The Choice

‘He was standing across the street, looking at me. Smiling that easy smile of his. I knew it well. He used to save that smile for me - he knew it made me happy.

‘And it made me happy to see it then.

‘But how was that possible? How could he be standing there?

‘I decided then and there that my mind was playing tricks on me.

That the downward spiral I had lost myself into had finally thrown me over the edge.

‘You see, he could not be standing there. For he had died two

months before. I should know, I'd seen it happen. I can still feel his blood on my hands; still hear his breathing seize; still see the life leaving his eyes. Those warm eyes, forever empty.

‘But I should start from the beginning, shouldn’t I? Of course I should. How else could you understand what happened?

‘I work as a homicide detective for the LAPD. Or I used to, anyway. It’s all so very confusing… Will I still have a job after all of this? I mean, no one wants a detective that’s slowly going crazy investigating their case. Right?

‘Forgive me. I digress.

‘For many years I had worked alone, which is the way I preferred it. My boss had never been pleased with this. He wanted me to have a partner; someone to keep an eye on me. And that’s how I met Mark.

‘It’s very hard to describe him. You see, he was not an easy man to understand.

‘His was a sad story. He came to us from New York, Narcotics Division, following a four-year undercover op. Which I had never previously heard of. Staying undercover that long is…dangerous, to say the least. It was only later that I learned it had been intended as punishment. You see, before that, Mark had been working a human trafficking case. A big Snakehead by the name of “The Ghost”. Mark was getting close to shutting down the entire operation. Too close. As a warning, the Ghost killed Mark’s wife and three-year old son. But Mark didn’t back down, he hunted down and killed the Ghost himself. He should have ended up in jail, but someone high up seemed to think he was too good an investigator to lose. So, instead, they sent him undercover. I don’t think he had ever been intended to succeed. Only he did and thus ended up in homicide.

‘You would think all of his past experiences had made him unbalanced. But that would be wrong. He was the life of the party; an eternal optimist. He saw the good in everything. In everyone, even. It wasn’t indifference; he hadn’t gone mad either; it was a conscious decision he had taken to live life to the fullest. He hadn’t forgotten. I don’t believe he could. But he worked hard at not allowing his past dictate his future. I couldn’t understand it then, and I don’t think I will ever understand the kind of inner strength he possessed.

‘Anyway. Did I go off on another tangent? Yes, I seem to be doing that quite a lot lately. It’s sometimes hard to get all my thoughts in order. But it is important to understand him in order to understand how he changed me. How his death changed me, too.

‘Before he came along, I used to do everything by the book. Never put a toe out of line. I was a little stiff, you might say. And you’d be correct, of course. For me, it was all work and no fun. And he became hell bent on changing that from day one.

‘True, at first it annoyed me. Annoyed the hell out of me. In fact, I tried to get him fired. Unsuccessfully, of course. You can probably guess what happened next. Somehow, he wormed his way into my heart. “Cracked the layer of permafrost around it,” as he so eloquently put it.’ I smile as this one happy memory invades my thoughts. The first real smile in months. My facial muscles seem to have forgotten how to do that.

‘We became partners. Real partners. I trusted him and he trusted me. It had been a long road. A very steep learning curve. Probably more so for me than for him. But he got me there in the end. Yes, it was all thanks to him. He never gave up, see. And it only hit me much later. I never had anyone care about me so much before.’

My voice seizes and tears threaten. But I have to finish this. I have to! Somehow, in my head, telling the story has become intertwined with moving on. Or, at least, making the first step. I need to be brave, like he was. I need to choose life, like he did. I clear my throat and continue my monologue.

‘Once we learned how to work together, we became almost unstoppable. We closed nearly every case. None of us could have done that individually. We completed each other in more ways than one. And that’s how you know you have the best partner possible.

‘Well, one day, we caught a very big case. Serial kidnapper. I won’t bore you with the details; all the intricacies of the investigation. The short version is this: we spent weeks, months even, interviewing witnesses, neighbours, friends, associates and family members of the victims. He never left any evidence. Nothing ever panned out. No ransom demands were ever made. We were hitting dead ends after dead ends, and every time another kid would turn up. Well, what was left of him, anyway.

‘You can imagine, the case took a toll on Mark. It took a toll on all of us. But he was…different. More reckless. He was slowly coming undone. I was afraid the case would destroy him. That he would be lost forever.

‘And now you’ll understand just what an extraordinary person he was. He came back and apologised. I think he felt guilty about his breakdown. Obviously, there was nothing to forgive. I was just glad to have him back.

‘And at that moment, everything changed. With him back, we put our heads together and caught our first real break. You see, we had been looking for a connection between the kids and found nothing. They had been kidnapped in different places, at different times of day. There was not a single place that connected all the kids. But we figure it out. It was the mail van – its route connected everything. It fit, so we went with it.

‘We made inquiries. One thing led to another and we found our unsub (that’s how we refer to unknown suspects). Found an old farm he owned on the outskirts of the city. That day, another kid disappeared. The warrant to search the farm had not yet been issued, so our hands were tied. But we couldn’t just stay idle while another kid was being tortured. Mark and I decided to go in. Pretty sure I will forever regret that decision…

‘On the property we found a barn. We broke in and inside we found the kid. Dead. We were already too late. And he was there. Waiting. We never saw him coming, and by the time we did, it was too late. He this gun…had me in his sights…there was nothing I could do. Nothing! I never thought Mark…he…he j-‘

The tears are now flowing freely. I can’t do it. I simply can’t. I close my eyes and, suddenly, I am back in that barn. I can smell the straw and the dust; hear the crickets outside; see the gun materialize in the killer’s hand. And Mark, of course. And my mouth seems to be spewing out the next words with no conscious thought.

‘Mark jumped in front of me. The gun went off…’

I need a moment to collect my thoughts.

‘It’s not how you see it in movies, you know. You don’t get blasted backwards. Most of the times you never even feel the bullet.

‘And it was the same for Mark. He didn’t go down. Not at first, anyway. Bullet after bullet kept smashing into him. They made this very dull smacking sound. Or maybe that was only in my head. The killer emptied his clip. When he was done, Mark fell down and I shot the guy. One bullet – that’s all it took. Seems so insignificant after so many months of fighting – after so much death. One bullet was way more than that monster deserved.’

‘Tell me about Mark.’

The barn dissolves in an instant. The walls of the psychiatrist’s office materialise. So does the couch I had been sitting on for the past hour. She’s there, right in front of me, looking at me expectantly. And he is there too, of course. He had never left me since showing up on that crowded street. He’s smiling. It’s the only thing that gives me the power to finish.

‘He was on the ground. Bleeding like crazy. I tried stemming the flow. I called 911, but I knew it was in vain. He was passing. Fast. I remember screaming – pleading with a God I don’t even believe in to not take him away from me. But that’s not how things work, is it?’

‘Did he say anything to you before he died?’

Somewhere behind her, Mark is smirking.

‘Yes.’ I smile sadly as I say this. ‘He told me to come closer. His voice was rasping. Gurgling. But he managed to whisper something to me.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t remember. It’s all a big blur.’

But that was a lie. The one and only lie I was intending to tell her. Because those words were for me and me alone. They would be forever etched in my memory. I would allow no one, no matter how good their intentions, to taint the memory of them. And the memory of what could have been.

‘As you can imagine, I got suspended after that. Probably would have gotten fired, had it not been for us getting a dangerous killer off the streets. And those months alone…well, they clearly had quite an impact. Now, here I am.’

‘Yes. Do you see Mark now?’

‘Yes.’ Crying, again.

‘Is he saying anything?’

‘No. He’s smiling. Just smiling.’

‘That special smile he reserved just for you?’ The woman has a kind smile on her face. It’s hard for me not to trust her. And indeed, I have to trust her. I want to.

‘Yes,’ I reply.

‘Well, over the next few weeks we will talk about everything in detail. In time you will learn to live with what happened. To accept it. Which does not mean to forget. I want to help you get better. I think, before you know it, you will even get your job back. But in order to help you, you need to trust me. You need to want to get better.’

I am nodding. Vigorously. ‘Yes. I want to get better. I choose life.’

‘Excellent.’

Behind the doctor, I see Mark smiling. Not like before, but proudly. And he is fading, and now I know beyond a shadow of doubt that I am doing the right thing.