In That Moment- A Chicago PD FanFiction

Thank You!

Hey guys, I just wanted to say a massive thanks to everyone who's read this. It's reached nearly 25,000 views now which is just incredible! I'm hoping to add another chapter for you all soon as a thank you.

I'm also working on another story called 'Twenty Three Minutes' at the moment. Below is a little extract. I'd love it if you could check it out and let me know what you think? Xx

April 12th-1.15am (Fourteen Hours After.)

Despite what they tell you in the academy, no amount of training will ever really prepare you for some of the things you see on the job. You'll tell yourself, each and every time, that this has to be it- that you've seen it all- that nothing else could possibly ever be worse than what you've just seen. Then you'll put on those blue lights, and race off to another crime scene, only to have the universe prove you wrong yet again, and be confronted with something even more horrific than the last time.

The question I'm asking myself at the moment- at what point do you say enough is enough?

Is it the point where you finally stop believing that there's some good in everyone? Because if that's the case then I've well and truly passed that point today.

It's 1.15am, and I'm standing alone, in a cold and somewhat eerie corridor in a school, staring at the carnage around me. I don't allow myself to think that the little yellow number markers represent where the bodies were found.

The bodies of children.

Children who got up this morning, argued with their parents over what they were having for breakfast and how late they could stay out with their friends after school. Children who had walked to class together, making plans with their friends for the weekend- a weekend that they will now never have.

The thing is, I know without a shadow of a doubt, this is one scene I will never be able to erase from my mind. The lockers left hanging open, text books and bags strewn across the floor where the students had dropped them in a panic to get to safety. The splatter of blood across the front of the white lockers that lined the hallway.

It looks just like an ordinary school- remarkably similar to the once I attended- but I, and everyone else know, that it will never be the same here again.

No matter what we do, no matter how much we wish we could, no one can go back in time and erase what has happened here today. We can't go back in time and find a way to get here earlier, even just a few seconds earlier, in the hope that it might save the life of another child.

I've often thought that as a detective I seem to spend my time going around, clearing up the devastation left behind by the criminals, rather than actively being out in front of them and preventing them from committing the crime in the first place.

It's always the same, every crime scene we arrive at. I look at the victim- an elderly woman, a young child, a frightened teenager- and I know that it's already too late. It's already happened to them, and I'm just cleaning up the mess once again. I can go out there and catch the person who did it to them, sure. But it's never going to undo what's already happened and it's sure as hell not going to erase their nightmares. Once. Just once, I want to be able to stop it happening before it's too late.

Is that really too much to ask?

I walk further down the corridor, in the direction of the gymnasium, keeping my eyes on the floor to avoid stepping on anything. It's slow going, as I tread carefully over books, pens, purses, lunch money that litters the floor. I stop dead in my tracks as I spot a small photograph lying on the floor, in between a back pack and a pool of blood next to a yellow marker with the number four on it.

I bend down and gently pick up the photograph, holding it delicately between by gloved fingers. Two young girls smile out at me from the photo, their blonde hair flying out behind them as they grin in to the camera. I can't tell where it's been taken, their faces fill the image so I can't see the background, but the thing that strikes me is how young and carefree they look. So innocent.

"Hey, Lindsay." I look up to say Jay standing in the entrance to the gym, watching me. I slip the photograph in to my back pocket without a thought and continue to make my way through the debris that scatters the floor towards him. "Find anything?"

I shake my head. "Nothing that might help us understand why on earth he decided to come in to the school this morning and shoot eighteen of his classmates." The number of victims itself horrifies me, and then as I started to work my way down the list earlier and realised how young some of them were.... I just don't have any words for it. "How's it going in here?" I ask Jay as we step through the double doors and in to the gym.

"We found two shell casings, still looking for the third. One of the kids that was shot in here was a through and through to the shoulder. Presumably the bullet is still in here somewhere but we haven't found it as of yet." He answers me as I take in the scene in the gym.

There's noticeably less lying on the floor in here, a lone basketball resting just short of the halfway line on the court and a few stray water bottles. Shattered glass is laying on the floor beside the door to the changing rooms, presumably smashed by a ricochetting bullet. It's much newer than the rest of the school, I can remember reading an article in the paper when they finished the construction last year. My eyes are drawn to another yellow marker, on the floor beside the bleachers. Number seventeen.

"Basketball practice." Jay says softly, answering my unspoken question.

I tear my eyes away from the yellow marker on the floor to look at him. I can tell by the pained expression on his face he's finding this just as hard to deal with as I am.

It's been fourteen hours since we arrived at the school.

Fourteen hours since we ran through the hallways, battling through crowds of terrified children running for the exit.

It's been fourteen hours since I held the hand of a sixteen year old girl, while my other hand was pressed down on the gun shot wound on her stomach and promised her everything was going to be okay, only for her to die less than thirty seconds later.

It's been fourteen hours since Alex O'Malley walked in to his school and opened fire on his fellow students and class mates.

Fourteen hours later and we are still no closer to establishing why he did it- and something tells me we may never really know the true answer to that question.