I can tell Kevin and I are having the same thought: We both miss Ramirez. Kevin missed his partner of five years because they’d become best friends, close as brothers, and had each other’s backs at all times. I missed Ramirez because he was the only person I trusted to keep Kevin safe out there. It was a shock to both of us when Ramirez announced that he and his wife, Felicia, were moving back to Felicia’s hometown outside Topeka to take care of her mom, who was battling cancer. In the couple months he’s been gone, Kevin’s been noticeably grumpier when he comes home from work, full of complaints he didn’t have with Ramirez. Ramirez calls Kevin throughout the day to vent about the new force he’s on in “this nowhere town with no action.” I bet Felicia loves the fact that there’s no action. We’d spent how many dinners together talking about how much we worried about our husbands—their safety, their mental health—while they swapped years’ worth of their greatest hits of stories and memories from the streets on a loop.
Kevin takes a deep breath, as if willing himself to continue, then starts talking so fast I can barely keep up.
“We got a call for an armed robbery, guy shot a convenience store clerk when he wouldn’t open the register. Plugged him point-blank in the chest. From the description it was this guy Rick, who robbed another bodega last week. Cameron and I were first on the scene, and we saw him running down the street. We started pursuit in the car. When he pulled up on Ridge, we got out and ran after him. Cameron is hella fast—he actually ran track at Kutztown—so he’s a few yards ahead, turning into an alley. I hear him yell, “Police, stop!” and I’m there at his heels when he yells, “GUN!” and fires. I stop and fire too and the guy goes down.” Kevin suddenly stops talking and stares into the empty fireplace across the room, like he’s watching the scene play out on an invisible screen.
“It was so fast. I didn’t have time to think. I should have—FUCK.” He’s digging his nails into my thigh so hard they leave a mark.
I don’t even feel the pain because I can only focus on one thing: My husband is alive. All the talk about armed robbery, chases, and gunshots, and Kevin is still here, right here with me.
I’ve gotten used to a lot in eight years as a cop’s wife—the erratic schedules, the bullet casings in the laundry, the missed birthdays and holidays—but I will never get used to the constant, relentless fear. Every day Kevin puts on his uniform and walks out the door is a day I wonder if he’s going to make it home. It doesn’t help that he works in one of the most dangerous districts in Philly or that his bulletproof vest expired two years ago. He’s supposed to go out there and face down men with guns with nothing between his heart and a bullet except an expired vest. He doesn’t know it yet, but I’ve been saving up to buy him a new one for Christmas, the best on the market. I put it on layaway last summer, and the final payment’s due in a couple of weeks. I keep telling myself that once he’s wearing the vest I’ll stop having all these nightmares.
I reach for him with both hands, desperate for the reassurance of his body, his breath, his presence here before me. You’re alive. The fact of it makes me weak with relief.
“He was a bad guy. You did the right thing. He’s in the hospital? I heard you tell Matt. He’ll recover?”
Kevin stands so quickly he almost knocks me off the couch. He paces the room without answering, a wild, terrified look on his face, like a scrawny cheetah I once saw in a cramped cage at some janky wildlife park in the Poconos. That’s what Kevin reminds me of now, a caged animal. In nine years of marriage, I’ve never seen him like this.
“He’s alive, yeah, but…”
“But what?” I want to go to him but I’m rooted to the couch, paralyzed with dread, just like in my nightmares.
Kevin talks to the wall instead of to me. “It wasn’t our suspect—it wasn’t Rick. He didn’t even match the description. Rick was tall, like six foot three and wearing a dark jacket. Cameron never should have…” His voice trails off. “Christ, Jen, this is bad.”
How bad? A question forms. I can’t make my mouth produce the words though; something about the look on my husband’s face stops me. Was there even a gun? This opens the door to other questions I’m also too scared to ask. Was the guy Black? Did you shoot an unarmed Black guy? Is this going to be the headline? In my gut, I already know the answer. I also know what that will mean for Kevin, for us. Maybe that’s why I don’t ask. Maybe that’s why my heart won’t stop pounding.
“I need to sleep, Jay,” Kevin says when he finally looks at me. “I keep seeing him.” His voice wobbles. “I keep seeing him there on the ground. I don’t want to see him anymore tonight.”
I don’t say another word. I grab Kevin’s hand, lead him upstairs, and give him two Tylenol PMs. He lies down in our bed, and I crawl under the sheets beside him, listening as his breathing slows. He’s almost asleep when I decide I have to ask after all; the need to know for sure is a weight on my chest.
Turning on my side to face him, I scoot close enough for my lips to graze the back of his neck and speak softly into his musky skin. “There wasn’t a gun, was there? The guy didn’t have a gun?”
Kevin barely shakes his head by way of answering, but it’s enough.
We don’t speak again. I breathe into the back of his neck, matching my breaths to his until he slips into jerky snores, and then I flip onto my back, an act which takes a shocking amount of effort these days, and watch the electric blue numbers on the cable box tick forward minute by minute.
“Kevin is a good cop.” I whisper this out loud, trying to reassure myself. I remind myself of his commendations. Two of them so far—a medal of valor and one for bravery. And that time he was called in to arrest a woman for shoplifting in the Walmart. At the hearing she struggled through broken English and hiccupping sobs to explain to the judge that she was stealing food because she was desperate to feed her kids. When the woman was let off on a misdemeanor, Kevin bought her a pantry full of groceries and quietly left them on her stoop.
People know his name in the neighborhoods where he does his foot patrols. He carries treats for their dogs, for Christ’s sake. And talk about dogs. What about smelly, snaggletoothed Fred, who Kevin rescued from Philly Salvage last winter, where she had been left padlocked to a chain-link fence in below-zero temperatures. I reach for her now, curled up as usual in the tangle of our feet, and remind myself: My husband is a good man.
But I’m not getting any calmer; instead, I’m sweaty and clammy in a knot of sheets. I rip them off and head to the kitchen. Maybe more tea will help. When I get downstairs, I see my phone, forgotten on the kitchen table. The screen is filled with missed-call alerts from hours ago—all Riley. Without thinking about it, I call her back. By the fourth ring, I don’t think she’ll answer and then she’s there, on the line, sounding winded: “Are you okay?”
She knows. “You know, don’t you.”
“Yeah, I’m… I came into work.”
Of course she’s there. She’s always there.