Reuniting With the Rancher by Rachel Lee Page B

and into homes, can get to you. They even warned us to leave the job at work and not bring it home.”
    “Why do I think you find that difficult?”
    She gave him a humorless half smile. “I guess you know me.”
    “A little, anyway. So even your colleagues think you need a rotation?”
    “Yeah. And I haven’t been listening. And that got me to thinking about why social work was so important to me, and just what demons might be driving me.”
    “I gather the answer upset you.”
    “Very much.” She was grateful that he didn’t press her, just waited for whatever she wanted to say. At this point she didn’t know. “It’s quite a mess,” she said finally. “Hard to explain. But then I made a link I hadn’t made before and I kinda fell apart.” That part embarrassed her. She was tougher than that, right? Well, maybe not, and it appalled her to be faced with her own weakness.
    “There are,” she said slowly, “a lot of good social workers. I could name a dozen right off the top of my head who could take care of my clients. They’d do a fine job. There’s no need for me to feel like I can’t turn it over to someone else for a little while.”
    “Are you worrying about your relationship with the children?”
    “A little. You develop them, you know. No matter how hard you try to maintain a professional distance, a balance, with at least some of those kids you become a trusted person, someone they can rely on. To just shift myself out of the picture, even if only for a month or so, might not be good.”
    He hesitated. “You came out here for two weeks. You explained to them, right?”
    She nodded.
    “Are any of them too young to understand that you need to go away for a little while but that you’ll be back?”
    “Probably not. And that’s when I looked hard at myself. Just by its very nature, social work results in kids and their families getting different caseworkers from time to time. We try to ease the transition, both of us showing up together at least once, but it happens all the time.”
    “So the kids get it. You’re not a parent but a professional they work with.”
    “Yeah, and that’s what makes what I’m doing so ridiculous. It’s not like I’m the fairy godmother with the only magic wand in town. I started thinking that I’m getting too full of myself. Started feeling too important. The truth is, if I dropped off the earth tomorrow, plenty of competent people would step in to help my clients and they’d be just fine.”
    “Maybe so. Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself? I mean, you care. That’s not something to apologize for.”
    “Another thing they warn us about is that if we don’t take care of ourselves, we won’t be able to take care of anybody else. I’ve been pushing that line for the past year. Driven. Driven to the point that my colleagues are commenting. That’s bad.”
    “Wouldn’t a supervisor step in?”
    “If we weren’t always so shorthanded, maybe. Right now, if I rotate, I’ll probably increase someone else’s load.”
    He gave a low whistle. “That’s a rock and a hard place all around.”
    “But it’s not the whole story. I’ve been taking my work home with me. I think about nothing else anymore. So anyway, as I was standing in the bedroom, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. I’ve lost twenty pounds in the past year.”
    “I noticed. A little too much?”
    “Too much. Five pounds needed to go. Maybe even ten. But not twenty.”
    He waited, and she got the feeling he wasn’t going to accept her weight loss as an excuse for her tears. She sighed again and put her head down. When her voice emerged, it was muffled. “That’s when I made the connection.”
    “To what?”
    “To the attack a year ago. I’ve been avoiding dealing with it by working myself to death. By letting my job consume me. It was easier. Yes, easier. I got sick of people saying how strong I was because I came back to work two weeks later. Because it wasn’t