The news continues, moving on to the weather. Motherfuckers. It’s cold outside. End of story. Go back to Spaulding. Which officer? What’s his status?
Joe’s attention goes back and forth between the blue map of Massachusetts on the TV screen and the screen of his phone, neither communicating a fuckin’ useful thing. Officer in trouble. Joe can hear the heart-stopping sound of those three radioed words inside his head, but it’s an auditory memory from another day. Officer in trouble. Joe should’ve been there. He should be out there instead of sitting in his living-room chair, still wearing yesterday’s T-shirt and sweatpants, a passive witness to the aftermath on TV. A waste of friggin’ oxygen.
Joe’s phone dings. A text from Colleen.
We’re upstairs. Rosie and Joey are napping.
Joe texts her back.
K. Thx.
Joe’s phone dings again. It’s Tommy.
I’m OK. Sean shot in stomach. In surgery at the General.
Fuck. Joe throws his phone across the room, knocking a porcelain angel off the end table. It lies on the floor, beheaded. Joe’s eyes then wander to the left of the body, landing on Yaz’s empty dog bed. And then it’s all too much for him. Rosie’s broken angel, their dead dog, his fellow officer shot and fighting for his life, Joe sitting in the living room, unable to do a damn thing about any of it.
He gets up and marches into the kitchen, and he’s stopped cold in front of Yaz’s dog dishes on the floor, still full of food and water. They need to be emptied and washed, and then what? Thrown away? Joe can’t do it.
He turns and faces what remains of the wall that separates the kitchen from the girls’ old bedroom. He began the renovation project three days ago, the same day Yaz stopped walking. At first it felt good to replace one job with another, but almost immediately he found he had no enthusiasm for it, and instead he parked himself in his chair in front of the TV, consenting without resistance to the very life he’d dreaded. So the wall is partially demolished, pissing Rosie off every time she walks in or out of the kitchen, mocking Joe during breakfast and supper.
He stares at the damaged wall, avoiding the TV and the sudden, palpable absence of Yaz, and he feels that familiar, primal rage stretching its long, hairy arms, awakening inside him. The rage clenches its fists, threatening that idiot white male for aiming to kill innocent people, good people who’ve devoted their lives to the healing of others, people like his daughter-in-law, mother of his grandson. They could’ve been there.
The rage stands and curses at that idiot white male for shooting Sean. The rage seethes, disgusted with the news reporters who Joe can hear are now talking about Lindsay Lohan instead of giving him an update on the condition of his friend. Sean has to survive. He has a wife, a family.
The rage beats its chest and howls at Joe for quitting his job. It should’ve been him at Spaulding instead of Sean. He didn’t stay in the fight. He gave up. He quit so he could stay home in sweatpants, drink beers, and watch TV. He’s not Boston Strong. He’s a friggin’ coward.
The rage roars deep within him, and an ungodly sound vibrates into every corner of his being, heard by every cell. Joe retrieves the sledgehammer from the broom closet and goes to work on the wall. He winds up. Slam. He winds up again. Slam. He winds up and falls backward onto the floor. He gets up, swings, and slam. The sound of the hammer making contact and the physical experience of each impact are immensely satisfying, better than hitting a baseball with the sweet spot of a bat.
He’s breathing in drywall dust, heaving and hacking, swinging and falling, swinging and pounding and falling. Slam. Bits of wall crumble onto his dirty white socks. Slam. He hears his voice yelling nonsense, his voice grunting, the wall breaking apart. Bam. Bam. Bam.
Finally he’s exhausted, and Joe drops the sledgehammer to the floor. He rubs his eyes and sits on the bed. The bed? He’s not in the kitchen. The room is dark. He’s in his bedroom. The walls. There are bashed-in holes all over the bedroom, pieces of bedroom wall all over the bedroom floor.
He counts. Nine holes. Shit. How did that happen?
He staggers out to the hallway. The entire length from living room to kitchen is littered with hammered holes. He approaches the living room as if investigating a crime scene. The room is intact but for the beheaded angel. He returns to the kitchen. The wall is gutted, destroyed.
Joe rakes his fingers over his sweaty face. What the fuck just happened to him? He was literally out of his mind. What if Rosie or Patrick had been here? Would they have been able to talk sense into him and stop him, or would he have taken a swing at them? Would he have hurt them? Is he capable of that?
Joe walks back into his darkened bedroom and absorbs the senseless destruction before him. He was completely out of control. The thought scares the bejesus out of him. He looks down at his hands. They’re shaking.
What if Colleen or JJ had walked in with the baby while Joe was in the middle of his rampage? He can’t stand the thought of it. He sits on the edge of the bed, surveys the mess, and cries. Rosie’s going to kill him.
Somebody should.
His phone dings.
Sean’s out of surgery. Condition stable. He’ll be OK.
Joe types:
Tiding bed she it there.
Damn autocorrect. Midget keyboard. Friggin’ spastic fingers. He’s text slurring. He tries again.
Thx. B safe out there.
Joe exhales and thanks God, grateful that Sean is going to survive. Then he sees the vandalized walls, the godawful mess he made, and gratitude is swiftly supplanted by unbearable shame for what he’s done, for what he has, for who he is.
He’s an officer who’s no longer an officer. He’s not protecting the city of Boston. He’s not protecting anyone. JJ and Meghan will get HD, and it’s his fault. Patrick and Katie and baby Joseph, God bless him, are all at risk, and it’s his fault. He’s never even held his own grandson, too afraid of some unintended, unpredictable movement hurting him. He can’t provide for his wife but for a pitiful 30 percent pension, not enough to live on. He’s about to divorce her.
He can’t protect Boston or his fellow officers or his family. He looks at the holes in the walls. He just smashed the shit out of his own home. He’s a home wrecker.
So what’s left for him? Wither in a disgusting stew of shame for years in the living room and then the state hospital, some poor nurse wiping shit off his skinny ass every day until he starves or develops pneumonia and finally dies? What’s the point? Why put them all through the miserable shame of it all?
Joe thinks of Yaz. He lived a good, full life. And then, when his quality of life drained away, they didn’t make him suffer. Yaz’s end was peaceful and dignified, fast and painless. Five seconds after the vet’s injection, he was gone.
It was the humane thing to do. Joe takes note of the word human in humane, and yet that kind of “human” compassion is reserved only for animals, not for people. There is no five-second injection option for Joe. Doctors aren’t allowed to be humane with humans. Joe and everyone like him will be expected to suffer and suck it up, to endure zero quality of life while being a burden to everyone held dear until the bitter, gruesome end.
Fuck that.
Joe walks over to his dresser. Police sirens wail outside, stretching, floating, drifting into the distance. Joe pauses to listen. Silence.
He opens the top drawer and removes his handgun, his Smith & Wesson Bodyguard. He removes the trigger lock and holds the gun in his hand. He curls his fingers around the handle, appreciating the power packed into its light weight, the natural fit of it in his palm. He ejects the magazine and eyeballs it. Six rounds, plus the one that’s already in the chamber. It’s fully loaded. He snaps the magazine back into place.
“Joe?”
He looks up, startled.
“What are you doing?” asks Rosie, standing on the threshold of their bedroom, illuminated by the hallway light.
“Nothing. Go back to JJ’s.”
“Joe, you’re scaring me.”
Joe looks at the black holes and dark shadows all over the walls, at the gun in his hand. He doesn’t look at Rosie.
“Don’t be scared, hun. I’m just makin’ sure it works.”
“It works. Put the gun away, okay?”
“This doesn’t concern you, Rosie. Go back to JJ’s.”
Joe waits. Rosie doesn’t budge. The primal rage stirs inside him. He swallows and grinds his teeth.
“Joe—”
“Go, I said! Get outta here!”
“No. I’m not going anywhere. Whatever you’re doing, you’re going to have to do it in front of me.”