My dreams were once vague and whimsical.

Not that I would ever recall much about them upon waking, but I knew they’d consist of the standard, typical flying through the air fantasies or potential idyllic futures.  They were carefree scenarios that pop culture magazines would run articles about, providing bogus insight into your inner psyche.

Now, they were vibrant, sharp, and in higher quality than real life.  I remember every detail of my dreams, because it’s the same dream repeating over and over, cutting off any rest I can truly gain from the act, for it was a nightmare that was completely factual, and there was nothing I could do to change the events in my head.

When I sleep now, I dream of the day my best friend bled out on the concrete while next to me.

We’d been returning to the station from an investigation into a rumored trafficking operation when we heard the gunfire.  Chaeng didn’t hesitate to turn our car around to jump immediately into the fray – she had never been one to back down, whether it was from a confrontation or from the chance to defend another person.  Even when we were kids, although she was the shortest, she was always the tiny vindicator for whoever was in need.

 It happened immediately after we arrived at the scene and dove out of the vehicle to cover – Chaeng was hit by a lucky shot in the right leg, and the adrenaline rush had been so high that I didn’t question her when she claimed to be fine.  

I didn’t check her over to make certain of that myself.  I didn’t notice her face going gray.  I didn’t notice her blue lips, her shallow breaths.  I didn’t notice her sweaty skin, her dilated eyes.

It wasn’t until I ducked back and loaded my backup magazine into my .40mm that I noticed the blood.  It wasn’t until I saw that she’d passed out against the wall we were up against that I knew something was seriously wrong.

Every night I watch as a ghost, screaming at myself to check on Chaeng, to do basic first aid, and every night I am too wrapped up in the fire fight to care about my best friend and partner.  I am helpless as I watch those eyes close for the last time.  I am helpless as I watch her sigh out her last gasp of air.

I don’t sleep much, anymore.

“Detective Chou?” 

Tzuyu stiffened at the abrupt interruption in her train of thought, turning her head to focus on the woman who was demanding her attention.  She felt numb, and recalled a portion of the psycho-babble the department appointed psychiatrist had told her before “recommending” this leave of absence: depression wasn’t sadness.
Tzuyu didn’t feel sad – in fact, she didn’t feel anything, at least when she was awake.  She felt detached, disinterested; like an outsider looking into a room of barbed wire, she didn’t want to open herself to feeling anything because it would be agony to do so.  

Apathy was preferable.

Unfortunately, her primary doctor refused to continue to prescribe her sleeping pills without counselling.

 “Yes, Dr. Minatozaki?”

The other woman’s eyes flicked from the street vendor and back to Tzuyu, before adopting the eternally calm, eternally understanding smile that Tzuyu had seen her use on other clients.  

Minatozaki Sana, the consulting psychiatrist the department used to help with domestic violence cases, was an acquaintance that Tzuyu knew of for two years now.  In fact, before Chaeyoung’s death three months ago, the detective always went out of her way to flirt with her.  It didn’t matter that she was always firmly rejected – she’d found the older woman to be ethereally beautiful, and absolutely cute when flustered.  She used to take it as a challenge that the woman would never use her given name, instead opting for ‘Chou.’

Now, though, it didn’t matter.  She just wanted to go through the motions and go back home.

Tzuyu allowed herself to tune out once more, looking down the street.  Her gaze focused on the corner of a building a few blocks away.

That was where it had happened.  

The bullet had severed her femoral artery, and she went into shock so fast…everything had felt like it was going both in double time and slow motion, all at once.  I was trying to stay alive – I thought she was doing the same.

Evidentially not.

A paper bowl of ddeokbokki was pressed into her hands and the woman sighed, halfheartedly stabbing at one of the rice cakes to bring to her lips.  They continued on their little walk, and the tension she didn’t know she had in her shoulders relaxed a little when they turned a corner and that stretch of pavement disappeared from view.

It had only been a few weeks since she started having sessions with the Japanese shrink, but she already knew from working on cases with her before that Sana’s approach was unconventional.  Instead of stark, white walls filled with diplomas and a couch to lie on, she’d insisted on making her appointments like little outings.  She never initiated any leading questions – she never initiated conversation at all.

It was all up to Tzuyu.

The detective idly toyed with the idea of comparing it to a dating situation – it wasn’t too far off.  They ate together, would window shop and people watch.  On the rare occasion she bothered to do so, Tzuyu would talk about herself so it wouldn’t be a total waste of their time to meet, and Sana would just listen.
It was actually rather annoying.

“Are you really a certified shrink?” Tzuyu asked suddenly, her voice blunt.  The food in the paper bowl had somehow managed to disappear while she’d been lost in thought, and she crushed it in her hand to toss halfheartedly into a trash can they passed by.

It wasn’t the first time Tzuyu had asked that question – no, it used to be her go to pick up line with her, said with a smile that no one but this woman had ever been able to resist.

“It’s what my degrees say,” was her reply.  Tzuyu knew that all of this was supposed to calm her, to ease her back into the outside world after shutting out every bit of stimuli that could possibly try to shove her into that damned, metaphorical room of barbed wire.

Again, annoying.

“Because you really are a terrible one,” she muttered.  She was getting ready to tune out of the moment once more when she felt her world shatter with a loud, thundering bang.

***

Sana secretly shot the detective a dirty look, her inner patience wearing thin.  She wasn’t sure why the former ace had chosen to go to her of all people for counselling – her specialty was post-traumatic stress, not depression or being a rude, sarcastic . 

That wasn’t fair, she knew.  Chou Tzuyu’s depression was real, and she needed help; the problem was that the woman didn’t want help, and wasn’t shy about being brutally honest about her intentions.  

She might need help, but she didn’t want it.

There were two reasons why Sana was allowing the woman to take advantage of her; one was that she sympathized with the other’s grief – she’d known Detective Son too, and found her to be a compassionate, kind colleague.

If she still felt so affected by the loss of such an acquaintance in her life, she couldn’t imagine what the taller woman was going through.

They’d been the epitome of “good cop, bad cop.”  Where the shorter detective would try and coax information from witnesses or suspects, the taller would viciously stab with her words.  Son would follow the rules, Chou would break them.

There’d been many jokes about cop buddy movies being tossed around the precinct in their prime.

The sudden sound of a backfiring car took Sana by surprise and she winced, her arms midway up to her ears by reflex when she found herself grabbed by her biceps and pinned against the wall, head pushed down and millimeters from Chou’s chest.

Sana’s eyes widened and she glanced upwards, trying to remain calm as the panicked woman reacted by reaching for where her concealed weapon used to be.  She allowed herself a moment’s relief that the department had confiscated the semi-automatic pistol for the duration of the woman’s leave.

“Chou,” she tried, watching the woman’s face as she completely dissociated with what was going on.  A small part of Sana felt relieved.

The second reason she’d agreed to treat Chou Tzuyu was that she suspected the woman could be suffering from PTSD, too.

This all but confirmed it.

It was a major breakthrough…but first, she had to figure out how to ground the taller, stronger woman who was currently being her human shield against the bullets in her imagination.

“Chou!” she tried, louder this time while straightening back up to eye level with her clenched jaw.  The detective was hyperventilating, eyes dilated, and her vice grip on Sana’s biceps were so tight that she suspected she was starting to bruise.     

Sana noticed a few concerned looking people pass by and gave a strained, reassuring smile to them; she was going to need to figure this out quickly, or the woman before her was going to have an even harder time returning to work if she ended up going into lock up for presumed assault.

Lifting her hands with great difficulty, she cupped Tzuyu’s face in her hands and forced eye contact, ignoring the shallow observations of how beautiful she was.  

Tzuyu was, and had always been, beautiful.  If it wasn’t for her competency at her job, she’d probably be hazed for it – men had a tendency to find beautiful women taking “their” masculine jobs as a threat.  Tzuyu, Sana had learned over the past few weeks, had been top of her class at the academy.

So it never took her long to make the male population of the police force to eat crow.

She was beautiful, yes.

But more than that, at this moment, she was terrified and quite visibly in the midst of a living nightmare.

***

It all became suddenly quiet and still after the casing of the final round from my magazine clattered to the pavement – the last one was down, and I felt the thrill of being alive.  I wanted to laugh, to cry, to vomit, to dance, to curl up in a fetal position, to find someone, anyone, and shove my tongue down their throat; I’d never been in a firefight before…

“Tzuyu…”

Holy , how am I still alive? There were so many close calls…

“Tzu…”

I look over at Chaeng and the grin on my face fades as I am filled with sickening dread.  She’s so pale, and that is when I notice the blood; how long has she been bleeding? When did it start? It’s starting to coagulate already, it’s…

“TZUYU!”

Instead of the deathly pale face of Chaeyoung, I see the vibrant face of Sana before my eyes as I come back to what’s going on.  Instead of those blue lips mouthing my name, Sana’s soft, pink, vibrant ones are moving as she screams at me to snap out of it.  

She seems to realize that I’m present now, because she relaxes the fingers of her hands that are cupping my cheeks, and I can feel them gently along my jaw – I can’t help but relax, too, at that.

“Let go of me, please,” Sana finally asked me with a soft, level voice, and I feel tears start to well up in my eyes as I relax my vice grip on her arms.

There’d never been a time in my life when I didn’t have Chaeyoung just there, within sight, until the day she died.  I’d taken it for granted that she’d always be there.  I’d taken it for granted that even if there was no one else in the world who could put up with my bull, I’d have Chaeng.

So when she was ripped from me, it was as if I’d developed a Chaeng-sized hole in my heart.

For the first time since I saw her die before my eyes, it hurt.

“I don’t want to feel,” I plea, hating my voice for trembling.  I had no right feel this loss, because it was my fault she was gone.  It was my fault I was alone.

“I know,” she whispered, her eyes filled with sadness as she continued to my face.  I bowed my head as she pulled me into her embrace, and I hid my eyes against her shoulder as I cried.

***

“I don’t want you as a patient anymore,” she said after several long moments of my hair.  

I felt too exhausted from baring all my emotional scars in the middle of the sidewalk to say anything to that, instead conveying my protest by hugging her back and moving my face from being buried into her shoulder to her neck.  

We might not have been close, and she might not have liked me in the past; but now, Minatozaki Sana was all I had in my fragile, shattered world, and I didn’t want to let go.

Thankfully, she seemed to understand.

“Not because I don’t want to help you,” she said.  Her voice was so soothing, but in a way that was different from her professional guise; it was approachable and relatable, for once.

“This may be selfish of me, but I want to be friends, and I think you need one.  If you need those sleeping pills…I will refer you to someone else, but…”

My mind drifts away from what she is saying.  She wanted to be friends. 

The unbroken Tzuyu would have leapt at the chance – how long had I been trying to get together with this exotic looking woman, only to be shot down again and again?

But now, I hesitated.

I could practically feel Chaeyoung nudging me…it’d been so long since I’d thought of what she’d do or say in response to situations.  Chaeng would have told me not to let the chance pass by – to try and be happy.  To not up what may or may not happen, and just let things flow naturally.

“Okay,” I say simply, quietly.  I made no effort to move; neither did she.

And so we held each other in the midst of bustling foot traffic, my face red and swollen from grief.

It was…nice.