They’d spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get me through medical school only for me to quit to join the Navy.
Once in the Navy, I’d continued my schooling. After I’d finished, and then got medically discharged due to some slight nerve damage in my left foot from a bomb exploding, did I decided that the medical field wasn’t really something I was much interested in anymore.
Which had pissed both my mother and father off.
Immensely.
But I’d hated it.
I’d only done medical school because it was expected.
None of my family could understand why I’d quit.
My mother was a nurse. My father was a doctor. My brother was a doctor, and my sister was a nurse.
They couldn’t see past the fact that I was happy. They could only see the millions of dollars I was flushing down the drain to be a SWAT officer.
Not to mention they were hardcore Democrats, and I was most definitely not.
My mind, however, screeched to a halt as I saw her.
Nikki.
She had long, rich brown hair, beautiful brown eyes, and stunning caramel skin.
Today, she was in her scrubs.
A dark gray color that, although it should look incredibly ugly, didn’t.
She was a phlebotomist and on the IV team. A licensed paramedic that worked as a tech in the ER. She went around doing IVs throughout the hospital, but mostly stayed down in the ER where she was needed the most.
She was also studying to be a midwife, and from what I’d learned from Nico, her brother and another member of the SWAT team, she was well on her way to graduating.
I was in love with the woman.
No if’s, and’s, or but’s.
So in love with her that I could barely be around her.
She was in love with me, too…or had been when we’d first met.
But I’d ruined that, like I always ruined every-fucking-thing.
See, I was an asshole.
A diagnosed asshole, but an asshole nonetheless.
I was bi-polar.
I take my meds religiously.
Yet, there were times…like when I told Nikki that I didn’t want to have kids with her… that the asshole slipped through, and took hold of innocent people, tearing apart relationships as collateral damage.
I’d not meant it to come out that way.
I’d actually meant it to come out the opposite way entirely.
I didn’t want to have kids fathered by me.
I didn’t want my children to suffer from what I had.
Being bi-polar was only the tip of the iceberg.
I battled with depression during the winter months.
I had ADD.
And swear to Christ I didn’t want to put a kid through that.
I was a prime example of a person that shouldn’t have kids.
But I was Nikki’s, even if Nikki wasn’t mine. At least not anymore.
She would forever have my heart, but I’d never hold hers.
It was better this way.
I was so fucked up that I literally couldn’t handle anymore.
And I didn’t want a woman like Nikki, someone so pure of heart, to have to deal with my shit. Because there sure the fuck was a lot of it.
Watching her until she went inside, I finally pulled out of the parking lot and responded to the suspected double homicide.
And once again it reemphasized the fact that some people really shouldn’t have kids.
Pulling into the yard that housed a double wide trailer, I walked up to the front door where an elderly couple was standing.
The old man had his hands wrapped around the old woman’s shoulders, and he was holding her comfortingly.
As if, if he were not careful, she might very well fall apart.
Stepping out of my cruiser, my feet crunched in the gravel.
As I made my way to them, I took a survey of my surroundings.
The land surrounding the trailer was clean and well kept.
Flowers lined the sides of the mobile home with red bricks surrounding the flower bed.
A bass boat sat to the side underneath an awning, with a trailer that had two four wheelers on the back ready to ride to the dear lease at a moment’s notice.
An infant swing swung on the front porch, being pushed by nothing more than the wind.
And I got a really, really bad feeling.