Going Home - Chapter 1

***The middle of this chapter has a change, shortly before the shooting, where he is walking from his apartment the next day (from saying he doesn't have a car to talking about a car he owns)***

I unlocked the deadbolt to my apartment and paused, letting out a long puff of air as I focused on the worn door in front of me. Like a gladiator preparing for a fight to the death, I steeled my nerves for the battle ahead.

Ok, so I was being a little melodramatic. But it’d been a hell of a long day and the last few months, almost every night ended in a fight. With one last deep breath I pushed the door open and walked in, almost relieved to find the lights off and the apartment quiet.

I switched on the hallway light and pulled off my uniform cap, setting it upside down on the table by the front door and dropping my keys into it. Kicking off my shoes and sliding them under the table holding my hat, I headed to the bedroom. From the moonlight streaming in through the blinds, I could see the bed was empty.

“Terri?” I called out and received silence in return.

Shrugging, I went to the nightstand on my side of the bed and pulled out the small gun safe I kept in there, punching in the code that unlocked it. Opening the lid, I set my sidearm into it and shut the lid back down, resetting the lock.

This had been happening a lot too, I thought, as I began to shed the rest of my uniform. I’d drag home after my shift and the house would be empty. I couldn’t decide which I preferred, the fighting or the absence. Of course, I was suspicious of my wife’s late-night disappearances, but the ability to relax after a long day without the evening devolving into a screaming match was a big plus.

To be fair, while I found these nights she wasn’t home troublesome, it’s not like I had proof that anything was going on. She always had an excuse for why she was home so late, and they weren’t even unreasonable excuses. She worked as a nurse at St. Barnabas on Third Avenue and the bus routes to our Apartment on Arthur Avenue weren’t a straight shot. She was right that it could take a while to make it home once she was on the bus and she was right that the buses were always delayed. But, she worked the seven to seven-day shift, meaning she started work at seven in the morning and finished at seven in the evening on the days she was scheduled. I worked the four to twelve shifts at the forty-eighth precinct which actually meant I got done around eleven-thirty and made it home just about midnight.

Being on the job, I came in contact with nurses and paramedics on a fairly regular basis, so I knew it wasn’t uncommon for a nurse’s shift to get crazy, forcing her to stay late. And I knew that sometimes another nurse would call in sick, and someone would have to cover. But it seemed to be happening a lot over the last several months, and with increasing frequency.

I’d asked a few of the nurses I know and they all seemed to agree it would be weird for someone who just finished a twelve-hour shift to have to work another five or six hours to cover, and even weirder for that to happen once or twice a week. They all swore Terri was cheating on me, and I guess they were probably right.

What really surprised me was how little it upset me. I wasn’t crazy about my wife stepping out and the general idea of it pissed me off to no end. But when I thought about Terri, specifically, I found I just didn’t care that much. I had passed that at some point in our marriage and all I could manage these days was a weary apathy when I thought about her.

With a stop by the kitchen to grab a beer, I headed into the small living room of our one-bedroom apartment and flopped on the couch. It was late and the city was as quiet as it would ever get, but it always took me an hour or so to wind down from the job, no matter how exhausted I was.

And I was always exhausted. I’d only been out of the academy for two years and they still had me walking foot patrol. My beat wasn’t the worst in town, but it also wasn’t the best. It was rare to go a whole night without having to chase someone down for doing something stupid. Plus, there’s the walking for about five of the eight and a half hours of my shift. It’s an understatement to say my feet hurt when I finally got to sit down.

Thirty minutes later I had polished off three beers and was on the back end of a nice buzz. My head was resting against the wall behind the couch and I closed my eyes for just a moment, trying to relax. I’d planned on getting up and falling into bed in a few minutes, but I was feeling relaxed and didn’t have it in me to move right away. Of course, a few more minutes often ended in waking up three hours later with a massive crick in my neck, but it was a risk I was willing to take.

I was pulled out of slowly falling asleep by the sound of keys in the front door followed by the deadbolt sliding back.

Terri walked in, carrying her large purse and wearing scrubs, although with more makeup on than she normally wore to work and her hair done up, not in a ponytail like she wore most days.

“You’re home late,” I observed.

I didn’t really mean anything buy it. I mostly just felt like I should say something instead of just watching her walk past, but it came out a little harsher than I planned. Maybe the apathy was only on the surface and my subconscious was pissed and venting a little. Who knows?

“What does that mean?” she said, stopping in the middle of the room to glare at me.

“It seems pretty self-explanatory to me. It’s late and you got home, so ‘you’re home late.’”

I might have been numb to our relationship, but getting attitude from her after she’d almost certainly been out on a date with someone else pissed me off. I’d always had an anger problem, which was one of the things she complained about the few times we’d tried marriage counseling, so I was working hard to control it. Unfortunately, my way of keeping my temper in check seemed to always be passive-aggressiveness instead.

“Fuck you, Henry. I’m going to bed. You can keep sleeping out here.”

And just like that, all of the techniques the marriage counselor had given me for controlling my temper went right out the window. I wasn’t one of those guys who went with the whole ‘this is my house’ routine, since she worked just as long hours as I did and nurses had it pretty hard. That being said, I’d had a long ass day including trying to bring in a homeless guy who was harassing and assaulting passers-by that, when my partner and I stopped to talk to him, whipped out his junk and straight pissed on me. It had been almost an hour before I could get back to the station and get changed into my spare uniform pants, and the shoes would probably stink in the morning, since the best I could do with those was hose them off.

I’d only been out on the couch cause I’d been too tired to go to bed, but our couch was uncomfortable and about two inches too short for me to stretch out, which meant I couldn’t get my legs all the way extended but I also couldn’t drape them over the back of the couch, making it all-around uncomfortable.

Mostly, though, was the fact that I’d been at home right after work where I was supposed to be and she’d been out doing God knows what even though the shift had ended hours earlier. Pointing out she was home late without pointing out that everyone she worked with knew she was sleeping around was an act of charity on my part.

“The hell I will. I wasn’t the one whoring around all night. I’ll sleep where I God damn well want to,” I said, blowing right past de-escalation.

“What did you say to me?”

“You know God damn well what I said. I know you’ve been seeing other guys when you’re ‘working late.’ You realize half the people you work with hate you, right? They straight up told me what, or should I say who, you’ve been off doing when you’re supposedly ‘working late.’ If you think you’re going to get some kind of attitude with me when you’re the one in someone else’s bed, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“You know what,” she said, grabbing her purse back up. “I’m glad you decided to be an asshole tonight. I was going to leave this until the morning so I didn’t have to be here when you whined and begged me to stay and try counseling again, but fuck it. I’ve filed for divorce.”

She dropped a fat manila envelope on the front table and started putting back on her shoes. I saw this coming, of course. With a marriage as shit as ours had been ever since I washed out of the NFL and her dream of becoming a team wife went with it, we’d been spiraling. The fact that we made it five more years had been a miracle.

“That’s fine with me, sugar lips. I’m tired of dealing with your shit anyways.”

She grabbed her keys and flung open the door, pausing right before she slammed it to say, “And yeah, I have been sleeping around, and all of them are better in bed than you’ll ever be.”

With that last shot, she slammed the door behind her and stormed out. I left the envelope where it was. I could see the name of one of those sleazy divorce lawyers who advertised on TV in the corner and they’d probably gone for the jugular. We didn’t have children to deal with, thank God, but I’m sure she’d found a way to stick it to me one last time on the way out. I didn’t much feel like dealing with it tonight and left it where it was as I walked through the front room into the bedroom.

I overslept and continued to ignore it the next morning. I had a short turnaround and was scheduled for patrol again today, which meant another day of lugging around heavy shit, chasing stupid people, and getting paid pennies for the pleasure. The last thing I wanted to deal with was her bullshit on top of all of it, so I’d left it for the morning instead.

I had a car, a sixty-four mustang that’d I’d bought when I first got my NFL contract and loved more than almost anything but couldn’t ever really drive it, because nearly everything associated with a car in New York was expensive. Besides it wasn’t like you could get anywhere easily because of traffic, so I kept it in a small storage lot way out in the sticks. What that meant for me now was a subway ride, at least until I could get an apartment closer to the station I was currently assigned to. When I’d first gotten out of the academy, I’d been stationed in the Bronx, so that’s where we’d gotten an apartment. Last year, I got moved to a station in lower Manhattan, which was generally a better posting, since we had more chances to work events off-duty and pick up extra money, but it also meant I couldn’t just walk to work.

Even after years living in New York, I still found the whole place loud, dirty, and smelly, and this went triply so for the subway. At heart, I was still a West Virginia boy and could remember what it was like to live in a small town where you could actually smell the mountain air.

The sun wasn’t even up yet as I walked the three blocks down to the subway and my stomach was yelling at me for only putting beer in it the night before. There was a little bodega not far from the subway I kind of liked. It wasn’t too dirty, they did a breakfast sandwich thing that was pretty good, and I liked the guy that owned it. He was always cool when I stopped in and on the days where I wasn’t running late, we’d sometimes talk for a bit before I climbed down into the subway hell.

Most of the places along the street were still dark, but Julian opened early to catch the poor slobs like me who had to get to work at the crack of dawn, so his was the only light on in the small stretch of storefronts.

A small bell tinkled as I pushed through the front door and looked around for Julian, since he was usually upfront in the mornings, making sandwiches for people or getting them their cigarettes or whatever else they needed to make it through the day. It was strange not to see him up there and he’d usually already had his delivery by this point. If I was picking up a drink or something pre-packaged I’d just put my money on the counter and leave, since it was early and there didn’t look to be anyone else around at the moment, but I wanted my sandwich and I only had a twenty and a couple of tens on me at the moment and wanted my change.

Instead, I headed towards the back to see if maybe he was in the restroom or something and how long it would take for him to come back out. I went through the swinging door and looked off to the left where his office was, and froze. Julian was kneeling on the floor, fiddling with his safe, while a kid that couldn’t be older than nine held a gun that looked like a small canon in his tiny hands. I’d been facing the rear exit, heading to the back alley to see if anyone was there, so I was facing away from him while he was more or less pointed in my direction.

I hadn’t been paying attention, and I knew it was going to cost me. Maybe it was because I hadn’t expected anything to be wrong, or maybe it was because of the mess with Terri, or maybe it was just the sight of a child pointing a gun in my direction, but I had been caught completely flat-footed. It was almost a full second before my training kicked in and my hand started to go towards my service weapon. Unfortunately, it was a second too long.

“Drop it,” I shouted as my hand reached my gun, pulling it from its holster.

The gun practically leaped out of his hands as it went off, nearly bashing him in the face as his arms jerked up and the weapon went over his shoulder. He looked absolutely terrified, as if he had no idea how loud and violent firing a gun could be until he actually pulled the trigger, which could have been the case. People who only see guns fired on TV don’t realize just how much more extreme they can be when you do it for real, especially in a small walled-in area where the sound has time to echo.

Most of those thoughts didn’t occur to me until afterward, when I had time to look back on the event, however, since as soon as he pulled the trigger, while the gun was still leaping from his hands, it felt like my leg was exploding as the bullet ripped through my calf, sending me tumbling to the floor. As I fell, searing pain shooting up my leg, my hand banged hard against a metal shelf and I dropped my weapon, which went skittering under another set of metal racks. I reached down and clutched at the wound with one hand while I tried to reach my weapon with the other as the kid went tearing past me, hurtling over my good leg and out of sight, leaving Julian staring after him, dumbfounded.

I gave up on getting my gun and reached up to where my radio should have been, only to realize stupidly that I didn’t have it, since I hadn’t gotten to the station yet.

“Throw me that towel and call an ambulance,” I called out to him through gritted teeth.

He tossed me the towel and stood up to grab the phone on his desk while I tried to bandage up the wound as best I could. I’d been on the scene for a couple of shootings since I’d joined the force and we had pretty good first aid classes just so we knew how to do the basics until EMS could show up and take over, so I was pretty sure the wound wasn’t life-threatening. I’d been to a call where a guy shot himself in the thigh the previous year, and he’d hit the arty. We were the closest unit and got there maybe five minutes after it happened, and he’d already bled out, and by bled out I mean there was a serious pool of blood that had all come from the one wound.

Since I wasn’t bleeding anywhere near that much, I thought I’d make it. I did stupidly try and get up to see if maybe I could hobble out of the store, but just moving it sent shock waves of pain up my body that felt a little like getting tased.

So I just sat there, in a smallish pool of my own blood, and waited for the ambulance to show up, trying to keep calm and focus on anything other than the pain in my leg.

I was a cop and I’d managed to let a literal child get the drop on me and then get away after shooting me. I felt angry and stupid all simultaneously, which considering how my week was going so far, seemed about right.