I don’t even wait for the officers to leave. I go out the back way. The folders give me an address. I get into my car and make my way there. I am by no means first to arrive. There are already at least half a dozen cars and tons of flashing lights. Everyone is standing around and talking into radios. Caution tape is already up as well, creating a boundary all around the house, even out into the street corners. I have to park a ways away. I pick the folders off the front seat and make my way over, forgetting to even shut my door in my desperate searching of the area for some sign of Luka. A chopper burrows through the sky above my head so that there’s suddenly a buzzing in my ears.

People are standing outside the caution tape but it was not meant for me. Without thought I crawl under. “Hey, hey, hey, lady, lady! Get back!” A policeman is grabbing me.

No! No! You don’t understand! “I’ve gotta talk to somebody, I’ve gotta talk to somebody!” I keep walking, trying to get past him. “I know him. I work at… hey! Hey!” I point my finger and wave to the people standing around the hood of a car. “I work at County! I know Curtis Ames!”

A man notices, motions me over. “Let her go.”

Thank God. My arm is freed and as I go to the other officers I give the man a look that, had I been younger, would’ve easily been read as an “I told you so,”

“I brought his medical records.” I pound the folders with my index finger to make my point. “It’s the reason that he’s doing this. There’s a lot of information in them,”

“Who are you again?” He’s not convinced. Take the papers! There’s got to be something in there that I’ve missed, something that warned us he could do something like this, something that will help us end it all and get Luka back here to me because I need him.

“That’s my husband in there with him!”

“Your husband?”

“Yes! We both work at County and I thought that maybe your,” He’s distracted, not even looking at me but I continue. “negotiator could use them to,” I’m still yelling but it’s not meant to be a scream. There’s just so much noise and I need him to hear me, I need this to work.

Only he’s not paying attention. “Yeah, move in!” He’s calling on the radio. Move in where? Someone tell me what’s happening! He flips briefly through the pages but I know he’s not reading anything. “No, look, thanks. I, I, I don’t think this is going to help.”

And that’s it. My purpose is over. I turn to the building where I hear a crash as they break through the front door. What do I do now?! This immobilization, this helplessness is killing me. Luka! Luka! I want to scream his name but my throat hurts and I don’t know why. Everyone crowds around a radio so I do too, but I can’t comprehend the words.

“4645 clear… Somebody was here, signs of a struggle…”

The chill of the wind that’s blowing my hair into my face has no affect on my skin. I try to wipe my tears and end up covering my mouth as I struggle to breathe in. I’m just numb all over.

“Yeah, this is Chopper 1. We’ve got two men on the roof, one of them is armed.”

“I want that chopper to back off. Tell that pilot to get some altitude now.” It’s the officer who refused the folders. He turns to me as the helicopter disappears into the sky in front of us. “Does Kovac have a cell phone with him?”

I nod. “I tried to call him before but he didn’t answer.” I need information. I need answers. I need to understand what’s happening. “What does he want?!” I cry. “I mean what does he want? If he wanted to kill Luka he could’ve shot him an hour ago!” I hate thinking this way but if I don’t get these questions out of my head I think I’m going to explode.

The officer doesn’t even really look at me, but his voice goes soft. “Maybe he wanted a bigger audience.”

And all the hope I’d been grasping onto, feeding myself with and surviving on, abruptly disappears in the blink of an eye. I feel my body sink under the weight of the world, somehow finding the bed of a truck or something and I shake my head to try to clear my brain but I can’t breathe. Maybe he wanted a bigger audience. This is the moment I lose it (because they always tell you in the hospital that as long as the person and their family has hope, you can get them back, but mine has just been deflated by this officer who is pretending to do his job): the moment my heart is stepped on and left oozing the life-sustaining blood of hope. Luka, I weep. Luka have hope enough for me.

They call Luka’s cell phone and when his voicemail picks up I jump at the sound of his voice before I realize it’s just a recording. There is no more room in my eyes for tears; they are pooling in my lungs, in my stomach, in my arms and legs and my hands and my feet. I have turned into an overflow basin just for tears, these tears that won’t fall.

“Mr. Ames, Mr. Ames this is deputy superintendant John Valentine.” I suddenly realize that someone has picked up on the cell phone this time, and now I know the man’s name, whether I want to or not. I squeeze my hands together, look to the roof pretending that I can see them standing there. “We’d like to resolve this quickly and peacefully so first off, is there anything we can get you?”

What?! I want to shout. Get him? I’ll tell you what you can get him, you can get him a bullet to the frontal lobe or the brain stem or any other place that he can’t recover from. You get him that, you get me my husband!

“Yeah,” Ames says. He sounds upset, like he’s been crying. His voice is breaking. Is this the sound of a violent man? “Can you just go away? Can you just leave me alone?” He’s begging. Are beggars capable of killing?

“Just go! Just go over there! Go over there!” Even though I can’t see him I can imagine him pointing the gun at my husband. Valentine pulls the phone away from his face. They’re losing him. I know how these things work. You only get the results you want if you can talk to them. But Ames’ has cut himself off. He’s cut himself off from the police, from his wife, from his children, from his friends. He’s only talking to Luka. But for how long?

“Curtis, we both have families,” Luka starts and I am so scared that it’s going to be the last of his voice I ever hear that I can’t experience the happiness of knowing he’s still alive to talk at all. “Children we love, a lot to live for.” My eyes shift over and over. I’m trying to think, process what he’s saying, hold onto it, find a way to resolve the mess about me. “This won’t solve anything!”

“Mr. Ames,” Valentine tries but the man responds to Luka first.

“The numbness happened twice, so it was TIA, right? Right?”

“Yes!” I shake my head, know where this is going and yet can’t change anything about the outcome because I’m stuck down here!

Ames spurts out a series of noises that I’m unable to form into words but maybe Luka can because he talks next.

“I thought it was from sleeping on the gurney, we’ve been through all this!”

But Ames will not be placated. “Intermittent numbness is associated with TIA. You should’ve considered that. You should’ve thought about my arm.”

“It was noisy, I explained that.”

“That’s because you listened with a steth! But the standard of care would’ve been a cardiac echo!”

Ames is right. The orders should’ve been for a cardiac echo. But doesn’t he understand that we’re still human? We’re not perfect. There’s too much need for all of us to handle. Doesn’t he understand that the decisions we make each day will haunt us until we die? That Luka has agonized over this very fact for months? “It doesn’t matter!” Luka screams, exasperated. Ames mimics him without hesitation.

“It does!” There’s a crash. The phone clanking to the floor, I think, because the voices suddenly muffle. Not in their volume or intensity, just in the clearness. I have to hold my hand to my lips to silence myself so I can listen as the dispute continues. “It does! Because you would’ve seen the patent form in overlay,” All these words that I live and breathe every day have been coming out of his mouth as if yanked from a chain and dragged to the surface; they just don’t sound the same coming from him. It’s as if he has poured over each and every detail of them in hopes of understanding and yet still can only manage to spit them out slowly. But his next words are sure. “And you would’ve PULLED THE CENTRAL LINE!”

“Yes! Okay? Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!” The yes bubbles up from Luka’s throat more like a howl of resigned desperation than an agreement. “You’re right! You’re right all along! I blew it! I missed it! I missed the murmur and I’m sorry for that!” A few seconds of silence pass, my heart jumps into my stomach.

Ames sounds like he is crying now too and his remarks are like accusations of negligence. “Why didn’t you ever just say that?”

“I’m saying it now, okay? Maybe I needed all this to, I, uh,” He’s doing what I did earlier. Stopping to formulate just what he’s going to say, and yet coming up empty. Just resigning to let whatever comes happen as it will. “I’m not innocent. I’m, I’m just, look if I can take it all back, if I can fix it, but I can’t, okay? I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t.”

He’s in pain, I can hear it. All I want to do is hold him close to me. “Luka,”

“Mr. Ames?” It’s Valentine, trying to interrupt. I’d almost forgotten there were more than two people in this little dance. There are at least three, with me on the outside, waiting. “Mr. Ames?”

But there’s no response. Just heavy staggered breathing. “Curtis,” Luka whispers, and I know it’s a whisper even though I don’t know how I could hear it through this radio if it was. There’s a strange and uneasy silence in the immense racket of the street as we all – Luka, Ames, Valentine, the other officers, the bystanders, the S.W.A.T. team waiting for orders, myself – stand hopelessly entwined and yet each of us alone. Breathing fills the space between us, all the way to my husband, the space I would give anything to cross.

The click of a gun.

Two shots.

My eyes go wide, staring at the roof yet seeing nothing. My heart stops yet my body jerks in time to each bang. Time freezes and frantic voices rush over me in a shadow. The world is distorted, knocked off its axis so that I can’t stay up.

“Who fired? There was no command to fire!”

“It came from the roof!”

Air returns to my lungs; adrenaline shoots through my veins like fire. I am not thinking, just reacting. Shrieking. Just running. Leaping to save my husband.

“Grab her!”

I’m striding around the edge of the car. And then there are arms in my way. Strong arms that not only stop me but slam me over, arms that have to catch me when I fall yet I am struggling against their help. “NO! NO! LET ME GO!” I’m screaming so loud my throat is instantly raw. I hit, kick, screech. The other voices ignore me.

“Go go go!” Valentine in the radio. The crashing of doors and the clonk of heavy footfalls. “All units I want status reports now!”

“Pulling back Charlie, we have a man down. We have a man down.”

Man down, man down. “Luka.” I breathe it, let it fill me and strengthen me, finally pull away in a burst of strength but I’m yanked again just as swiftly. “No, no, you have to let me go.” I fight the man, push at his hands with mine, searching for contact to free myself. He looks so young; he doesn’t understand! “I’m an ER doc; you have to let me go!” But I don’t truly finish my last words because I’ve turned around and the S.W.A.T. team is charging down the front steps.

The arms let me go and I don’t understand. I want to close my eyes in fear of seeing the fatal wounds but I can’t bear to miss the truth. Then he’s there, walking – walking! – down the stairs between the S.W.A.T. team and when he looks at me all the questions in my head stops.

Without knowing how, I end up in his arms, right where I belong. People always laugh about how short I am compared to Luka, but if only they knew just how perfectly we fit together. If only they knew what it was like to feel his heart beat beside mine, to have the rise and fall of his chest with every breath change to match in rhythm, to have hands pressed against my back holding me securely, to tuck my head into his shoulder, to link my arm around his neck.

The world is spinning but we are still. I keep my eyes open, reveling in this moment, breathing him in as if I have never wanted anything else in all my life and the truth is I haven’t. We stay that way, interwoven, until there is no me and him, but instead one solid unbroken body of us.

It is later – as the detectives question him – that I see his wounds, categorize them by severity in my head (broken hand, fractured nose, chipped tooth, cut lip and heavy cheek abrasion). Luka’s alive. We’ve survived. I know the harm to his body will heal in time, but what about the damage to his soul?

I drive the car home, thoroughly surprised at how awake I am considering how draining this whole day has been. But still, something tickles the back of my mind. “Luka,” I whisper, not wanting to ruin the peacefulness we’ve finally achieved. “There were two gunshots.” The question is implied because I don’t know how to ask it. He understands, doesn’t miss it except he just gazes at me, so long I can’t tell if there is an answer to the question I’ve since forgotten.

When we get home, Joe sleeps in our bed with us, between us, the perfect completion of our little family. It is then I realize something else. All night –without even noticing the lie that in my heart feels true – I have been saying husband.