Innocent Until Proven Guilty

I stand in the bathroom sink desperately trying to get all the blood out of the creases of my hands and out from underneath my fingernails. I look in the mirror to see my wide eyes and open mouth, still breathing heavy after the night’s events. I glance to the right to distract myself by staring at the crack in the wall. I almost wish for an earthquake to widen the crack and have the ceiling cave in and bury me. 

Looking back down at my hands I see that they are still red, but now they’re red from me scrubbing them too hard and not from blood. I pump another pile of soap into my palms. The gooey, transparent pink hand soap barely lathers as I wash my hands one final time. I rinse them off and turn the water to cold so I can splash my face. I drag my hands down over my eyes and around the back of my neck. I redo the last two buttons on my uniform and run my finger underneath the color all the way around my neck. 

My hands shake as I run them down the sides of my shirt and the front of my pants to make sure everything is in order before I walk back out to the car. I avoid my gaze in the mirror as I turn to grip the handle, some rust sliding off and getting stuck in the cracks of my hand. I turn to the left to go to the back of the building where our car is parked. I hear the normally quiet engine that now sounds deafening as I get closer. At least he had the good sense to leave the lights off while I was gone. He’s standing on the driver’s side with a cigarette between his first two fingers. I expect to see his hands shaking when he takes it out and throws it on the ground to step on it, but they’re perfectly steady, like they always are. 

He glances around him in a full circle before his eyes rest on me. Without a word he gets in the driver’s side and unlocks the door for me. As soon as I get in it feels like I’m surrounded by cigarette smoke. As if he can read my mind he says, “Sorry about the smell. You were in there for a while.” 

Normally I would ream him out for smoking during our shift. I can’t stand the smell, and I hate it even more when I have to sit in the car with him afterwards. I always know that the smell will be on me for hours until I can scrub my entire body and wash my hair, but at this point I couldn’t care less. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it,” I mumble. I feel him looking at me from his seat, but I turn my head to watch out the window instead. I keep my eyes on the side mirror. I’m still waiting for someone to turn up behind us, but there’s no one around to do that. There aren’t even any other cars patrolling this small section of the city, so he said we should be all in the clear, like it’s a good thing. 

The dim street lights blur as we speed past them, faster than usual. I sneak a glance at the speedometer and will him to go slower. The last thing we need is to get flagged for speeding in an area we’re not supposed to be. I grip the door handle on my side as we take two more turns and get closer. 

I can see my apartment building from the end of the street. He nearly drives right by it but then slams on the brakes at the last second. My whole body shoots forward and then slams back to hit my head against the headrest. I unbuckle my seatbelt and go to get out of the car but then it clicks to lock again. I brace myself. “You can’t say anything,” he says. 

I look over my shoulder at him. “I won't. I swear.” I keep eye contact with him as I say it so that he knows I’m not lying. He stares back at me for what feels like minutes but can’t be more than ten seconds. I impatiently wait for him to unlock my door. Eventually he nods and hits the button on his side. I force myself to open the door at a normal pace and climb slowly out of the car. I don’t look back as I walk to the door. I enter in the code and hear the car leaving as I hurry inside. I watch the car turn back down the street. Hopefully he doesn’t get to the station too early to drop it off. 

I don’t even bother checking everything in my apartment before stripping and going into the bathroom to take a shower. I just want to wash off everything that happened tonight, but I can’t help but fold up my uniform and place it on the chair in my bathroom. I’ll deal with cleaning it tomorrow. I wish I could just throw it out and get a new one, but that would be a total nightmare with a lot of explanations needed. 

I turn the shower all the way over on the warm section and brace myself for the at first freezing water to come out. I shut my eyes against the weak water pressure and wait for it to get warm before grabbing the shampoo. By the time my hair is all lathered up the water has turned scalding, and I let my hot tears fall to join the water dripping down my body. I slowly sink down onto the floor and wrap my arms around my legs. My whole body starts to shake as I try to come to terms with what the hell happened tonight, and whether or not I could have stopped it.