No, protect her one last time.

“Nothing physical.” You answer as look at the necklace.

“What did you say?” The lieutenant asks again.

“Nothing.” You look at the police officer. “Nothing was stolen.”

You decide to protect her one last time. You could easily justify the action since no one will miss a worthless piece of glass that has been replaced by another worthless piece of glass. The real reason, however, is that you're tired; physically, mentally and emotionally. The path of least resistance is to barely mention the masked female vigilante that beat up the Riddler's thugs.

Sitting down on a crate you only half pay attention to the swirl of activity that now engulfs you. EMTs tend to your injuries, police and Athenaeum staff pepper you with questions, but your mind, let alone your soul, is elsewhere.

When the police clear you go, you refuse any suggestion to go to a hospital or even to be given a ride home. Getting into your car you go back to your apartment and collapse on your bed and sleep for nearly a day. When you awake loss and tedium are your companions.

Though you have the day off, your request to go back to work to occupy your restless mind is categorically rejected. In fact you're put on medical leave, which is a nice cover for what it really is, administrative leave, until everything is sorted out with the police.

Consigned to your apartment the silence is most daunting. As always you fall back on your intellect to guide your will and suppress any pain. Logically, you know she is not coming back, so you try to focus on the present duties and things to keep you occupied. Unfortunately, the first two things to be dwelt with are about that night.

First, you find the baseball card she gave you. She must of picked it up and slipped it back into your jacket while you were not looking. It takes a few hours of internet searching but you find the owner it was stolen from. Though you know it's unwise, you find you cannot part with it, and have to pay well over the market price value in order to retain your birthday present. The other memento offers a different challenge: You still have the handcuff around your left wrist. That takes about a day, but with some old surgeon tools and a youtube video you finally remove the device.

Your thinning patience is further tested by the fact your apartment's senior doorman, Frank, is down with the flu. His well meaning, hardworking, though naive and inexperience eighteen year old son, Truman, fills in him. Since Frank has kindly helped you many times in the past you feel obligated to help his nervous son, who calls you several times throughout the day. Even worse, he lets a few reporters slip by who come knocking on your door looking for information about the “Riddler Robbery at the Athenaeum” as the press is now calling it. The reporter from the Daily Planet, a Lois Lane, is practically pushy.

The one task you dread the most, however, is calling your boss, Dr Anne Rorbeck, who set up the original date. Though a colleague, friend and a good boss, Rorbeck has a habit of demanding answers and lecturing, neither of which you wish to face, let alone her possible wrath about standing up her friend. The story you have to offer in your defense, even if you could tell it, you hardly believe yourself. You put off the penance of calling Rorbeck for several days, but that haunting memory begins to consume you.

You do not sleep or eat well and it greatly frustrates you cannot suppress the achings of the heart, especially over a woman who you knew only for one night. All your lecturing to yourself about “acting like some childish fourteen year old” does little good as you find it strange that you have no anger for being lied to or betrayed, just a constant gnawing emptiness.

During one **** moment you stop and look at your wedding picture on your wall, trying to use your dearly passed Jane to exercise the memory of the other. It fails; all you can see in your mind is her standing in the very place a few days ago running her finger over the frame. The emptiness, now mixed with guilt, is most bitter.