It Happens All the Time

by Amy Hatvany

  “I can feel you worrying from here,” he said, rolling his head to one side so he could look directly at me. His voice had taken on a softer edge, so I assumed the pain meds were doing their job.

  “I’m not worried,” I lied, trying to sound more confident than I felt. He could still hear my thoughts before I spoke them—would anyone else ever know me so well? Could I feel as safe with another person, the way I used to feel safe with him?

  “Yeah, you are,” Tyler said. “Trust me, you don’t have to.”

  I took a few steps over to the sink on the opposite side of the room, grabbed a small paper cup, and filled it with water, gulping it down. I refilled the cup, drinking until my parched throat was finally quenched. I turned around, about to answer him—about to remind him that he’d stolen my ability to trust him when he held me down on that bed—but just as I opened my mouth, two uniformed police officers entered the room. I froze where I stood, the empty paper cup still in my hand.

  “Amber Bryant?” one of the officers asked, looking at me. He was young, maybe even younger than me, reed-thin and tall, with closely cropped black hair and blue eyes.

  “Yes,” I said, but my voice cracked on the word, so I cleared my throat and spoke again. “That’s me,” I said, then crumpled the cup and threw it in the garbage beneath the sink.

  “And you’re Tyler Hicks?” asked the other officer—an older, thickly built man with salt-and-pepper hair and a full mustache.

  “Yes, sir,” Tyler said.

  “I’m Officer Porter,” the older cop said, and then he gestured toward the younger man, who was standing closer to me. “This is my partner, Officer Olsen.” Tyler and I both nodded, and Officer Porter continued. “Can you tell me what happened to you, Mr. Hicks?”

  “Yeah, of course,” Tyler said, and again, as it had when I first entered the ER, my body tensed and I began taking shallow breaths. Everything hinged on this moment, what would come out of Tyler’s mouth next. “Amber and I went up to her parents’ cabin to winterize it,” he said, maintaining strong eye contact with the older officer. “She picked up her dad’s gun, and for whatever reason, it went off. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor and I was bleeding.”

  Officer Porter glanced my direction, and I nodded, still anxious, every nerve I had still shot through with fear, because no matter what Tyler said, it was possible the cops wouldn’t believe him. It was possible that they’d poke and prod at our story until it fell apart.

  “I don’t know how it happened,” I said. “I feel terrible.” This was true. I did feel terrible, but not because of the shooting. It was so much more complicated than that. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I hoped that the officers would view this response as a show of remorse instead of what it really was—the dizzying confusion I felt about the fact that Tyler had chosen to protect me now, despite also being the one who tore my life apart. If, when we got home, he actually confessed to the rape, we would need to withhold the truth of how he had been shot from everyone—from the authorities and our parents. I would have to trust that he would forever be the keeper of this secret.

  “How far apart were you when the gun discharged?” Officer Porter asked.

  “About six feet, I think?” Tyler said, looking at me. “Does that sound right?”

  I nodded again, not trusting my voice, worried it might break and give us away.

  “She helped me put pressure on the wound and got me here as fast as she could,” Tyler said. “We had to take the logging road, since the main road is still washed out.”

  The tension inside my chest began to lessen as Tyler spoke, and it looked as though Officer Porter believed what we had said. I watched as Officer Olsen made notes on the pad he carried, and then looked at his partner, expectantly. He must be new, I thought. He’s waiting for a cue because he doesn’t know what to do next. I felt a little better knowing that we were only dealing with one experienced cop, hoping this meant that they’d be less likely to doubt our story.

  “Where’s the weapon?” Officer Porter asked.

  “In my truck,” Tyler said, and I was glad I’d put it inside the console when I’d gone to get the first aid kit. If I hadn’t, if I’d left it at the cabin, the cops might have thought we had something to hide.

  “Did you check to see if the safety was on when you picked it up?” Officer Porter asked, turning toward me.

  “No,” I said, suddenly tearful again. “I should have. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Tyler said, locking his green eyes on mine. “It was an accident. A mistake. I know you didn’t mean to do it. You’d take it back if you could.”

  His words hit me hard, since I knew that he wasn’t only talking about what had happened with the gun. I started to cry then, in earnest. My shoulders shook and I put my face in my hands. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so, so sorry.” But as I sobbed, I realized my apology wasn’t about shooting him—it was more about the loss of our friendship. In that moment, listening to him lie to the police in order to protect me, I felt connected to him the same way I used to before the rape. I remembered what it was like to be in on something with him, to know something that only the two of us knew—to trust someone implicitly—and it struck me, then, that we’d never have that same kind of closeness again. Everything I believed about him, about me, had changed.

  “It’s okay,” Officer Olsen said, awkwardly patting my back.

  “We’ll need to examine the gun,” Officer Porter said as he handed me a tissue from the box on the counter next to the sink. “And file a report.”

  “Thank you,” I said, sniffling as I took the tissue from him. I felt Tyler’s eyes on me, too, but I couldn’t look at him, for fear that I might totally fall apart.

  “Do you need anything else?” Tyler asked. “Do we need to sign something?”

  “No,” Officer Porter said. “Seems clear this was an accident.” He looked at me. “Don’t beat yourself up too badly, miss. These things happen.” He paused, and frowned. “But in the future, you might want to look into some gun safety training, if you’re going to be handling a weapon.”

  I bobbed my head and blew my nose, just as the male nurse reentered the room. “All right, Tyler,” he said. “Time to wheel you off for some tests.” He looked back and forth between the officers. “Did you get everything you need?”

  “Yep,” Officer Olsen said. “Just need to take a look at the gun.”

  “I’ll take you to the truck,” I said, feeling like now that Tyler had made an official statement to the police that the shooting was accidental, I could leave him alone and not worry about him telling the hospital staff something else. I couldn’t follow him around forever. On this one issue, I’d have to trust him—I had no choice.

  Twenty minutes later, after the officers had inspected the gun and confirmed for their report that there had been only one bullet discharged, I sat in the waiting room of the ER. Except for me and one older man napping on a small couch, it was empty, which wasn’t surprising. Monroe wasn’t exactly a raging metropolis; anyone with more serious, life-endangering medical issues would likely be taken to Everett, to a bigger hospital.

  As I waited, I wondered what my parents would believe had happened, and how Liz and Jason would react to Tyler’s injury. I decided that I’d better at least text my parents and let them know I was okay. I’d left a note for them before I’d gone to confront Tyler, saying that I probably wouldn’t be home that night, but there was no way I’d be able to hide the fact that Tyler had been shot, and that I’d been with him when it happened.

  I quickly typed out a text to both my mom and my dad, telling them that Tyler and I had gone up to the cabin to try to work things through. I said that I’d taken the gun from my father’s office just in case, as a way to feel safe and secure around Tyler, and that it had accidentally gone off. I felt terrible for lying to them, and guessed they might suspect that I had purposely pulled the trigger, but as long as Tyler and I told the same story, no one would
be able to prove otherwise. Again, I was struck by the oddity of this new and unlikely alliance with the man who raped me. This lie would forever link us.

  My phone immediately began to chime with anxious return texts from both of my parents—“Where are you? How could this happen? Are you okay?”—so I told them where we were, that the doctors were taking care of Tyler, and that I was fine. “He admitted what he did to me,” I told them. “He said he’ll tell the police.”

  Knowing this would set off another litany of responses, I turned the sound off on my phone and shoved it back in my pocket. My stomach growled, but I ignored it, instead thinking about what the police in Bellingham would do when Tyler confessed. What kind of consequences he would endure. I had read enough about rape shield laws online to know that my name would be kept out of the paper unless I consented to having it made public, but Bellingham was a small town. People who knew our families were aware of how close Tyler and I were, not to mention there were other people who had attended the party and might put two and two together, remembering us making out on the dance floor, and then my abrupt departure with Mason and Gia. I need to move, I thought suddenly. I need to find a place where nobody knows me.

  “Excuse me, miss?” a voice said, jerking my attention back to the waiting room.

  “Yes?” I said, startling in my chair, realizing that I’d begun to doze off. I looked up to see the same male nurse who had taken Tyler for his tests standing in front of me.

  “Everything looked good. He’ll need some physical therapy, but the bullet missed the joint, so there’s no need for surgery. We’re going to clean the wound and pack it, put him in a sling, and give him some antibiotics and pain meds, and then you two can be on your way.”

  “Thank you,” I said, strangely relieved that Tyler’s injury hadn’t been worse. Maybe the long shadow of our friendship would always be the first filter through which I saw him. Maybe, no matter the damage he’d done or how hard I tried to fight it, there would always be part of me that cared.

  • • •

  We left the ER in Monroe around two p.m., and spent an hour and a half in silence as I drove us north—home, to Bellingham. Tyler slept most of the way, but then, just as I turned on my blinker and took the Lakeway exit off of I-5, he spoke.

  “Do you want me to do it today?” he asked. His voice was dull. Defeated. “Should we go downtown right now?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “We should.”

  “They’ll want you to make a statement, too, I’m sure,” Tyler said. “But probably not until after I’ve made mine.”

  “Okay.” I wanted to say more, but I was so tired, my brain seemed to be running out of words. “I told my parents we went up to the cabin to try and talk things out, and that I brought the gun just to help me feel safe around you. I told them it went off on its own. That it was an accident.”

  “Then that’s what I’ll say, too,” he said.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him turn and look at me, but I forced myself to keep my gaze forward as I turned onto Lakeway Drive and followed it until it became West Holly, a one-way street that led downtown. “You promise you’ll tell them everything,” I said, my voice an octave higher than usual. “You’ll tell them what you did?”

  “I promise,” Tyler said, without hesitation.

  I drove toward Grand Street, thinking that I’d need to have one or both of my parents come pick me up at the station and take me to get my car, where I’d parked it last night when I was waiting for Tyler’s shift to end. I couldn’t believe that barely thirteen hours had passed since the moment I approached him in the parking lot. It seemed like another lifetime; I felt like I’d aged a hundred years.

  As I pulled into a parking spot and turned off the truck’s engine, Tyler looked at me again. “I know this doesn’t change anything,” he said. “And I know it doesn’t help, but I really am sorry. I’d do anything to fix it.”

  “Do this,” I said, keeping my voice hard, even though a small spot inside my heart ached hearing the angst threaded through his words. “Do what you promised to do.”

  “And that will make things right?” he asked, with a sliver of hope.

  “Nothing can do that,” I said. I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel “right” again, whatever that meant. All I knew was that the idea of his confession and the punishment that would likely follow were the only things helping me to believe I might be able to get on with my life. Those steps had to be taken before I could find a way to move on.

  We sat in silence for another moment, before Tyler used his free hand to open the truck door. Carefully, he landed on his feet on the cement below, and then looked back at me. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and handed them to him, even though I knew with his shoulder in a sling he wouldn’t be able to drive. But that wasn’t my problem to solve.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, again, and then I watched as he shut the door behind him and made his way up the steps to the police station’s front doors. Part of me wanted to run after him, to make sure that he recounted every moment of what he’d done, but another part of me knew that I couldn’t stand to hear it. What happened that night already played on a constant cycle inside my head; I didn’t need any help remembering the details. I didn’t need to hear them from Tyler’s point of view. All I needed was the knowledge that he was headed inside that building in order to set the record straight. He was going to tell the truth.

  Tyler

  Three weeks after I walked into the police station and turned myself in for raping Amber, I made my way inside Bellingham Towers, where I had an appointment with my attorney, Peter Thompson, whom my mom had hired as soon as I called her and said that I’d signed a document waiving my right to have a lawyer present during my confession. Hours later, after an officer had led me into a small room and recorded every word I said about what I’d done to Amber on the Fourth of July, second-degree rape charges were filed against me, and after one night in jail, my mom bailed me out and introduced me to Peter.

  Today, I was headed to his office in order to discuss the plea bargain he’d been offered by the district attorney, and though I was determined not to let my anxiety get the better of me, I could still feel it surging in uncomfortable sparks beneath my skin. As I opened the single, smoked-glass door that led to the reception area of his office, my heart banged inside my chest, and I wished hard for a Valium to steady my nerves.

  “Hi, Tyler,” Peter’s receptionist, Jane, said when she looked up from her desk and saw me. She was a short, skinny woman, likely in her late fifties, who wore red-framed glasses, and whose silver hair stuck straight up in messy spikes on top of her head. “How’s the shoulder?”

  “Better, thanks,” I said, trying to smile, even though my lips trembled. The sling I’d worn since the morning at the hospital in Monroe came off a week ago, and though the wound still ached and itched as it healed, the pain was manageable with Tylenol. Every time I looked at it, though, every time I took in the red, puckered skin around the dark scab that had formed, I was reminded of Amber’s face just moments before she shot me—the pure, rancorous anger in her hollowed-out eyes. I remembered the terrible pain that I had caused her. And even though I was terrified of what might happen to me next, I tried to hold on to the fact that at least I’d done what she asked—I’d given her the one thing that she needed most.

  “Peter’s ready for you,” Jane said, nodding in the direction of his office. “Would you like anything to drink? Coffee or water?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m good.” I wondered if it was difficult for her, as a woman, when her boss represented a client like me, who had confessed to committing a rape. The few times I’d been to Peter’s office, she had never been anything but polite, but I couldn’t help but think that she was probably just a good actress. I bet she went home and had a drink to blur out the uglier portions of her job.

  I turned right and headed down the narrow hallway that led to Peter’s office. “Hey,” I said, as I entere
d the room and shut the door behind me.

  “Good morning,” Peter said. He stood up from his sleek glass-and-chrome desk, and walked around it in order to shake my hand. He was a little shorter than me, not quite six feet, with the body of a college football player who had lately spent more time on the couch than in the gym. He was fighting a receding hairline, and wore a blue suit and shiny black loafers. “How are you?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, as I dropped into one of the two high-backed, black leather chairs that sat closest to the door. I should have said I wasn’t okay. I should have said that I was about to crawl out of my skin, wondering whether or not I was going to end up in prison. “As good as can be expected, I suppose.”

  “I take it you heard from your captain?” Peter asked as he returned to his own seat, across from me.

  “Yeah,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “He fired me.” I’d gotten the call a few days before, after Captain Duncan had been contacted by the D.A., who informed him of the charges filed against me. The conversation had been short, less than two minutes, at the end of which my captain told me that I wasn’t welcome back at the station—he would have someone clean out my locker and send me my things.

  “Well, we expected that, right? The law doesn’t allow for you to be a sex offender and a paramedic, too.”

  “I guess,” I said, flinching at the use of the term “sex offender.” No matter how hard I tried, I still couldn’t believe that’s what I’d become. “But that doesn’t make it any easier. That job was my life. It’s all I had.”

  Peter shrugged, and I shifted in my seat, feeling my face flush, suddenly furious that he could just brush off my entire career with a roll of his shoulders. What if someone came along and took his job away? How would he feel, then? Knock it off, I thought. This isn’t Peter’s fault. You did this to yourself. You walked into a police station and told them what you did. I tried to focus on remaining calm as he spoke again.