Him coming back was all it took to turn her world upside down.
Harper Collins is perfectly content with where her life is at. Is it perfect? No. But she's content. Now a guidance counselor at her old elementary school, a volunteer safety officer...
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WE ALL WAIT FOR HARP TO GET OUT OF ANOTHER SURGERY and all that's in my mind is static, something all cops are familiar with. A known side effect after dealing with evil.
Momma Collins is sniffling after her hour long ranting about how she knew Harp shouldn't have been a guidance counselor. Am is quiet, while Matt holds a crying Elise. The girls are with Elise's parents so that she could be here for Harp.
I wave off a nurse who comes up to me trying to get me to have my arm stitched up from the graze I had gotten. I keep myself perched against the wall as I wait impatiently. Finally, a doctor comes out and heads our way and I instantly straighten, pushing my back off the wall.
Momma Collins shoots up and the doctor gives us a reassuring smile. "She's fine. Her leg wasn't as bad as we thought. We got all the shrapnel and debris out and stitched her up. She should be walking fine in a couple of weeks, but..." We all hold our breaths and he continues, "She has some significant damage to her muscle and skin, it won't look the same again and she may live with a limp, but she will walk."
My jaw flexes and my chest burns as if a heart attack was coming on. My Harp, with her magnificent freckled legs that would race me to our chicken teriyaki, may limp for the rest of her life. It's much better than what we thought, but it's still hard to swallow.
I close my eyes and breath deep calming breaths through my nose. A hand touches my shoulder and it's Am. She bites her lip and looks at my arm. "She'd be pissed with you. Go get fixed up."
I nod as a nurse ushers me away. She brings me to a room and begins to stitch me up as I sit, trying to remain stoic and professional. I watch her put gauze soaked in my blood on the tray. My thoughts consume me as I watch her work.
I chose to become a cop over a professional baseball player to protect and to serve. I'm a man who believes wholeheartedly in public service, which is why I've put my life on the line multiple times. I've been shot a few and knifed and I believed I had seen the darkest side of humanity. I stood my ground at a door and watched wasted and high parents get cuffed for neglecting their starving children. I stood my ground holding a young girl who had been kidnapped and abused to the point she was unrecognizable. And I stood my ground when a young woman who had been stabbed multiple times held my hand as she breathed her last.
But this.
The minute the nurse leaves me to myself I'm not standing my ground. I'm on the light green linoleum floor, broken screaming silently and slamming my fist on the hard ground.
I need a minute, just one minute.
The bandaged around my arm throbs from where the bullet grazed me as I continue my rampage against the linoleum floor.
That kid, it was that stupid, angry kid.
When Luke and I had heard the call, we were among the first there. The Sheriff didn't know what to do because people said the suspect had a bomb strapped to him. I wasted no time, I rushed in with Luke right behind me and other men following. We got kids and teachers out. We caught the suspect, only to find out it was the same one Luke and I had arrested weeks ago. The judge allowed him to walk with only the punishment of community service. Both Luke and I knew that that hadn't enough, that there was something wrong with the kid.
