Winning His War

39

Patrick's POV

People around me talked but I couldn't find it in myself to listen. Their words becoming nothing but white noise as we sat around a table at the precinct. We were supposed to be having a meeting but my mind didn't care about the latest drug bust or the newest murder no one could solve.

An image of Jem lying on a hospital bed back at his house was all I could see, all I could think of. The sound of machines keeping him alive was all I could hear.

Wires and IV's all but poured out of him as he laid more still than I had ever seen before. His chest rose and dropped to the rhythm of a machine. His face was still pale and sickly despite the fact that he had more blood in him than he should know what to do with.

It had been days already and there had been no sign of improvement. The doctors had hoped he would wake up from time to time, even if it was only for a few seconds and even if he did nothing but flutter an eye open before going back to sleep but there was nothing. No twitch of a finger, no kick of a leg, no mumbled word in his sleep.

Andrew, Dev, and I hadn't left his side since the day it happened. We had wanted to be there the second anything changed but after 4 days of nothing, Barrett insisted that we had to keep up appearances.

Dev had fought it at first but after a reminder of how scared Jem's people were without Jem around, it was easy to convince him that seeing the two of them confident and working would help sooth everyone else so he went back to work the next day.

Andrew and I went back to our jobs too after that but the work I was doing didn't seem to matter. I signed a few things without reading them, I talked in meetings when I was supposed to, I sat still behind my desk when people complained about their jobs or their cars or budgeting not being done correctly. It was all a blur that didn't quite make sense anymore.

Then, when the day was finally over, we went home. We sat with Jem until we fell asleep in the uncomfortable hospital chairs and when our alarms woke us up in the morning, we did the same thing over again.

Now I sat here, in a meeting that I didn't understand, praying for it to be over soon so that I could go back to Jem, hoping tonight would finally be the night he made improvement.

"And lastly we need to go over the strange increase in arson seen this past week," Warren sighed as he looked over some stupid line graph that he wasted time making, knowing that none of us really cared about numbers and just needed to facts.

"Arson has gone up 8% this week alone. Thank god all targeted places have been abandon so far but there are only so many abandon places in this city and at this rate, there won't be any by next week. Serial arsonists need to have a trigger to go off on a path like this and they normally don't stop until they are forced to or until they over come the trigger so we need to catch him before it's too late and he does some serious damage. All information about him can be found in your meeting debriefing packet and if you have an additional information on him, feel free to share that now."

They didn't have much on the arsonist yet but from what they did have, it wasn't hard to put two and two together.

Short, Latino, male, early to mid 20s, brown hair; it all seemed to point to a certain man I claimed to know but it wasn't any big reveal to me.

Ever since that night, Barrett has been going out late at night and not coming back until early morning. Whenever he did come back he had a crazed look in his eye and smoke seemed to follow him around.

Part of me knew I should bring him in for questioning. He was a prime suspect after all and if he didn't stop he was going to get people hurt, even on accident but every time I passed him long enough to consider it, I couldn't force myself to do it.

If that means I'm a crocked cop so be it but I couldn't bring myself to arrest him knowing what he was going through and knowing that he was just trying to coup the best way he knew how to.

So I kept my mouth shut until the meeting was finally over. I stayed even after every else had gone home for the night. I did paperwork, I looked into murder cases, and I flipped through the budget.

I kept up appearances because that was what was expected of me.

Then when letters blurred together and words didn't make sense anymore, I went home.

Devon had stopped driving me to and from work. He claimed that the attack left no survivors so the threat was dealt with. He had encouraged both of us to go to our own homes again. To rid ourselves from them while we still could but every night as I drove home, I found myself taking a right turn to Jem's driveway instead of a left turn to mine.

People no longer glared at me when I walked through the living room. They stared and watched closely as I went but the glares had been absent since that night. A common, silent agreement was put in place that we were all going through the same thing right now and hate wouldn't help that go away.

On several occasions, a few of us slept in Jem's room together, waiting for him to finally wake up until a few of us had to go to work. The common agreement said the house became neutral ground. Andrew and I couldn't hog the room to ourselves and neither could Jem's people. No one could start arguments anywhere but especially not in the hospital. No one was supposed to mention what the person next to them did for work.

It was a thrown together peace agreement but it was working so that's all that mattered.

Today Jem's room was mostly empty. Andrew still wasn't in yet but Erica and Philip sat at each side of the bed. A TV hung on the wall was playing some anime they had claimed Jem loved. I hadn't seen it before but they claimed the theme song could wake him up from a coma if they played it enough times so no one turned it off, it just played over and over again non stop.

"No improvements," I asked as I sank down in my usual chair at the foot of the bed.

"His heart rate spiked earlier, only by a few beats per minute and it went down after about 2 minutes but the doctors said that was a good sign," Erica said happily as she propped her feet up on the bed, her shoes still on.

Her plan had been to annoy him into waking up so everything she did was just in spite of him at this point.

"They also said the bruise around the shot is healing. It's not a lot of progress but if that's healing already there's a good sign that the wound will heal too. He'll probably make a full recovery," Philip said happily.

Erica and Philip were identical twins. At least they were before Erica transitioned. Even now you could tell they were twins, no bout about it but Erica is a lot more mature while Philip seemed to lack that quality.

Erica and I could easily piece together the unspoken 'he will have a full recovery if he wakes up' part while that seemed to go over Philip's head entirely but hell would freeze over before either of us told him that.

"I'm sure he'll wake up soon then," I said with a smile as I looked over to Erica who nodded her approval.

Keep the innocent ones hopeful, let the mature ones be realistic.

Yet another rule of the unsaid treaty.

Last updated March 29, 2022