We Are Not Like Them(10)

“I don’t know, Matt. We just have to wait. He’s alive; they took him over to Jefferson Hospital. No one will tell me anything. I hope… I don’t know if he’s gonna make it. I’m meeting with my union rep in the morning. I’ll call you after, okay? I just got home; I gotta go.” He lets the phone fall to the carpet as he collapses beside me on our worn sectional.

“Oh God, Jenny.” His head drops like a heavy weight onto my shoulder. I smell old sweat and something musky, the acrid scent of adrenaline lingering on his skin. He’s back in plain clothes. Where’s his uniform? I picture a bloodstained pile.

I cup his chin in my hand and tilt his face toward mine. “Babe, tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.”

He turns away from me, silent. This is nothing new. He shuts down all the time when it comes to work, especially when shit goes bad. I grab his hand, trembling and ice-cold. “Kevin, I need to know what happened.”

“It was all so fast, Jaybird. Cameron shot, so I shot.”

“Wait, who’s Cameron?”

“Travis Cameron. New kid. I was matched with him at roll call this morning for the first time.”

I can tell Kevin and I are having the same thought: We both miss Ramirez. Kevin missed his partner of five years because they’d become best friends, close as brothers, and had each other’s backs at all times. I missed Ramirez because he was the only person I trusted to keep Kevin safe out there. It was a shock to both of us when Ramirez announced that he and his wife, Felicia, were moving back to Felicia’s hometown outside Topeka to take care of her mom, who was battling cancer. In the couple months he’s been gone, Kevin’s been noticeably grumpier when he comes home from work, full of complaints he didn’t have with Ramirez. Ramirez calls Kevin throughout the day to vent about the new force he’s on in “this nowhere town with no action.” I bet Felicia loves the fact that there’s no action. We’d spent how many dinners together talking about how much we worried about our husbands—their safety, their mental health—while they swapped years’ worth of their greatest hits of stories and memories from the streets on a loop.

Kevin takes a deep breath, as if willing himself to continue, then starts talking so fast I can barely keep up.

“We got a call for an armed robbery, guy shot a convenience store clerk when he wouldn’t open the register. Plugged him point-blank in the chest. From the description it was this guy Rick, who robbed another bodega last week. Cameron and I were first on the scene, and we saw him running down the street. We started pursuit in the car. When he pulled up on Ridge, we got out and ran after him. Cameron is hella fast—he actually ran track at Kutztown—so he’s a few yards ahead, turning into an alley. I hear him yell, “Police, stop!” and I’m there at his heels when he yells, “GUN!” and fires. I stop and fire too and the guy goes down.” Kevin suddenly stops talking and stares into the empty fireplace across the room, like he’s watching the scene play out on an invisible screen.

“It was so fast. I didn’t have time to think. I should have—FUCK.” He’s digging his nails into my thigh so hard they leave a mark.

I don’t even feel the pain because I can only focus on one thing: My husband is alive. All the talk about armed robbery, chases, and gunshots, and Kevin is still here, right here with me.

I’ve gotten used to a lot in eight years as a cop’s wife—the erratic schedules, the bullet casings in the laundry, the missed birthdays and holidays—but I will never get used to the constant, relentless fear. Every day Kevin puts on his uniform and walks out the door is a day I wonder if he’s going to make it home. It doesn’t help that he works in one of the most dangerous districts in Philly or that his bulletproof vest expired two years ago. He’s supposed to go out there and face down men with guns with nothing between his heart and a bullet except an expired vest. He doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve been saving up to buy him a new one for Christmas, the best on the market. I put it on layaway last summer, and the final payment’s due in a couple of weeks. I keep telling myself that once he’s wearing the vest I’ll stop having all these nightmares.

I reach for him with both hands, desperate for the reassurance of his body, his breath, his presence here before me. You’re alive. The fact of it makes me weak with relief.

“He was a bad guy. You did the right thing. He’s in the hospital? I heard you tell Matt. He’ll recover?”

Kevin stands so quickly he almost knocks me off the couch. He paces the room without answering, a wild, terrified look on his face, like a scrawny cheetah I once saw in a cramped cage at some janky wildlife park in the Poconos. That’s what Kevin reminds me of now, a caged animal. In nine years of marriage, I’ve never seen him like this.

“He’s alive, yeah, but…”

“But what?” I want to go to him but I’m rooted to the couch, paralyzed with dread, just like in my nightmares.

Kevin talks to the wall instead of to me. “It wasn’t our suspect—it wasn’t Rick. He didn’t even match the description. Rick was tall, like six foot three and wearing a dark jacket. Cameron never should have…” His voice trails off. “Christ, Jen, this is bad.”

How bad? A question forms. I can’t make my mouth produce the words though; something about the look on my husband’s face stops me. Was there even a gun? This opens the door to other questions I’m also too scared to ask. Was the guy Black? Did you shoot an unarmed Black guy? Is this going to be the headline? In my gut, I already know the answer. I also know what that will mean for Kevin, for us. Maybe that’s why I don’t ask. Maybe that’s why my heart won’t stop pounding.