To Love and Protect (16 page)

Matt grabbed Shelley and pulled her off to the side near a game booth. "Stay behind here and get down!" he ordered.

"No!" she screamed as he started to run off. She reached out just in time to grab hold of his shirtsleeve. "You're not going back out there!"

Matt yanked himself loose as though brushing a mere mosquito off his arm. Without so much as a reply, he pushed himself back through the dispersing crowd and ran towards the man brandishing the gun.

"Damn you!" Shelley yelled, holding her head in her hands. How could he do this? It would be bad enough if he were on duty and had no choice but to run directly into gunfire, but to risk his life when he didn't have to?
Why?
Peering out from behind the booth, Shelley's eyes widened with dread as she spotted Matt calmly approaching the man.

"Put the gun down," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. "It's not worth it."

"Shut up, man!" the shooter yelled. He pulled the young woman closer by her long brown hair.

"Look," Matt continued, "you have the power to end this right here, right now, before more people get hurt and you end up with more consequences to pay for. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in prison? You're a young guy−"

"She's been cheating me!" he exclaimed, letting go of the woman's hair and pushing her to the ground. "With my best friend!"

"Is that who you shot?" Matt asked as he looked over at another young man lying on the ground and being attended by several fair goers.

The man nodded. "Do you know what it's like to find your woman's been cheating on you with your best friend?"

"I know, man, I know," Matt said, his voice now sympathetic. "But that's just it. Are these two worth it? Are they worth you spending your whole life in prison?"

The man stood motionless as the woman cried at his feet. A few brave onlookers had slowly ambled back to the scene, watching intently at the drama unfolding before them.

"Give me the gun," Matt repeated. "Come on, it's over."

Slowly, the man stretched his arm out to hand over his weapon. With each fraction of movement, Shelley's heart surged. It was almost more than she could bear to watch. What if the man flipped out at the last moment and shot Matt? Her mind flooded with possible scenarios, all of them equally horrific. But maybe this would finally end peacefully, she thought. After all, the gun was now almost in Matt's possession. Just a bit more of a reach on both their parts ….

Suddenly, another young man darted from the crowd and lunged at the shooter.

"You shot my brother!" he raged. “I’m going to kill you myself!"

The shooter swung around and pointed the gun at his potential assailant. To Shelley's growing horror, Matt lunged forward and threw himself on the gunman like a blanket draped over a chair. They fell to the ground in a heap as the gun went off, its hollow echo ringing through Shelley's head.

"Oh my God!" a woman exclaimed as blood quickly pooled around them. "He's been shot!"

"No!" Shelley wailed, sliding down against the wall of the game booth.
"No!
" She screamed again, but her voice had gone hoarse. Pulling herself up, she tried to run towards Matt, but her legs refused to cooperate. As she nearly reached the pool of blood, Shelley saw someone stir. Matt lifted his head, then slowly sat up.

"Matt!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. "I thought you were dead!
I thought you were dead!"

The earlier chaos erupted into a full-blown spectacle as half a dozen police cars and several ambulances arrived on the scene. Though it seemed like an eternity had passed since Matt first confronted the shooter, in reality, only several minutes had gone by. But Shelley knew all too well that several minutes, if not several seconds, could alter reality forever.

"What happened?" the first paramedic at Matt's side asked. "Are you shot?"

No," Matt answered, his face slightly dazed but his voice still even. "When I jumped him he started to pull the trigger on the other guy, so I twisted his hand down to avoid someone in the crowd being shot."

"He took a bullet in the foot," another paramedic verified as she and a third paramedic readied the shooter to be placed on a stretcher.

"There's another gunshot victim about twenty feet away," Matt said, pointing to the small crowd huddled around the motionless man.

"The other rescue unit's already there," said the paramedic attending Matt.

"Is he alive?" Shelley asked, her voice shaky.

"I think so," the paramedic replied, "but he's lost a lot of blood."

As Shelley buried her face in Matt's shoulder, he rubbed the back of her head. "It's okay," he said softly.

He was nearly killed, and he was reassuring
her?
Shelley knew she had become completely unraveled earlier.
How was it that when someone brought a seriously injured
animal into the clinic, she could command the scene with
authority and self-assurance, but now she was about as solid
as a bowl of jello?
It wasn't that she avoided becoming
emotionally involved in the plight of her patients, because
to some degree she did, every time.
But somehow she could
wait until after the grieving family had left her exam room
before breaking down herself after a particularly heart-predictingwrenching case.

No, thought Shelley. Something else was going on. Something deeper than her fear of watching a scene of gunfire and havoc unfold around her. It was the fear of again losing someone she cared about in a moment of insanity.

"I don't know," said an older police officer called from the neighboring town of Middleton as he surveyed the scene of carnage around him. "Life just isn't what it used to be in these small towns anymore."

"I don't know about that," another officer said as he joined him. "You put the combination of alcohol and a lover's quarrel together, and this same thing could've happened twenty years ago."

"But with one big difference," the first officer said.

"What's that?"

"These guys would've come after each other with pitchforks instead of semi-automatic pistols."

"Maybe you got a point there."

"Come on," Shelley said, trying to help Matt up but soon realizing she'd have an easier time lifting a rock wedged between two boulders. Matt slowly stood up on his own, then took Shelley's hand in a tight grip.

"Who do I give my statement to?" he asked the two officers.

"You're one of the fellows in the Fairfax Department, aren't you?" one of them asked.

Matt nodded.

"And you're that anxious to leave the scene? I would've expected you to want to hang around for all the nitty-gritty details."

"I've kind of seen all the nitty-gritty details firsthand.”

"I'll take your statement," Officer Jenkins said as she joined the fray. "I can write faster than the other guys," she said with a smile.

"And probably a lot neater, too," one of the officers said.

All the easygoing banter in the midst of trauma was all too familiar to Shelley. She knew from her years with Ted that this was just how police officers coped with the unpleasantness they so often witnessed. Still, she couldn't help but feel slightly unnerved by their overly casual attitude.

"Why don't you go enjoy what’s left of the night," Officer Jenkins said to Matt ten minutes later after she took down all the pertinent information. "We can handle things from here."

"Any news on the first shooting, victim?" Matt asked.

"His injuries don't appear life-threatening," a paramedic offered. "But he took two bullets in his shoulder and arm, and he'll probably always have problems with that arm considering that the bone looked pretty shattered."

Matt shook his head. "He was just a kid, really. And now his life has changed forever."

So could have yours,
Shelley thought, though she bit her tongue for the time being. Inside she was wrestling with conflicted feelings about Matt's actions. On the one hand, she was proud of the way he selflessly put himself in a dangerous situation in order to save others. No one asked him to do it − he simply followed his instinct to do the right thing. But on the other hand, that same "act now, think later" attitude made her question whether Matt was someone she could really be with. If he didn't protect himself because he was protecting others, then what would become of
him?
But she knew he wouldn't change. And the most confusing aspect to this dilemma was that she wasn't sure how much she actually
wanted
him to change. She was falling in love with the core of who he was, which was a man who would fearlessly put his life on the line for others.

"So are you ever going to talk to me again?" Matt asked five minutes into the silent ride home. Although they had tried to pick up where they had left off before the shooting, the gravity of that situation weighed down any chance of enjoying the rest of the evening, and they left the carnival early.

"I guess I'm still kind of in shock, that's all," Shelley said quietly.

"I'm sure that's part of it, but I know you're mad at me, too."

Shelley stared out of the passenger window, but in the dark of night, all she could see was the reflection of her drawn, ashen face. "I'm not mad at you, Matt. I just don't know how to feel about what you did tonight."

"Would you rather I had done nothing and innocent people were killed? The place was full of families and children. And I saw a few dogs running around, too. I'm sure you wouldn't have wanted anything to happen to them, either."

She couldn't be sure if he were being serious or derisive in his comment about the dogs, but the truth was she
wouldn't
have wanted them harmed. But she didn't want Matt to be harmed, either.

"I wasn't being reckless, Shelley. I knew what I was doing. I've trained for years in this kind of thing."

"It doesn't matter to someone holding a gun how much of an expert you are. If they want to kill you, they'll kill you."

"But I could tell this guy didn't really want to hurt anyone. He just lost it over the stuff about his girlfriend. The fact that he had a weapon on him made him a threat, sure. But I felt I could talk him out of it."

"You didn't even realize why he was shooting at the crowd until after you ran out there. He could have easily been a complete maniac who would have killed you in an instant."

Matt sighed. "I don't know what else to say. I know a lot of this has to do with the way you lost your husband. And Shelley, I understand that. I really do. But at some point you have to let go of this, because being a police officer is what I love, and I'm not going to give it up."

Shelley watched tears trickle down her cheeks in the reflection of the window. She flinched slightly as Matt rested his hand on her leg. She didn't want to lose him, but it was starting to seem like an inevitable conclusion. If she didn't lose him because of the dangerous situations he put himself in, then she would lose him because she couldn't accept the choices he made.

"How are you feeling?" Diana asked the next morning as she came into her room with two cups of coffee.

Shelley sat up in bed, Toodles and Melba yawning beside her. "Like I just woke up into a bad dream."

Diana handed her the coffee. "It's not that bad, is it?"

"Diana, you weren't there last night. You didn't see Matt run out straight towards a guy who had just shot someone and was about to shoot again. And the worst part was that I couldn't stop him."

Diana sat on the side of the bed and took a sip of coffee. "Shelley, let's say he did nothing. Let's say he grabbed you and said, 'Let's get out of here and let these other people be killed.’ Would that have been okay with you?”