could have been avoided. Trinity’s kidnapping had stirred up old feelings of grief, loss, and rage for Josie. She’d thought that after they found Trinity alive, those feelings would go away, but they hadn’t. It had helped to have Trinity near, but two weeks earlier she had had to return to New York City to try and salvage her journalism career. Josie missed her terribly. All of it was causing a swell of confusing, difficult emotions. She thought she’d just been tamping them down the way she always did. Apparently not very well.
Gretchen said, “You’ve been short with the team lately. You snapped on that drunk and disorderly we brought in the other night, and last week, in the bathroom, I heard you crying.”
Josie kept her eyes on the road. She couldn’t deny any of it, as much as she wanted to. Still, the words came, as if of their own volition. “I wasn’t crying in the bathroom. I don’t cry, I—”
She stopped. What did she do when she was upset or stressed or anxious? When her demons threatened to overtake her? She used to drink until she blacked out. But she had stopped doing that two years ago because it didn’t lead to anything good.
“Right,” Gretchen said. “You were trying not to cry, then.”
Josie’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “That was the day that drunk driver crashed into a tree. I did the death notification. He had a—a six-year-old daughter.”
Still, it wasn’t like Josie to break down. She’d given dozens of death notifications in her career. The number of grieving children she’d comforted, as well as the children she’d helped rescue from abusive situations, was in the hundreds. She had always maintained a professional demeanor even when every cell in her body yearned to break down and weep. Compartmentalizing was one of her greatest skills. What was happening to her? Why had that case gotten to her? Why was everything getting to her lately?
“Today,” Gretchen went on, “you put the rest of us at risk by going back into the water. Surely you realize that. I just think that under more normal circumstances, you would have thought more clinically about the situation and let that body go.”
“I’m sorry,” Josie said without looking at Gretchen.
They crested the hill, the large brick edifice coming into view. The city morgue was located in the basement of the hospital. Josie didn’t know whether or not the city planners had taken flooding into account when they decided to build the hospital there, but the tall brick building sat high enough over the city that it was well out of the danger zone.
“Boss, I’m always on your side,” Gretchen added. “I’m just saying I’ve noticed a difference in you lately. Hayes got frustrated today. His job is to rescue people. It was tense out there. Everyone’s on edge. We’re all just trying to save lives.”
“I know,” Josie said.
“Anyway,” Gretchen said. “Forget about that guy, okay? What are the odds you’ll have to work with him again—or even see him again after these floods are over? Right now, we’ve got work to do.”
Josie sighed. She swiped a lock of wet hair out of her face. She needed coffee. “Good point,” she conceded.