Chapter 5
Terran
I was going to actually fucking die.
Two thousand dollars.
Two thousand fucking dollars. Tossed in the trash like last week’s lunchmeat.
An entire year’s worth of savings, gone in an instant. All because I had to go and get myself stabbed like the rookie everyone at the goddamn precinct claimed I was.
What kind of idiot neglected to follow the first step in subduing a perp?
Securing any and all weapons before pinning them bodily to whatever hard surface was available and then fishing out a set of cuffs to slap around their wrists.
Now, I had to suffer from my own consequences. Stuck in the hospital until sometime next week—the timeframe still ambiguous—and losing the most valuable item I owned.
Ripped off of me like a used bandaid and thrown into the trash like one, too, no doubt.
No amount of care taken into consideration for the real gemstones embezzled perfectly in those settings, or the handcrafted detail that went into casting the gold to make the chains and then shaping it into its intertwined pattern.
No appreciation for the time spent on such artistry, now sitting in some compactor ready to head to the incinerator.
Probably with my blood still crusted all over it.
I’d admit, that purchase was the single most expensive thing I’d ever bought that I didn’t end up sharing with my sister in the end.
Unlike my car that we both drove, my waist chains were my own private gift to myself.
A way to pay ode to that part of me that I fought so long and hard to ignore and dismiss, pretending it was a fleeting interest I’d grow out of because it was easier that way than admitting to myself that I liked being fem behind closed doors.
Being out was a struggle with the upbringing my sister and I had. With a ruthlessly misogynistic step-father and a mother too abused into passivity to stand up for any of us against the swinging fists of a man three times her size, we’d fended for ourselves as best we could.
It’d taken a long time to heal from those wounds once we were out. Longer to accept the truth about myself even after that.
Thankfully, Palmerston PD was run by a captain who believed we all mattered, no matter what team we swung for or what past we came from.
She was a fierce woman that took no shit from anyone.
According to TJ, she’d beat her way through the glass ceiling with her bare hands, climbed to the top ranking position, and wrung the machismo out of those dingy walls until there was nothing left but the radical acceptance of a family forged in blood and brotherhood with no room for prejudice otherwise.
By the time I got there, they’d been five years deep into that mentality. All that was expected was that you took your oath from the academy seriously with no exceptions excusing you from your public duty.
Much better than I’d been expecting when moving to this small town.
Now, I wasn’t about to invite any of my coworkers over to my place to show off my closet full of lingerie, but feeling like I wasn’t going to get cornered in the locker room showers for an accidental lingering stare was a nice change of pace.
“Unca Terry!”
My head snapped around to my room’s door, Ainsley’s curly blonde head of hair bobbing while she ran to the side of the bed.
“Don’t climb up there!” My sister’s sharp tone forced my niece to freeze, one hand already slapped down and clutching the blanket draped over my legs, her back leg poised up behind her to do just that.
In her other hand, was some kind of large envelope that she held in a tight grip, the edges around her fingers crinkling.
“It’s all right. Plenty of room up here.”
My sister huffed, readjusting the baby bag’s strap off her shoulder and letting it drop to the ground over by the guest recliner chair. It sounded heavy when it hit the floor. “You say that now until she accidentally punches your incisions.”
Okay, fair point.
“On bed?” Ainsley patted the mattress, her head swiveling back and forth between her mom and me. Her curly hair had been pulled back in two matching pigtails on the top of her head, each decorated with an animal-shaped barrette.
There was a fresh looking stain on the front of her shirt, no doubt a car ride episode I was happy to have missed.
Amelia squatted down to retrieve her, hoisting her up into her arms. “Why don’t we show him the card you made?”
“On bed?”
“Maybe later.”
“Why?”
I bit the inside of my cheek, impressed by my sister’s lack of eye twitching. We were in the ‘question everything’ phase, which was always a fun little test to every parent’s patience. And me, by extension, I guess.
Ainsley was a curious girl, something we both wanted to keep fanning the flame under no matter how annoying it got sometimes. That was how you got scientists and world leaders unafraid to challenge the status quo.
“Is that a card for me?” I asked, reaching for it.
My stomach twinged just enough to be noticeable with the motion as I slipped it from her fingers.
My system was still flooded with painkillers, leaving me with a false sense of reality that the injuries I’d gotten dragged out of the house with weren’t nearly as bad as everyone was making them out to be.
I’d yet to lift my gown and look down at the bandages covering my entire waist down, hiding what was probably a horrible macabre of incision lines and suture marks.
If the bruising along my arm from the multiple needles during surgery were anything to go off of, I was going to hate what I saw in the mirror once I got home.
Yet another reminder to not let my body work faster than my brain.
What a horrible way to learn an incredibly valuable life lesson.
“She made it all by herself just for you.” Amelia hiked her toddler higher up on her hip, wincing slightly when tiny fingers latched onto her long, pin-straight brown hair.
“Awww.” I peeled the envelope back, revealing a folded up sheet inside. Once flattened, the hand drawn picture of all three of us was laid out in stick figure form, shaded over by jagged lines that I could only assume represented clothes.
In the background, was a lemon-shaped sun, a smiley face drawn in the middle, and an odd-shaped box with a slant drawn over the top of it, both in the colors of our house.
“Thank you, Ainsley. This is very nice. I’ll keep this here with me.” I tapped the table next to my bed twice. “So I can look at it every day when I wake up.”
“Unca Terry, go home?”
“No. He’s got to stay here for a bit, honey.” Amelia pointed to the drawing. “Did you hear what he said? He’s going to keep your picture so he doesn’t get lonely while he’s here.”
To her credit, Ainsley held on for a good thirty seconds before crumbling into a fit full of sobs. My sister twisted her around to cradle her while swaying on her feet, a hand coming up to gently pat my niece through the sobbing.
It was hard being a kid and not knowing what was going on.
The machines all around me with different things displayed on the screen, the nursing staff coming and going every hour checking on my vitals, even I was out of sorts from all of that chaos.
Imagining what it was like to see all of this as a child and being told your uncle had to stay in this strange-looking place you’d never seen before would probably have me crying, too.
“She missed you a lot last night. Kept asking when you were going to come read her a bedtime story,” Amelia said.
Ugh, my heart.
Just like my sister, my niece had me wrapped around her finger. Upsetting her was the last thing I wanted to do.
However, the strict tone my surgeon had used was…
quite the deterrent from actually going through with trying to get discharged early like I’d been planning on.
His intimidating presence still lingered in this room long after he’d gotten up and wandered off.
Which was quite impressive, considering I could only see a third of his face.
“Maybe we should facetime later.” It was the least I could think to do if it got Ainsley to settle down at night.
She was routine oriented, needing and craving the structure that came from knowing exactly how the day was going to go, regardless of what went on outside of the safety of our home. Something coming in and bulldozing that to pieces, even in an emergency, would be devastating.
“Don’t stress yourself. You’re the one with a bunch of holes in you. You need to rest and sleep as much as possible. How long have they decided on keeping you here for?”
“At least a week.”
She grimaced. “What happened to the guy who did it?”
“Kicked rocks, apparently. Early this morning.”
She nodded, and then said, “Your captain told me it was pretty bad when she called.”
I nearly failed holding back a wince.
I couldn’t imagine receiving a call like that in the middle of the night, having no idea what was going on and only being fed what little info had trickled back to my precinct from TJ and whoever else had responded to the scene.
How in the world was anything supposed to make sense in a chaotic mess of a situation like that?
Especially, half asleep trying to drag your three year old out of the warm comfort of their bed?
From what I was told, my sister had gotten to the hospital within an hour of me being wheeled back into the OR, waiting for any news about my condition.
Sometime around three, she’d been told by one of the nurses that, while I was now in recovery, she wasn’t able to visit because it was past visiting hours and the hospital had some bullshit policy.
Thankfully, I’d been stable enough to call her after my surgeon had left and talk until my pain meds decided to kick in and send me back off to la la land for another few hours.
“Guess this means you’ll have to wait on me hand and foot.”
She rolled her eyes, giving Ainsley’s back a firm pat as she began to quiet down. “Ha, ha. Funny. If I didn’t know any better, I’d accuse you of getting yourself hurt on purpose.”
Honestly, Internal Affairs was most likely going to come back with that same conclusion once they got my statement about not securing the fucking weapon.
Luckily, I had rookie-stupidity favoring my side of things, along with that being my first call that involved the use of deadly force.
So, desk duty would only last a little while and, hopefully, get me out of safety training.
“Never, since it means I’m going to be forced to eat your cooking for the next few weeks.”
Amelia glared. “I’ve improved.”
“Yeah, with things you add water to.”
“You loved those cornbread muffins I made.”
“Once I doused them in butter.”
“Ainsley…” The little girl popped her head up from her mother’s shoulder. “You might not have an uncle by the end of this week.”
Unfair.
It wasn’t my fault Amelia burned everything she touched. Even meals she threw in the microwave. It was a mundane superpower neither of us wanted her to possess, yet was the most consistent thing in her life aside from her daughter and I.
Small sniffles were followed with a soft, “Unca Terry go home?”
“Monday,” I told her, winking. “I promise. Mom will put it on the calendar so you guys can count down like Christmas. How’s that sound?”
“Oh, you hear that?” Amelia tickled her belly. “He’s coming home Monday. Uncle Terry never breaks his promises, huh.”
Never in my damn life.
That was my mundane superpower.
Ainsley rubbed a fist into her eye, her face still red and splotchy from crying. “Okay.”
Come hell or high water, I was going the fuck home on Monday. No matter what bullshit my surgeon tried to throw at me.
I’d yet to disappoint my niece and wasn’t going to start now, regardless of that man’s weird and unshakable indifference.