by Hayden Hunt
I felt so incredibly torn. I kept going from sadness to anger, my stomach doing uncomfortable flip flops as I drove around and patrolled town.
I knew I shouldn’t contact Charlie, but I had to. At the very least, to find out about Bailey. I had really fucked up things with her too today.
I kept my text simple: ‘How is she?’
I didn’t get a response for a while. I was starting to think maybe he wasn’t going to answer me at all. Maybe he was too angry to even speak to me. But that would’ve been incredibly fucked up of him to not even let me know how Bailey was doing.
‘The vet said she’ll be okay. They made her vomit and gave her activated charcoal. She has to stay the night for observation and I will pick her up tomorrow.’
Relief washed over me. The only thing that could have made this day worse was if Bailey wasn’t okay.
My relief quickly left me, though, when I got a second text from Charlie.
‘Don’t text me about anything else. I’ll update you on Bailey but that’s it.’
Just like that, it felt like my heart broke again.
I felt so lost. This wasn’t the first time a relationship had imploded because of my job, but it was the first time I cared. None of the women in the past were important enough for me to feel torn between my job and my relationship.
It was different with Charlie. I may have had goals within my job, but I had life goals with him too. I wanted to marry him one day. I wanted to have children. I wanted to forge a life with him.
I should have known my job was going to get in the way of this relationship too.
I guess I had some overly optimistic idea in my head that this time, my job wouldn’t get in the way because of how much I cared about Charlie. As if just the fact that I loved him was going to be enough to fix the relationship issues that plagued me in the past.
But that was incredibly naïve. Love alone is not enough to forge a healthy relationship. They took work. Not just work between each other, but the ability to work on yourself as well.
I should have learned from my last relationships but because I never cared very deeply about them, I never was motivated to change. It used to be that I was unable to even picture a romantic future with another person, so what was the point?
Now a future with Charlie was everything to me. But what would changing really mean?
I’d need to cut back on my job—that was what would save my relationship… if it was even salvageable. Could I do that?
My immediate answer should be yes. If I loved Charlie as much as I claimed to, I should be ready to give up everything to make it work with him. But I was so hesitant. As much as I loved him, I’d always been so dedicated to my job.
I didn’t have time to think about it anymore because I was getting a call over my radio. I was being dispatched to a house down the street where apparently, a man had been found dead in his bed.
An ambulance was on the way, but I was a lot closer and arrived in minutes. I didn’t even have time to process how difficult of a call this would be. It was just going to be one of those days.
I walked in to see a distraught older woman crying on her couch hysterically.
“Ma’am,” I addressed her, “can you tell me what happened?”
She wiped snot off her nose. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m acting like this. I had expected it for months but… It’s just so different when it finally hits you.”
I sat down next to her. “I’m sorry, I know this is difficult, but can you give me more information about the situation?” I asked.
“Yeah, sure, uh… Well, I was going grocery shopping earlier in the afternoon. My husband was taking a nap when I left, which he did most of the day as of late. When I came back to offer him a glass of water, he… He just wasn’t here anymore.” She began to sob again.
I very carefully rested my hand on the small of her back comfortingly, waiting for her sobs to ease before I asked my next question.
This was another difficult aspect of my job. When people were falling apart and all you wanted to do was comfort them, you instead had to question them about the most traumatic experience of their life. It was necessary, but it was incredibly difficult.
“You said this was expected? Was your husband sick?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said, nodding, “stage four pancreatic cancer. He was terminal. We all knew this was coming. We expected it many months ago, actually, but he kept hanging on.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said softly.
She nodded gently in response. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry to ask, but do you mind if I go take a look? It’s part of my job. I need to get as much information about the situation as I can.”
“No, of course, go ahead. It’s the last room on the right.”
I didn’t bother calling in forensics since it was an expected death of an older man. And if I didn’t see anything suspicious in the room, I’d let the paramedics take over in handling the body.
I dreaded this part. No matter how many times you saw dead bodies, you were never really prepared for it. There was a general discomfort that came along with it.
People said the dead looked peaceful… I thought that was just a bullshit sentiment we spread to make us feel better about ourselves.
Or maybe it was something that the mortuary did when dressing the body that added that peaceful look. Because, I swear, when I saw them, there was nothing peaceful about it. They appeared… lifeless. Not peaceful, just devoid of existence. And it was fucking hard to deal with.
I opened the door to the room very slowly, trying to mentally prepare myself for what I would see next. No amount of preparation was ever enough, though.
The second I walked in, I smelled the familiar scent that made my stomach turn. My first instinct was to run out the door, as it always was, but I had to continue forward and at least take in the scene of the room to make a call on whether forensics needed to come through.
It was a plain, empty room. A few pictures on a walnut dresser, several water glasses sitting on a matching nightstand. There was a very light tan carpet which thankfully made it easy to see there was no blood anywhere and no real sign of a struggle.
The man lay peacefully in a hospital bed that had been set up in his room as was often the case for people on hospice. He was cuddled under a navy blue comforter. His eyes were closed, but you could tell immediately by his face that he was not sleeping. Like I said, the dead just looked lifeless.
I pulled back the covers to make sure there weren't any scratches or bruises on his body to indicate foul play. As I suspected, there weren’t. So I respectfully covered him back up and made my way out of the dusky room just as the ambulance was arriving.
When I walked out to the living room, the woman was bawling again. I could guess why. The sight of paramedics ready to inspect her husband’s body and take him to the hospital for an affirmation of death was too much. It made things more real.
Knowing that there wasn't much more I could do as a police officer in this situation, I sat back with the woman and held her as she cried into my shoulder.
“I know this happens,” she mumbled. “This is part of life. I knew one day I’d lose him but when you’re nineteen and saying your wedding vows and ‘till death do us part,’ you don’t think about the death.”
I had my radio on me and I decided that until I got another call, I was going to sit with this woman. She needed me. This was part of what being a civil servant was all about.
“Why don’t you tell me about him?” I rubbed her back. It was the only way I could think to comfort her as paramedics took her husband’s body away.
So she did.
She told me about how they met, which was at a company party of their fathers, who worked for the same corporation. They barely knew each other six months when he asked her father for her hand in marriage. To which he agreed.
“I know that sounds crazy compared to now. People wait so
long to get married these days and I think that’s good. But it was a different time. Though I have no regrets about saying yes so quickly. Sometimes you just know somebody is the one. You feel it in your bones.”
“Yeah…” I said softly. “I think that’s true.”
“He really was the one. We had our struggles, every couple does, but at the end of the day I always loved him. He was the only one for me. I never strayed and neither did he. I know even after death, I’ll never find someone else. And if he had left me at nineteen instead of married me, I don’t think I would have ever found someone that moved me like him.”
As the words were coming out of her mouth, I could only think of Charlie.
She continued to tell me about their lives together. Funny little anecdotes, stories about their wedding and their first child. She painted him as this amazing father who always put his family first.
The more we talked, the more she seemed to calm down, though she was obviously still incredibly distraught. The love of her life had just passed and even though she’d had years to prepare for it, it wasn’t enough. Just like preparing to see a dead body, it could never be enough.
I was worried about how she was going to handle things when I eventually had to leave, but thankfully one of her daughters was on the way to take care of her.
Just like when I first tended to Charlie’s father, my mind drifted to what it would be like to be old and in her position. Although it was obviously incredibly difficult to lose the person she loved, she still had a family she built with her husband. There was a legacy created between the two of them that continued on even after death.
She had her children to care for her, because of the love she shared with her husband. Her kids even had a piece of him in them, so he was never truly lost. Despite the tragedy, there was something beautiful in that.
And then a darker thought hit me… Was that a beauty I was ever going to experience in my life?
There were people whose lives were tragic in completely different ways. They never found someone they could spend the rest of their life with because they could never work through their flaws. They couldn’t ever step up in a way that a family required… So they never had one.
They grew old the same way and were lonely in the same way, but when their friends slowly started to die, they didn’t have children to comfort them. They didn’t have any family… They were alone. They died alone.
I felt a lump in my throat.
Maybe they were even like me. Maybe they were dedicated to their job and found joy in it… But eventually you retired. One day, I’d be too old to work. So what did you have when that was over? One thing was sure, the job wasn’t going to cuddle up in bed with you at night.
“Thank you so much for staying with me,” the older lady, who I learned was named Nancy, said.
“Of course, that’s what I’m here for.”
“I really do feel better, being able to talk about Edwin. Just getting these memories out helps me process. And that’s all I really need to do… Just process the loss that I knew would one day be here. The truth of the matter is that we had a wonderful, beautiful life together. I am grieving but I have nothing to be sad about.”
“That’s a really beautiful way to look at it,” I told her. “I hope one day I can have a love like that with someone and have no regrets.”
“Oh,” she said with a sigh, “I have my regrets.”
“Really?” I asked. “Like what?”
It may have seemed inappropriate to ask, but we had been speaking so deeply that it didn’t seem out of line.
“Mostly, I just keep thinking about the time lost. All the time we could have spent together and trips we could have taken that I didn’t for various reasons. Just a lot of excuses, really. Maybe I was tired one weekend, maybe I needed to stay late for work. I always had reasons for the times we didn’t get to be together. But now, none of those reasons matter. I would trade anything just to have one more memory with him.” She patted my shoulder comfortingly. “Heed my advice, when you love someone, you make memories. You make time. The only thing that matters is the people in your life. When, one day, you approach your own death, only the people you love will run around in your mind.”
It was like she was speaking to my exact situation.
The doorbell rang and she stood up.
“Oh, good, that’ll be my daughter. I’m sorry to have kept you so long.”
“It’s not a problem at all. It’s been a slow day. I would have left if it was necessary. I hope my company helped at least a little in this difficult time.”
“It did.” She smiled sweetly. “By the way, my daughter is single if you happen to be available.” She nudged me.
I laughed. “I’m sorry, I’m in a relationship.”
Actually, I wasn’t. I had been dumped mere hours ago.
But I was now determined to change that at all costs.
I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it all right away. The changes I wanted to make were going to take a few days.
I guessed I could go to Charlie right away and tell him all the ways I planned to change, but they’d just be words. If I were him, I wouldn’t believe me. I wanted to give him concrete proof that things would be different.
I wished Nancy good luck with everything, politely said hello and goodbye to her daughter, and left to keep working while I thought about everything I wanted to do.
The very first thing I needed to do would happen when I finished my shift today.
The hours that I still had to work dragged on slowly. There were no more big calls coming in the rest of the day, which was nice because this morning had enough stress and emotion for the entire day. Plus, it gave me more time to think about Charlie.
I couldn’t believe mere hours ago, I was wondering if I could give up my job for him. My fucking job, the thing I did to put food on the table. It didn’t mean anything to me! Not in the way he did.
I couldn’t believe it took speaking to a new widow for me to realize that. I also couldn’t believe I went to work anyway even though I had a day planned with Charlie and our dog was sick. I just left him to handle that!
He was right, I could have called in. It wasn’t even a day I was technically scheduled for. But I was worried how I would look if I called in after agreeing to come. I didn’t want to be rude to my bosses and coworkers.
No, instead I just chose to be rude to my boyfriend. I was rude to the most important person to me in this entire world.
That was something we did as people, I supposed. We got comfortable with the people we loved most. So comfortable that we stopped worrying about being rude or hurting them. We worried more about being impolite to strangers on the street than our closest loved ones.
That wasn’t who I wanted to be, though. I wanted to be someone who would be disrespectful to the entire world if it only meant I was able to be kind to my lover. I wanted Charlie to become everything and everyone else.
I also didn’t want to be that man that was married to his job. Who went to work comforting strangers instead of comforting my upset boyfriend and our sick dog?
When the end of my shift finally did arrive, I marched straight into the police chief’s office. Thankfully, he was still at his desk when I finished work.
“Hey there, Bryant.” He nodded to me. “How can I help you?”
“I need fewer hours,” I said bluntly.
He raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“I need fewer hours, sir. I know I’m the first one to take overtime when it’s available, but I cannot continue to do that. I need more time off.”
“I see.” He nodded. “I have no problem honoring a request like that because you’ve given me a lot of faithful years on the force. But I have to ask, what stirred this up? I pegged you for one of the ones that loved the extra hours.”
“Oh, I do. Or at least, did.”
“So what changed?”
I sighed. “Honestly, sir, I’m starting to hurt the lov
e of my life. I think my relationship is in danger and I want to do everything I can to save it. If it’s still salvageable.”
He smiled softly. “I think that’s a good decision, son.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You do?”
This wasn’t how I was expecting this conversation to go over at all. I actually thought maybe the chief would ignore my request entirely. But he actually seemed happy that I needed time off.
“Absolutely! I’ve known you for years, Bryant. And yet all I know about you is related to the job.”
“Well, that’s kind of the only thing there is to know about me.”
“I know,” he said seriously, “and that’s a problem. It’s none of my business how much you do or don’t work, so I would never say anything. Especially when you make it very easy for me to have a cover for anyone calling in. But the level of dedication you had was just unhealthy. You need balance in your life to be happy. A balance between fun and work. It didn’t seem you had any.”
I laughed. “Until recently, I didn’t. But I met my partner and all that changed. Now I really, really do want to take charge of my free time.”
“All right then. I take it you still want full time hours though, right?” he asked.
“Yeah, full time would be good, but nothing over that.”
“No problem. I’ll work around the schedule and let you know what your new hours will be, how does that sound?”
“Absolutely perfect!” I grinned. “Thank you, Chief.”
“No problem, Bryant. Have a good one.”
I made a move toward the door to exit his office, but he stopped me right as my hand was on the doorknob.
“Hey, Bryant, make sure you make it up to your lover for standing by your side.”
Oh, I planned to. I planned to sweep him off his feet as soon as possible.
But that wasn’t going to be tonight. Because the last thing I needed to do to prove my dedication to Charlie was something I couldn’t do until tomorrow.
14
Charlie
“Okay… Thank you for letting me know,” I said softly to the person on the phone before hanging up.
