Neal rubs his face tiredly. "I swear to god I have been trying to do this as delicately as I know how, but Sameen, that your brain doesn't tell you what your body already knows doesn't mean the feelings aren't there. You can be one of the least objective people I know. Everything you do is emotionally driven, everything. You assume objectivity because you can't identify what you're feeling and assume bias in the rest of us when some of us can. The reality of it is you can't tell if you're being objective because you've never learned to separate how you feel from what you feel."

He sighs. The faintest, most aggravated, loving smile flutters across his face. "You told me Malcolm hurt you--crossed several lines. You made that very clear. You said he does it to others. And there are times that he does. But pretty much everyone else I know who's had struggles with Malcolm has been able to talk through them with him and move on."

He walks slowly over to sit down on the couch next to her. "He hurt you somehow, I'm not going to make you share. But you're so dead set fixed on the idea that you're objective simply because your emotional experience is different than the..." he gestures at himself "...louder ones among us--you haven't given yourself any time or grace to figure out where that hurt comes from and how it can actually be resolved."

He tentatively, experimentally puts a hand on her arm. "And you didn't fail Will. What happened has nothing to do with how closely you were watching him and everything to do with this boat being packed to the bow with unstable personalities under pressure."