Two Man Station

by Lisa Henry

  “Jason,” he heard Sandra say, her voice ragged. “Jason!”

  “Richmond Station,” the operator said. “I need the condition of the—of the people who’ve been shot.”

  “Sandra?” Gio couldn’t look away from Brian, whose fingers were still twitching weakly. Maybe he was dying. Maybe Gio should put pressure on his wounds. But he couldn’t make himself move. He kept his thumb on the microphone button. “Sandra, is Jason breathing?”

  “Yes!” she called back, her voice thready.

  His thumb slipped again.

  “—hear him asking if Jase is breathing!” he heard the operator shouting at someone in the background. “VKR to Richmond Station, was that a yes?”

  “Yes,” Gio said.

  “What about the offender?”

  Brian’s fingers weren’t twitching anymore.

  “No,” Gio said, cold flooding his body and leaving him more numb than before. “He’s dead.”

  Gio watched as blood pooled out from underneath Brian, dark against the grey marbled linoleum floor of the foyer. Did all government buildings have such ugly fucking furnishings? The police recruits in the poster on the wall smiled down at Gio, and he wanted to laugh at them.

  This? he wanted to ask. Is this what you’re selling?

  He reholstered his Glock and bent down to pick up Brian’s rifle. He set it on the counter, and then used the fob on his keys to open the door into the dayroom.

  “Gio?” Taylor wailed from under the desk.

  “Stay there,” Gio said, his voice cracking. “Just stay there, Taylor, please.”

  He stepped around into the workspace behind the front counter.

  Sandra was kneeling beside Jason, her hands pressing against the wound in his chest. His blood was pumping out from underneath her fingers. His face was pale. His mouth was moving, but Gio couldn’t make out any words. His eyes were wide with shock.

  From somewhere outside, Gio could hear an approaching siren.

  Hurry the fuck up, Vicki.

  “Dad?” Taylor asked, appearing in the doorway. He burst into tears. “Dad?”

  “This is a two-man station,” Jason had told him that first night. “If things turn to shit, it’s just us. Even coming lights and sirens, the nearest backup is about two hours away. Longer than that if they’re on the other side of their division.”

  The crew from Hughenden made it to Richmond in a little over an hour and twenty minutes, and all Gio could think was that they must have fucking flown down the highway.

  Jason was at the Richmond hospital now, and Gio didn’t know how bad he was. Gio was at the station with a dead body in the foyer, and he didn’t know what the fuck he was supposed to do.

  The sergeant from Hughenden introduced herself and Gio forgot her name immediately. She took Gio’s firearm off him, taped off the crime scene, and told her senior constable to take Gio to the hospital.

  “Don’t say anything, Valeri,” she warned him. “Not until you get a union rep.”

  Gio nodded, too numb to care. Too numb to think about five minutes from now, let alone the weeks and months and possibly years of an investigation stretching out ahead of him.

  It felt like just a moment ago he’d been laughing with Jason and Taylor, and then—

  And then—

  And then this. Somehow the universe had skipped some steps, because that didn’t become this. Not on a lazy Monday afternoon in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

  The rescue chopper was landing in the paddock across from the hospital when they arrived, and Gio’s heart skipped a series of beats. He’s alive. He’s still alive. They wouldn’t have sent the chopper all the way from Townsville for a corpse, only for a medivac.

  When Gio and the senior constable from Hughenden got inside the hospital, Taylor was crying. He tore himself out of Sandra’s grasp a minute later when the crew from the rescue chopper wheeled Jason towards the exit.

  Gio caught him.

  “Dad!” Taylor screamed, struggling to get to Jason. “Dad!”

  Gio tightened his grip on the kid, and tried not to think about how Jason’s blood was soaking through his shirt onto Taylor. He must’ve got it on him when he was helping Vicki back at the station.

  “You can’t go in the chopper, Taylor,” he said. “You can’t, okay? They’re taking him to Townsville. They’re gonna look after him there.”

  Taylor kicked and screamed.

  A neighbour had come to the station. A neighbour, like he was just popping in to see what was going on after he’d heard the commotion. Only in Richmond could a neighbour hear gunshots from the police station and set out towards the noise.

  “You,” Vicki had told the startled man. “You’re driving the ambulance for me.”

  Taylor and Sandra had been packed into the front of the ambulance, both of them pale and crying. Gio had waited behind at the station—the crime scene. He had locked the doors of the station and had sat outside in the sun, while Brian Howe’s blood congealed on the shitty linoleum inside, his radio blasted frantic bursts of noise at him, and the crew from Hughenden thrashed the hell out of their vehicle to make it to Richmond in an hour and twenty minutes.

  How . . .

  How had any of this happened? There were too many separate pieces for Gio to put together. Too many to make sense of.

  How was he even now standing in the hospital foyer? Because when he blinked, he was right back at the station, and Brian Howe was pointing a rifle at Sandra. When he blinked, there was blood everywhere.

  “Taylor,” he said, holding the struggling boy. “You can’t, mate. You can’t.”

  Taylor, still crying, turned and buried his face in Gio’s neck.

  The chopper crew wheeled Jason outside.

  “No,” Gio said when the doctor came to check him. “No.”

  He refused to let go of Taylor.

  The senior constable from Hughenden tried to take a breath sample, but Gio couldn’t suck enough air into his lungs to push it out again.

  “Take blood,” Gio told him. “Just get them to take my blood.”

  Taylor clung to him tightly.

  “It’s okay,” Gio murmured to him, rubbing his back. Liar liar liar. They both stank of Jason’s blood. “It’s okay.”

  They sat and waited, and Gio tried not to blink. He stared at the posters on the far wall while Taylor sobbed against his neck. They sat for what felt like hours. The nurse who took Gio’s blood tried to talk to Taylor, to coax him away with a promise of biscuits and chocolate, but he refused to look at her. At some point, he fell asleep with Gio’s arms still around him.

  The senior constable from Hughenden had Rihanna’s “Work” as his ringtone.

  “Fuck,” he said when it blasted out in the small waiting room in the hospital. He stood up. “Shit. Sorry.” He answered the call. “Madison.”

  He turned away from Gio and Taylor, and moved a few paces down, as though that would give him privacy.

  “Boss,” he said. “Boss, I need to get his kid to Townsville.” He listened to whatever he was told, and then said, “Any news?”

  Taylor, awake again, tensed in Gio’s arms.

  “Okay,” Madison said. “Yep.” He ended the call, and then turned back to them. “They’re landing in Townsville soon, and he’s going straight into surgery.”

  Taylor lifted his tear-stained face towards the guy. “Is my dad gonna be okay?”

  “I don’t know.” Madison’s expression was solemn. He shifted his gaze to Gio. “The crews from the Towers are almost here. Branch is coming too. The DDO says one of the GD’s can take Taylor. A Townsville crew is heading out to meet them and take him to the hospital.”

  Jesus. Taylor was going to be handed off to different coppers all the way to Townsville.

  “Let’s get you both back,” Madison said.

  Afterwards, Gio was just as unsure of the sequence of events in getting home as he was for the shooting. Someone had brought Taylor’s backpack from the statio
n and used his key to get into Jason’s house. There was a bag packed and waiting for Taylor, and clean clothes to change into. Jason’s blood had soaked through Taylor’s clothes though, and Gio talked him into having a shower. Taylor panicked when he took his shirt off and saw his dad’s blood on his skin, so Gio sat on the hallway floor outside the bathroom while Taylor showered with the door ajar.

  The living room was filled with unfamiliar coppers. There was a never-ending procession of them. Gio didn’t know who any of them were, really, or where they’d come from.

  It was dark outside now. When had that happened?

  “Giovanni,” one of them said, crouching down beside him. “I’m Chris. I’m a union rep from Mount Isa. The bosses are going to be here soon, and Ethical Standards are on their way. The media too. So I know the last thing you want to do is go through this now, but we need to, okay, to get it sorted out before they all want a piece of you.”

  Gio nodded.

  “You need to get cleaned up as well,” Chris said. “And I’m going to have to bag your uniform.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” Chris said. “Let’s go to your place, and get you locked down.”

  “Taylor needs—”

  “We’re looking after Taylor,” Chris said. “Let’s look after you too.”

  Gio waited around long enough to say goodbye to Taylor. Taylor appeared very, very small as they loaded him into the back of a police car and drove off into the night.

  Chris stayed by Gio’s side. He was plain clothes: an older guy, with a beard, and a face that was starting to show the effects of sun damage. The faint smell of cigarettes clung to him. Not a smoker himself, Gio guessed, but a man who spent a lot of time around them.

  He spent the night on Gio’s couch, a makeshift office set up on the coffee table.

  Gio stared out his front window towards the back of the station. There were lights on inside, and more police cars pulled up around it than he had seen since he’d been on the Coast. The undertaker arrived at a little past midnight.

  At two, there was a knock on Gio’s door.

  Chris let them in. Two inspectors, and the assistant commissioner.

  “He’s out of surgery,” one of the inspectors said. “Still listed as critical. We’ll know more in the morning.”

  They took it easy on him, or at least it felt like that. Gio had been in enough interviews with bosses to know the personas they projected—friendly, supportive, encouraging—were no indication that they weren’t planning to fuck him over in the wrap-up. Chris took control of the questions when Gio couldn’t.

  “Don’t answer that,” he said several times. And, “Senior Constable Valeri has been awake now for almost twenty-four hours, and he’s been through a traumatic incident. He’s in no condition to answer all of your questions tonight, sir.”

  “Did you instruct Brian Howe to drop his weapon?” the assistant commissioner pressed.

  So that was how they were going to get him.

  Gio opened his mouth to answer, but Chris held up his hand. “Brian Howe had just shot a police officer and had his rifle pointed at a civilian staff member. Giovanni’s quick actions saved Sandra’s life, and his own.”

  Gio closed his mouth.

  He wondered if Taylor was in Townsville yet. He wondered who was looking after him, and if they’d let him see Jason yet. Critical. What did that mean? That the surgery hadn’t done what it was supposed to do? They’d been laughing at the station, and then—

  He flinched as he felt his finger tighten on the trigger all over again.

  “Don’t answer that,” Chris said, pulling Gio back into the now.

  Gio nodded. He hadn’t even heard the question.

  Chris fielded the rest of the questions. There weren’t many. The bosses left with the promise of returning in the morning and walking Gio through the scene at the station. He didn’t know how he’d manage. Could he remember exactly what he’d done, exactly what he’d thought, exactly where he’d been standing? And by tomorrow the bosses wouldn’t be his biggest problem. Not with Ethical Standards also on their way.

  They could fuck him over in a heartbeat, but Gio was too tired to care.

  “Try and get some sleep,” Chris advised him.

  Gio retreated to the darkness of his bedroom.

  He couldn’t sleep. His exhaustion could barely take him to the edge before he was jolted back again by flashes of horror. Jason’s blood. Brian’s twitching fingers. Taylor’s screams. And how could he look the investigators in the eye and tell them he’d done the right thing when he couldn’t remember the exact sequence of events? What should he have done differently? Should he have told Brian to put the rifle down? Was that something he was supposed to have done, even though Brian had already shot someone? Because Sandra had been in Brian’s sights, and Taylor had been in the station too. A civilian and a child. What if Brian hadn’t put the rifle down? What then?

  Should he have told Taylor to run out the back instead of hiding under the desk?

  Why had he told him that at all, when he hadn’t really known what was going on until he’d stepped out behind the counter? Had he known on some instinctual level? Or had he just seen too many movies?

  He closed his stinging eyes and tried to sleep.

  Opened them a minute later as fear gripped him again, this time followed by a blast of realisation. He fumbled for his phone. What time was it? Three? Four? Maybe the shooting hadn’t hit the news last night, but it would by this morning.

  He scrolled through his meagre contacts and hit Sophie’s name.

  Her voice was thick with sleep. “Gio?”

  “It’s so late,” he said, his voice breaking. “But if I didn’t tell you, you’d be worried.”

  There was a low murmur in the background of the call. Ian. Sophie shushed him. “What is it, Gio?”

  “Jason got shot,” he said. “He’s pretty bad. And I—I shot the guy who did it. He’s dead, Soph. I killed a guy.”

  “Oh my God!” Sheets rustled. “What happened?”

  Gio almost wished Chris was here. “You don’t have to answer that.” But even Chris would be no match for Sophie in big-sister mode.

  “He shot Jason,” Gio said. “So I shot him.”

  “Oh, bambino.” Sophie made a sound that was half horror, half frustration. “Why are you so far away? What can I do? What do you need?”

  Her voice wasn’t enough to comfort him, only to remind him of the thousands of kilometres between them. He scrubbed at the hot tears on his face. “Soph, everything’s such a fucking mess. Everything I touch goes to shit, and I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  “Oh, bambino,” she whispered. “Come home. Can you ask them to send you home?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “No.”

  She was silent for a long while, only the faint whisper of her breath in his ear. Then she sighed. “Gio.”

  His stomach clenched. “I don’t want to fight, Sophie. Not tonight, please.”

  “What about . . .” She paused. “His name is Jason?”

  “Yeah. Jason.”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know.” Gio cleared his throat. “He’s critical. I don’t really know what that means. They said we should know more in the morning. He’s got a son. Taylor. He’s ten. He was there.”

  “Oh my God.”

  He was crying now, and there was no way to hide it from her.

  “Gio.” She sounded like she was crying too. “Oh, bambino. It’s going to be fine. It’s going to be fine, I promise.”

  There was something in her tone that hit exactly the same pitch as Gio had when he’d had Taylor clinging to him like a limpet at the hospital. And Gio heard the exact same voice in his head that he had then: Liar liar liar.

  But hollow comfort was better than none.

  Nothing hurt. Pain might have clued Jason in quicker to where he was and what had happened as he slowly blinked awake, but nothing hurt. There wa
s a woman sitting beside his bed. Her head was tilted forward, her chin resting on her bosom, and she was sleeping.

  Mum?

  Why was his mum—

  The memories flooded back thick and fast, hitting him in a barrage and breaking over him. He sucked in a breath, except he couldn’t, and there was the pain that made everything fall into place. A sharp, stabbing pain that seemed to be centred in his chest, pushing his ribs down, ripping through his lungs. A strangled whimper escaped him.

  His mother was awake instantly. “Jason! Don’t move! Don’t move!” She grabbed the call button hanging from the rail on his bed and jabbed at it, wincing. Then she reached out and put her hands over his, and he noticed how swollen her knuckles looked, and how twisted her fingers were. She’d had arthritis for as long as Jason could remember.

  “Taylor?” he rasped.

  “He’s staying with one of the police officers here.”

  “Gio?”

  “I don’t . . .” His mother frowned, her forehead creasing. The lines around her eyes were more pronounced than when he’d seen her last, her hair a shade lighter with grey, her shoulders more rounded. “I don’t know who that is, Jason.”

  A nurse came in then, and Jason’s mother moved back while the man checked him over. Jason tried to pay attention to what the nurse was saying, but he was already drifting away again. Taylor was safe. He held on to that. Taylor was safe.

  But was Gio okay?

  The universe faded into blackness around him.

  He woke up again sometime later, to a different nurse checking his catheter and changing the bag. It seemed darker than before, although the room had no window. Had the light always been this low? Maybe it was night, and this was their concession to it.

  The nurse caught him watching her, and flashed him a smile. She moved what looked like a small plastic controller up to where his left hand was resting. “Press this whenever you want pain relief. Don’t worry, you can’t have too much.”

  Jason didn’t know if he wanted pain relief or not, but he pressed the button anyway, and sank back into sleep.

  When he woke up next, the room was brighter, and he was in definite pain. He pressed the button, and it softened the edges of his pain enough to breathe. He took the time to really take in his surroundings. The bed. The catheter tube snaking out from under the blankets. Other tubes too, draining away bloody fluids. Jason lifted his left hand. There was a cannula taped to the back of it, hooked up to a saline drip. Jason let his left hand fall onto the bed again, and inspected his right hand. It was unencumbered. He brushed it slowly over the blankets covering his chest. He could feel tubes taped in place, and a bulky dressing on the right side of his chest. A part of him wanted to press down on it to see if he could discover the dimensions of the injury underneath, but the still-rational part of his brain told him that was a stupid fucking idea.