Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
cole
During Monday’s shift, I responded to the kind of call that every police officer dreads.
An infant, just a few weeks old, had stopped breathing.
When I pulled up to the house, a woman I assumed was the mother came running out with the baby in her arms.
“She’s not breathing! She’s not breathing!” she screamed over and over again. “Help me!”
Nothing is worse than a situation where a child is in danger, but my training kicked in and I remained calm, even as my own heart was firing like a machine gun.
“Okay, let me have the baby. Let me have her.” I took the infant from the hysterical mother and assessed her quickly. The baby’s color was okay, and she was blinking at me. Her huge eyes were dark and trusting.
But she wasn’t breathing.
While continuing to soothe the frantic mother by speaking calmly, I checked the baby’s mouth and airway but saw nothing obstructing it. Then I rotated her to face down on my forearm and delivered three blows to the upper middle portion of her back. A few seconds later, she started to cry.
Part of me wanted to fall to my knees in relief, but I remained upright and stoic, holding the baby against my chest as I radioed back that the baby was breathing and crying, and the EMT had arrived.
Afterward, I wrapped up the call like it was any other, accepting hugs from the grateful mother, handshakes from neighbors who’d come out to see what the trouble was, and claps on the back from colleagues at the station. I finished my shift as if nothing was amiss.
Then I went home and had a full-on panic attack, alone in my room.
What if I hadn’t gotten there in time? Or worse, what if I’d been unable to save the baby? What if I’d been too late, or so panicked I’d forgotten my training, or simply hadn’t been able to clear the obstruction? That innocent little life would have been gone on my watch.
My watch.
It was the perfect example of why you couldn’t trust the universe or God or anyone else to protect you. You were on your own. Anything and anyone could be taken from you inside a minute.
An accident. A mistake. A lightning strike. An error in judgment. A split second. A wrong choice.
There were so many ways fate could turn on you, no matter how smart or careful or good you tried to be.
After pulling myself together, I changed out of my uniform and went downstairs.
The episode with the baby had made the evening news, and footage from my cruiser’s dash cam had been released to the media. By the time I made it downstairs for supper, the phone had started ringing—townspeople calling to praise and congratulate me.
My mother was beside herself, beaming with pride, scolding me for not saying anything sooner. “Cole Mitchell! You walked right by me at the stove and went upstairs to change without telling me what you did!”
“Sorry, Mom,” I muttered. “I needed a minute.”
My daughter was impressed too, hugging me hard, playing the video online again and again. “Wow, Daddy! Can I bring you in for Show and Tell?”
“Uh, no.”
Cheyenne came rushing in the back door, practically knocking me off my feet the way she hurtled herself at me. “Why didn’t you say anything, you big jerk?” she cried. “You’re a hero!”
“I’m not. I was just doing my job,” I told her as she sobbed on my shoulder.
That night, the soundtrack of my nightmare included the sound of a child gasping for air.
I yelled so loud, I woke my mother.
The following day, baskets of fruit and plates of cookies showed up at the police department, and I fielded phone calls from reporters who wanted to interview me. My boss had to essentially give me the day off just to keep up, but he said he was glad to do it.
Burying all my emotions, I calmly relayed the events the way they’d occurred, saying only that I was grateful for my training and happy the baby was okay.
It was all in a day’s work of keeping Bellamy Creek safe.
The baby’s family came to the station, and we took a photo together, me holding the baby and the child’s parents standing beside me.
By the time I got home, my mother had printed it and taped it to the refrigerator.
Local Hero Saves Baby, read the headline.
I looked at the picture. Beneath my bloodshot eyes were dark circles. My smile looked forced. My chest seemed artificially inflated.
My legs trembled as I went upstairs to change out of my uniform.
I didn’t feel like a hero. I felt like I was faking it.
That evening, I took Mariah to her therapy appointment.
While she was in the office with Jessalyn, I sat in the waiting room, staring at a dog-eared parenting magazine and sipping a cup of coffee.
I was exhausted and on edge, hoping it wouldn’t show.
I was also hoping Mariah told her therapist that I’d asked Cheyenne to move in with us—that would prove to her she’d been wrong about me, wouldn’t it?
When the hour was up, Jessalyn and Mariah came out. I rose to my feet.
“Hello, Cole.” Jessalyn smiled at me. “I heard the news.”
“About Cheyenne?”
“About the baby.” Her grin widened, and she shook her head. “Quite a story. Thank goodness you’re so good at what you do.”
“Thank you.” I looked at my daughter. “How did it go tonight?”
“Great!” She beamed. “We made a—oh!” She flicked worried eyes to Jessalyn. “I left my perfect-day collage on the table so the glue would dry. Can I get it?”
“Sure.” Jessalyn stood aside, and Mariah scooted past her.
“So did she tell you about Cheyenne moving in?” I asked the second we were alone.
“She did.”
“Told you I was fine,” I blurted.
She was silent a moment. Then she cocked her head. “Are you?”
“Of course I am. Why else do you think I asked Cheyenne to live with us?”
“Is that why you asked her? To prove you’re fine?”
I opened my mouth and shut it. It seemed like a trick question.
Mariah came bustling out again, carefully carrying a sheet of paper with pictures cut out from magazines posted on it. “Look, Daddy! I made a perfect day collage.”
I took it from her and carefully held it by the edges.
There was a picture of a dog, a snowman, a pizza, someone ice skating, an old-fashioned horse-drawn sleigh, a house strung with Christmas lights, and several photos of families that included a mom, a dad, and children.
There was also a picture of a girl about Mariah’s age cradling a baby.
It was the baby that threatened to undo me—the room spun, and my breathing was labored all of a sudden.
But I fended off the panic.
“Wow, Mariah. This looks great.”
She pointed at the photo of the girl holding the infant. “That’s me with my little sister. Penelope.”
“Penelope, huh?” I hoped Jessalyn didn’t notice the way I’d begun to sweat.
“Yes. Penelope Mitchell. Doesn’t that sound good?”
I swiped my forehead. “We should get going, Mariah. I’m sure Jessalyn wants to get home. Zip up your coat.”
“Okay.”
I looked at the therapist. “See you in two weeks?”
She nodded. “Yes. Off next week for break.”
“Enjoy the holidays,” I told her.
“Same to you.” Just for a second, I thought I saw something like sympathy on her face.
But I hustled Mariah out the door before I could be sure.
Wednesday night, the guys and I got together at the pub—all except Griffin, who was on a plane to Nashville.
He and Blair were going down to spend Christmas with her family, since they’d been unable to make the wedding.
Mariah was with Cheyenne at her house—they were baking cookies and wrapping gifts.
We sat at a table near the back of the pub, ordered some beers and bar food, and caught up a little. It was the first time we’d seen each other since the wedding.
After they made a big deal about the incident with the baby and gave me a bunch of shit about being a hero—people kept coming over to shake my hand or hug me—Moretti took over the conversation, bemoaning his unsuccessful attempt to convince his parents to give him some more time to find the right bride.
“What happened to Reina?” I asked, happy to discuss something other than myself.
He shrugged. “Reina’s fine. But I just don’t think she’s the right fit,” he said, like he was talking about ceiling joists and not marriage. “Hey Beckett, how’s your old man? He seemed okay at the wedding, although he did think I was my dad all night.”
Beckett frowned. “Yeah, the signs of dementia are all getting worse. He wandered away from the house again yesterday, and a neighbor saw him walking down the highway without a coat. Luckily she recognized him and drove him home.”
“Shit. Is it that bad?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I keep trying to lock him in, but it doesn’t work. And I can’t be inside with him all day. I’m running a fucking cattle ranch by myself at this point.”
Beckett’s parents had divorced when he was young, and his mom had been out of the picture for years.
He’d been raised by his dad and two older siblings.
The best student of all of us—also the biggest and brawniest thanks to all the manual labor he did growing up on a farm—he’d left Bellamy Creek right after high school on a college scholarship and hit Wall Street after that.
But city life hadn’t been for him, so a few years ago, he’d left it behind and never looked back.
Even now, his cowboy hat was resting on the couch between us next to him—brim side up, and don’t fucking get him started on why you can’t set a cowboy hat down any other way. We sometimes teased him that he was more Texas than Michigan, despite having been born and raised right up the road.
“What about your sisters?” Moretti asked. “Can they help?”
“They’ve got jobs and kids, and Amy lives an hour away. They can’t really do much.” Beckett pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’ll probably have to hire someone eventually. There’s no way he’ll move to a facility, and I can’t babysit him all day.”
“That’s a good idea,” Moretti said. “I once dated a girl who did that—home care for an elderly guy. She’d help him get dressed and all that.”