---White---
---Marc’s perspective---
O… K…
Well, this isn’t intimidating at all(!)
The woman in the completely white suit turns her face to look at me from her chair, pointed facing out of the window towards the dense field of multicolored stars.
She smiles a joyless smile and states “You’re nervous, Dr Fischer.”
I consider lying for a sec but… I don’t think I’d fool her…
“I am.” I answer.
“Why are you nervous?” she asks, managing to perfectly reproduce the balance of tone she needs to ask a sensitive question without making it seem like she’d be judgmental about my answer… despite not being a therapist.
“I… err… I… uhm… I actually met my wife in a Xenopsychology 101 module at university in Cincinnati… The first time I remember her ever looking at me, like I wasn’t something gross she’d found stuck to the bottom of her shoe, was when I got assigned as her study partner and was helping her understand one of your papers… you’re a bit of a legend(!)”
“What paper was it?” asks the Tibetan woman.
“Understanding Aggression in its Environmental Context.” I answer without needing to spend a moment on recall.
“Oh, yeah… not my best work!… What was it that confused her?”
“Well… she… couldn’t work out why none of what you were saying seemed to apply to Humans(!)”
A more genuine smile spreads across the woman’s tired face.
She asks “And how did you explain it?”
“Well… there wasn’t really, like, any ‘Ah-ha!’ moment… we just ran through every example you gave of aggressive behaviors and I explained how and why a Human’d be likely to react in those circumstances… eventually, she seemed to get it…”
The white clothed woman nods “…So, you’re nervous because you feel like your therapeutic skills might not be quite up to the task of rendering grief counselling to the Mother of Terran Applied Xenopsychology?”
“Guess… so…” I answer, uncomfortably.
She leans back in her chair, seeming mildly satisfied.
“You can rest easy, Dr Fischer… you may have studied my papers as part of your qualification but I’m not a therapist and I’m not here to critique your performance… Try to forget who I am and just treat me like you would any other client…”
I feel relief flood my body.
I was definitely afraid that, once she worked out how terrified I was, we’d have needed to come up with some alternative arrangement… I’d have to have (embarrassingly) asked my wife to switch her for her husband!
“Alright then, Dr Yeshe… why don’t you tell me what brings you to therapy?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“The death of a friend I’ve known for over thirty years.” she answers, simply.
“Representative Mudaliar?”
She nods “Indeed.”
“Would you… tell me a little about him, Dr Yeshe?”
“Lhamo, please…” she smiles.
“Oh… then please feel free to call me Marc, if you want.”
She nods and then answers my question “We met a little less than 3 years into the War… I had been consulting for the UTCIS on my homeworld but, at that point, the Front had been pushed far enough away that it wasn’t really practical for information to be carried back and forth anymore… by the time it reached me and my answer got carried back, it tended to be irrelevant due to the travel delay (you must realise this was before we Terrans had the capacity to just call eachother up, across interstellar distances, and consult remotely). So, I was transferred to Forward Operations.”
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“That’s where you met him?”
“Indeed… He was one of the main administrative directors aboard the Command Fleet… At first, I didn’t really think much of him or his role but… I quickly realised just how much he was holding things together on that ship… how much he was required to understand about the nature of the planets we were fighting on in the spearhead offensive, about the logistical situation back behind us in Terran Space and about how to direct FO personnel for best effect… He was an absolute wizard!”
“You respected him.” I state more than ask.
“I respected him immensely!” answers the normally serene woman, letting a tiny bit of ferocity into her voice “I had one thing I needed to be good at… looking at alien sapients and attempting to analyze the ways that differences between us and them might affect how they viewed the world… Zurab had to wear every single hat on that ship, at least a little… That man deserves more credit than just about anyone else for the swiftness and cleanness of our Victory.”
I nod, considering a moment, before asking “And you continued to work with him after the War?”
“I did… We both worked under Jeanne in the early days of the Peace…” she confirms.
“This would be…?”
“Jeanne ‘Blitz’ Miyazaki, the very same…”
Being reminded of that fact does not do my confidence any favors!
I do my best not to show it as I ask “And what did you do under her?”
She gives a shrug and answers “Mostly very boring stuff, I’m afraid… Sorry to disappoint(!)… It was mostly the tedious work of thrashing out every minute detail of how we wanted to represent ourselves to the species of the wider galaxy and designing the ODR from the ground up… When Jeanne retired from the role and went home, we kept working together under her successors, Inigo ‘Montoya’ Heusaff and, after him, Tazagul ‘Gaze’ Rakhimova… When she stepped down, 6 years ago, however, Zurab finally decided to put his name forward and got chosen to succeed her…”
“How did you feel to suddenly be working under him after working as equals for so long?” I ask.
She shakes her head “I wasn’t resentful… No one deserved the job more than he did! Montoya and Taz were good but they would have been lost without him there!”
“Alright… Ambas…Lhamo… you’ve told me all about your professional relationship to Rep. Mudaliar… How about you tell me a little about your personal relationship…”
She sighs and looks away from me, out of the window she’s facing.
After a few moments of collecting her thoughts, she answers “He was a bridesman at my wedding… I was a groomswoman at his… He was there when my kids were born... I was there, both times, when his were... Our kids absolutely adore eachother, even if the age gap meant that Chan and Sai viewed my three a bit more like older cousins than siblings or playmates… We worked together, so we would regularly socialise afterhours… We both lived in the Residential wing of the ODR on Citadel, so it was always a simple matter to just pop round for tea and a chat… He always felt so… permanent… like something that, no matter what else changed in my life, would always be there… and now… he’s not…”
“And, how are you feeling about that?”
She gives a joyless chuckle as she sarcastically answers “Pretty miserably, actually(!)”
I give her a sympathetic smile and answer “Dumb question, I know… It’s OK if you don’t want to elaborate on that…”
“No, no… I shouldn’t mock the process… I hope I didn’t offend you!”
“You really didn’t. All good!” I answer the grieving woman.
“I’ll… I’ll say some of what I’m feeling…”
“Please do…” I invite “…in your own time.” I clarify. I don’t want to rush her.
She takes some time putting her thoughts in order before answering “…I… guess… the first thing is that I feel terrible for his husband and kids… Chhay, Chan and Sai… didn’t deserve this!… Chhay at least knew what he was signing up for when he married Zurab… the kids didn’t get any say in whether one of their dads was one of the biggest targets of assassination in the galaxy… but they still have to grow up with the fallout… I’m… I guess I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself too… and I’m feeling guilty about feeling sorry for myself… like I’m making it all about me…”
I extend my palms to the sides and say “You’re the one who has to manage how this affects you… There’s no shame in considering yourself…”
She nods and curls her mouth “Not that simple, though… is it…”
“Knowing something and feeling it are very different, yes… It’s not usually possible to debate away a feeling like guilt, even with ironclad logic.”
“There’s… something else I feel guilty for…”
“What’s that?” I ask, cocking my head to the side.
“I guess… He just… he died within hours of me leaving the planet… There’s part of me saying it’s my fault… I should have been there…”
I frown lightly “Do you think it’d have made a difference if you’d been there?”
She shakes her head vigorously “I am an academic… not a warrior… I worked for the UTCIS as a consultant, not an agent… If I’d been there, the only difference it would have made would be that I’d have been murdered too! I know… but…”
“But you still feel guilty.” I offer.
She nods, moisture visible in her lower right eyelid.
“Well… Lhamo. I think we should explore that…”