by June Gray
I touched a hand to his back and kissed his shoulder. “Then do something about it. Don’t go down this path again.”
“What, you think I’m letting this happen?”
“I don’t know what to think, to tell you the truth.”
“Well I’m trying my best, Elsie,” he said, eyeing me steadily. “But I don’t know how to combat the nightmares or the guilt.”
I didn’t know how either, but slowly I could see the darkness winning, threatening to suffocate the very things I loved about my husband.
“I just . . . need you to leave me alone and let me deal with it on my own, okay?”
His words stung, but what could I do? If I kept pushing, I’d only end up angering him. So even if it was against my nature, even if it was the last thing I wanted to do, I left him there on his own, just like he’d asked.
—
“Thanks for meeting with me,” I said as Sondra and I sat down at an outdoor café.
“It’s no problem.” She waved the waiter over and ordered a glass of wine. “And you?”
“Just an iced tea please.”
Sondra didn’t waste any time beating around the bush. “Look, I know it must be tough with what Logan is going through.”
“You know?”
“Yeah, with the investigation and Franklin’s death, I don’t know anyone who would enjoy this kind of weeklong break.”
“But it goes beyond that,” I said, unsure of how much I could say. Henry might trust her enough to tell her everything, but I sure as hell didn’t.
Sondra watched me carefully. “Every cop goes through a rough patch, especially when they see a colleague die on the same day they make their first kill. Put yourself in his shoes.”
“I have and all I can think of is that I’d be seeking some professional help.”
“He’s getting professional help. He’s at the counselor’s office right now, isn’t he?”
I played with the condensation on my drink, afraid to voice my worry that it wouldn’t work. He’d gone to a psychiatrist once before and it had ended with him breaking up with me. What would happen this time?
“Elsie, seems to me like you’re having trouble with this yourself.”
I nodded. “I guess you can say that.”
“Are you afraid of him? Disgusted with him?”
“No,” I replied. “I just . . . I don’t think the counseling is helping.”
For the past few days, Henry had come home after his sessions more shut off than before, evading even the simplest touch from me. He wouldn’t accept comfort, wouldn’t even let me near him sometimes. And I, in turn, suffered in silence, trying to be the strong one for once.
“I think it’s happening again.”
Sondra gave a nod, like she knew exactly what I was referring to.
“You told me before that it’s my job to keep it from happening again.”
“True, I did. But you can’t blame yourself. Some things go way beyond our control.” She gave a pause, eyeing me for a long, unnerving while. Finally, she said, “I went through something similar several years ago. I don’t tell a lot of people because the automatic reaction is that I’m too soft because I’m a woman.”
“Forgive me for saying so, but there’s nothing soft about you.”
She grinned. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“It was.” I leaned forward. “So what happened?”
“Some gang member at a gas station just started shooting at me. Luckily he was a lousy shot and only clipped my leg,” she said, her gaze unwavering. “For the longest time I couldn’t get over the fact that he was so young. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. I had the hardest time making peace with that.”
She tore off a piece of bread and chewed on it for a moment. “I won’t pretty it up: It took awhile. I don’t know anyone who’s invulnerable to it. We have our Kevlar to protect us from bullets, but we don’t have anything to protect us from the guilt and shame.”
“Then what the hell do I do?”
“Be prepared. Get ready to be frustrated and angry—sometimes so angry, you want to hurt him—and be prepared to be pushed away so many times you’ll be tempted to just leave. But don’t. Don’t give up. Not if you want to see him recover.” The way Sondra talked, the way she kept her eyes fixed on me, spoke volumes about her experience.
“Why do it? Why be a cop knowing that what you’ll experience may very well fuck you up emotionally?”
“Why not? Every job has its hazards,” she said, the tough police officer back. “Most of us don’t enter the force out of some heroic idea, or because we like the power trip. Even if it means we carry a burden on our shoulders, some of us do it just to make a difference.”
—
On the third day of his administrative leave, I came home after work to find Henry still in his pajamas, playing Xbox on the couch. He had a dirty plate beside him and several bottles of beer on the coffee table.
He didn’t even take his eyes off the television when I bent down to give him a kiss on the cheek. I ran the back of my fingers against the beard on his face, remembering that, once upon a time, it had been a turn-on to see him so scruffy. Now it was just another piece of evidence that he was starting to unravel.
“Have you even taken a shower today?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, making an obnoxious popping noise with his lips.
“You went to the therapy unwashed and in your pajamas?”
He gave me a look as if I was the one losing it. Which may very well be the truth. “Really?”
I rolled my eyes and backed off when I felt my temper flaring. Pregnancy hormones and an irritating husband should never be combined. “You got dressed, went out, then came home and changed back into your pajamas. Got it,” I said, taking my shoes off and making my way up the stairs.
In our bedroom, I let out an overlong exhale, trying my best to keep from crying. Be strong, I kept telling myself. Henry needed me to keep it together.
I jumped when hands wrapped around my arms. “How was your day?” Henry asked, his tone much different than a few minutes before. I sank back onto his chest, taking advantage of his momentary affection. His hands slid around to caress my stomach.
“Work was fine. But my back is hurting.”
He kissed the top of my head before going to the bathroom and drawing me a bath. I followed him in and found him lighting some candles.
He turned to me with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I was waiting to take a bath with you.”
I turned my back as I undressed, and the little move didn’t go unnoticed.
“Don’t hide yourself from me,” he said, taking me by the shoulders and spinning me around. “I don’t care if you’ve gained weight.”
It was a sweet thought, but my brain got stuck at the fact that he mentioned my weight at all. The scale said I’d gained nearly fifteen pounds already, due to stress-eating more than the growing fetus inside me. I was self-conscious enough without having it pointed out.
“Come on, I’ve seen you like this before,” he said, pulling me into the bathtub. He sat behind me and wrapped his long legs around mine.
I couldn’t relax, however. “When?”
“Your first year away in college when you gained the freshman fifteen. Or twenty,” he said with some humor in his voice. “A lot of it went to your ass, but you had a lot to grab on to elsewhere.”
I knew he was kidding; I knew this but I couldn’t help but feel the sting of his words. “Shut up,” I said, sitting up and sliding away from him. “Just stop talking.”
“What? What did I say?”
I stood up to get out of the tub, but my foot slipped on the way out. Thankfully, Henry was quick and caught me before I fell. “Damn it, Elsie, be careful!”
I turned to him with t
ears in my eyes, but the words stuck in my throat. I wanted to use every curse word in my arsenal, but didn’t want the situation to get out of control. So I just grabbed a towel and stomped out of the bathroom.
Henry, in his first display of good sense, stayed put.
4
Patrick Franklin’s funeral was held on a somber Thursday morning with the entire Denver Police Department in attendance. Allison and I stood at the corner of Quebec Street and East Eighth Avenue along with countless others—some holding signs and American flags—to pay their respects as miles and miles of police vehicles passed by with their lights flashing.
Allison brought her husband’s police scanner and we listened with tears in our eyes as the dispatcher called a status check on each cruiser. Every police officer answered the call, all but the last one. The dispatcher called his number once. When she received no reply, she called his number again, her voice barely containing her sorrow. At the last call, she said, “All units be advised, Officer Patrick Franklin has officially reached his end of watch.”
—
It was nearly one o’clock in the afternoon by the time Henry made it home, three and a half hours after Allison and I came back from the burial ceremony. I had known Henry would have his duties during the funeral; I just hadn’t counted on it taking so long.
As soon as Henry stumbled in through the garage door, I could tell he’d been drinking.
“You didn’t drive in that condition, did you?”
He lifted his arm to show me the six-pack of Fat Tire beer he was carrying. “Relax, Perez gave me a ride home.” He sat down on the couch and proceeded to uncap a bottle with his wedding band, not bothering to change out of his uniform.
“Where have you been?” I asked, sitting on the love seat.
“I had to go talk to Franklin’s widow,” Henry said then took a long pull from the bottle, drinking nearly half. “And his kids.”
“Is that procedure?”
His eyes flicked away. “No. It’s just something I felt I had to do, considering I was there beside him when he got shot.”
“How did it go?”
“How do you think it went?” he asked, throwing his arm across the back of the couch. “It went like this. Me: Sorry I couldn’t stop the guy from killing your husband. Them: Oh, it’s okay. Even though it’s really not because now he’s gone.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“How would you know? You weren’t there.”
His sarcastic, almost accusatory tone snapped something in me. “Why the hell are you blaming yourself for his death?” I shouted, my anger propelling me off the couch. God, I was so tired of tiptoeing around him. “You didn’t kill Franklin. You didn’t shoot him in the stomach.”
“No, but I did kill someone that day, didn’t I?”
“But he was the bad guy, not you.”
He set the bottle down with a thud; it fell over onto its side and spilled beer on the coffee table, which eventually dripped onto the carpet. “I’m not the good guy here, Elsie,” he said. “I’m no better than that sniper who killed Jason.”
“I can’t believe you’d even say that! You are nothing like that asshole.” I stalked over, grabbed the sides of his face and made him look me in the eyes. “Do you hear me? Nothing.”
He twisted away from my grasp. “He was just doing the same thing I was. He was just doing what he believed to be right.”
That gave me pause and for the longest time, I didn’t know what to say. He was right, in his crazy kind of way, but I refused to think he had anything in common with the man who’d killed my brother. “That guy shot Jason in the back of the head. Unprovoked,” I said. “If you were anything like him, I wouldn’t be standing here in this house, carrying your child.”
He looked up at me, his eyes drowning in sorrow. “Sometimes, without meaning to, we accidentally turn into the people we hate the most.”
And damn if even in his drunk state Henry’s words made too much sense.
—
After a week, Henry’s gun was returned and he was welcomed back to work. I had to admit, it was a bit of a relief to watch him walk out the door with purpose in his step. I wasn’t naïve enough to think that simply going back to work would make him forget his issues, but a part of me hoped blindly for it anyway.
But I knew, as the front door finally opened four hours after his shift ended, that something was still very much wrong with my husband.
“Elsie!” a male voice called out.
I put on my robe and rushed downstairs, recognizing Perez’s voice. My breath caught in my throat when I found Perez supporting a moaning Henry by the arms.
“What happened?” I asked, covering my mouth. “Is he okay?”
Perez released Henry onto the couch, where Henry slumped over, his head bowed to his chest. I reached down to peer into his face, surprised when he smacked my hand away.
I grabbed his hair and pulled, gasping when I saw what he’d been trying to hide: a large bruise on the side of his face. I turned back to Perez. “What happened? Someone needs to start talking.”
Perez put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “We were just at a bar, taking a load off after our shift. Logan was talking to a woman at the bar when her boyfriend came over. They exchanged words, Logan pushed him, then just let the guy hit him. He didn’t lift a finger to fight back, didn’t let me come help.”
“Why didn’t you fight back?” I asked Henry, my grip tightening on his hair.
Perez shook his head again, concern written all over his face. “Listen, this is between you two. I’d better go home before Allison starts to worry.”
“Thanks for bringing him home.”
When it was just Henry and me in the dark living room, I was at a complete loss. Here was my bruised husband before me, slipping into the waters, and the hardest part was that he wouldn’t reach out and grasp the hand I had extended.
In that moment, I felt as if I had no fight left in me. My hand slipped off his head. “Why?”
He took a deep breath and pushed off his knees and rose to his feet. “It was no big deal. Just a scuffle,” he said, still not meeting my eyes.
“And the badge bunny? What were you doing that would make her boyfriend mad?”
“We were just talking.”
“Yeah? Were you telling her all about your pregnant wife who’s waiting for you at home?”
His eyes finally flicked up to mine. “No. We were just talking.”
“You should have been talking to me.”
“I didn’t want to talk to you,” he said. “I needed to talk to someone else.”
His words physically hurt. Even though he hadn’t been unfaithful, it felt as if he’d slammed a door in my face. I realized then that this was it; this was the thing he’d been trying to save me from back when he was having an emotional crisis. He’d had a few different reasons why he’d broken up with me, but in the end, the raw truth of the matter was that he’d tried to spare me from this hell.
Now, to see him going through the torture, I felt lucky to have escaped it before. I wasn’t sure we would still be here today if we’d stayed together and tried to brave his issues together back then. I wasn’t sure I’d be strong enough to watch while the love of my life fell apart in front of my eyes.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said. “I can’t be with you like this.”
“You said you’d never give up on me.”
“I’d do almost anything for you, Henry. I’d walk through hell and back to see you better again. I’ll put you back together piece by piece when you fall apart. But I won’t stand here and wait for you to cheat on me,” I said, tears falling down my face. “There’s only so much I can take.”
His face crumpled. “I would never do that to you.” He wrapped his arms around me as the tears blurred my vision. He sme
lled of sweat and blood and his unique scent and I breathed it all in with an ache in my heart.
After a moment, I felt his hands press against my back. His fingers were shaking as he brought them up to my face, tilting my head up. “I would never, never betray you like that.”
My tears blurred my vision. “You’re not the most reliable person these days, Henry.”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a hoarse voice. His dark eyebrows were drawn, his nostrils flaring, his blue eyes full of sorrow. “I know I’m a disappointment to you. I tried to be the husband that you deserve, instead I’ve become this.”
I stood on my toes and gently pressed my forehead up to his bruised lips. He hissed and pulled back, licking at the wound I’d accidentally opened up. I knew the second he pulled away that the moment had ended, that the darkness had enveloped him once more.
“I’d better go take a shower,” he said, starting up the stairs.
I followed him, watching from the door as he undressed, taking note of the bruises blooming along his side and on his arms. “Is this how you felt? In Korea?”
He looked over his shoulder with a deeply etched frown. “No,” he said, but any relief his answer gave was quickly taken back. “It’s worse. The only guilt I carried back then was breaking your heart.”
He didn’t have to say the rest. We both knew that this time the stakes were much higher.
5
If I thought I was doing a good job of leaving my personal life at home, I was wrong. After the fifth person at Shake commented on my stressed appearance, I had to admit that maybe I wasn’t doing such a hot job keeping my problems under wraps.
“How are things?” Kari asked one afternoon as she took her break by eating a granola bar in my office.
“Good,” I replied like always.
Kari raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. No, they’re not. You look like shit.”
“You know that’s really not something you say to a pregnant lady.”
Kari didn’t seem at all apologetic when she shrugged. “I thought things were going well with the pregnancy? Are you stressing over that?” she asked. “Or is it some sort of PTSD from the shooting?”
