The Standoff

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It is an open secret among members of the United States intelligence and law enforcement communities that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, maintains a private wing in a mental health facility on a sprawling estate in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The Retreat, as it is referred to, survives each fiscal year of hard line budget negotiations due to a provision in the federal employees’ general health plan guaranteeing six months’ voluntary treatment for alcohol abuse and mental illness. Diagnosed employees are offered three alternatives: resignation, early retirement, or “compassionate leave.”

Special Agent John T. Banish had chosen compassionate leave. He was being discharged now, six months to the day after entering the Retreat. He was healthy again; that was what they told him. Alcoholism seemed to him the only disease that could be talked away.

He was seated in a metal folding chair, one of four arranged in a disjointed semicircle facing Dr. Juliet Reed, resident Chief of Psychiatry. The three other patients, all men younger than Banish, wore cotton hospital-issue blues. Banish wore a suit jacket and tie. His suitcase was set on the floor next to his chair. Dr. Reed wore her usual low heels and a long linen skirt. She was a strict professional but with an encouraging smile. Banish liked Dr. Reed. He just never wanted to see her again.

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