“You heard me. Thus far, your primary coping strategy has been to lash out. So do it. Yell at me. Call me a bitch or a pervert or a sycophant. Here I sit, having never felt even the sting of a paper cut. And there you are, drowning in waves of physical distress. Rage, D.D. Rant to your heart’s content. There is nothing you can say that I haven’t heard before.”

She did. She swore and fumed and shouted and roared. I let her go for several minutes, building to a full crescendo as she slowly but surely started swinging her left arm in small circular motions, like a dangling pendulum. More sweat beaded her brow. Between curses, she panted heavily as her fractured bone shrieked its own protest.

“Stop,” I said.

“What?” She didn’t even look up at me. Her gaze was locked on a spot on the rug, her eyes nearly glazed over from the stress of her exertions.

“On a scale of one to ten, rate your pain.”

“What do you mean? You just had me do a dozen pendulum swings. I’m at a fucking fifteen. Or eighteen. Or twenty! What the hell do you want from me?”

“So has cursing worked for you?”

“What the hell?” She glanced up, ashen faced, bewildered.

I continued steadily: “For the past two minutes you have externalized your pain and vented your rage. Do you feel better? Has that coping strategy worked for you?”

“Of course not! I’ve been doing PT and we both know PT equals agony. Of course it didn’t—”

“Stop.”

Her mouth open, closed. She glared at me.

“I would like you to swing your shoulder in the opposite direction now. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? Please reverse direction, and this time, instead of yelling, I want you to breathe with me. We are going to inhale for the count of seven, hold it in our lungs for a count of three, then exhale. Please begin. . . .”

She cursed, I held up a hand.

“Detective Warren, you came to me, remember? And we have forty minutes of our appointment left.”

She continued to regard me mutinously, sweat trickling down from her hairline. Then, slowly but surely, she inhaled upon my command.

“Now,” I said briskly, “I want to you to repeat after me: Thank you, Melvin.”

“Fucking Melvin!”

“Thank you, Melvin,” I continued. “I know this hurts. I know you’re doing your job by telling me how much this hurts. I hear you, Melvin, and I appreciate you trying to help me protect my shoulder.”

D.D. muttered under her breath, including a few terms that were clearly not words of praise. Then she gritted out: