The Shift That Changed My Life

Authors Note: This is the first story that I have ever written. Not any sex in this but wanted to try and put together a solid story as my first attempt. Figure I would sort that out first and then attempt to make some steamier passages in another story idea that I have. Let me know what you think. There is an authors note at the end, with some of my story thoughts. Wanted to avoid any story spoilers.

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I am sitting in my Police cruiser just finishing my coffee before going back on patrol. We have had to work extended 12 hour shifts to cover vacations, so these nights are long. It is 11:00pm, 4 hours into my shift and I see a car go through the stop sign a half a block away. I put on the lights and start after the car. As I am going through the intersection, I notice that as you get closer to the stop sign, it disappears behind some tree branches.

I thought to myself, "OK, if he and his car are clean, I'll let him off with a warning."

He pulls over and I pull in behind him. I run his plates, and he is clean.

I walk up to the driver's window and he rolls down the window.

I approached the open window asking, "Sir, do you know why I am pulling you over?"

He replied, "No sir."

"You ran a stop sign back there. Can you provide your driver's license and registration?" I asked.

As he is getting that together I notice the woman sitting beside him. She looks a bit nervous and is looking away. She sort of looks familiar. I ask if she is OK and she nods.

I take the paperwork back to my car and run him one more time through the system. He is still clean. As I am about to get out of the car, I realise where I know the woman from.

I go back to his car. "Since the stop sign is somewhat obscured, I am going to let you go with a warning. I have to ask the county to get those trees trimmed. Where are you off to tonight?"

He replies, "Thanks officer, we are just out on our first date. We just finished dinner and a movie and were heading to my place."

I said to him, "That's great. Have a good time, and if you can do me a favour, please make sure my wife gets home safely after your date."

I then got back in my cruiser, did a U-turn and drove back the other way. As I drove away, I saw my wife in the rear-view mirror, jump out of the car, and try and chase after me.

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My name is Jim Carter. I have been a police officer for 4 years and have been married for 2 years to my wife Lisa. We met at the Police Graduation Ceremony. Her sister Mary was in my class. I was first interested in Mary, but as she was already engaged we became very good friends. As she decided that since I was a good guy, I would be a good match for her sister and introduced us. After dating for 18 months, I popped the question, and we were married 6 months later.

Mary and I are both patrol officers on the county police force, but she is currently 2 months into a 6 month maternity leave with her first child. Lisa and I have been trying to have a baby, but no luck so far.

Lisa has always had a twinkle in her eye, but since Mary had the baby, and we have been having no luck, she has been a bit down. I have been trying to cheer her up with flowers, special dinners, etc, but she has lost that twinkle. I am hoping that when she finally is pregnant, she will get that back.

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I am one of those guys that needs a plan of action before I do anything. I didn't want to start anything there at the side of the road as I don't need make a scene with a stranger. And frankly he is just an innocent party on a date. I noticed that she wasn't wearing her wedding ring, so likely he didn't know that she was married. Don't need some video on the internet of a cop confronting a cheating wife.

So, I formulated my plan. I saw some phone calls and texts from my wife during my shift but ignored them. I wasn't going to get into it over the phone or text. I checked her phone location, and she was back at the house, so she was safe. The texts only begged me to call, not alerting me that she didn't safely get home. I sent one text that we would discuss this when I get home, after my shift is finished.

Before I walked into the door, I called my brother Steve asked him to come over as Lisa and I were having a situation. I also called Mary her sister to come over saying the same thing about a situation. I know that sometimes my temper gets the best of me, so figured I needed some 3rd parties there to make sure I didn't get out of control.

When I got home, she was at the table. She looked distraught and looked like she hadn't gotten any sleep.

I told her, "Before you say anything, I have called Steve and Mary over. They should be here in the next 20 minutes or so. Knowing that I am sometimes a hot head, I wanted to have them come over to make sure neither of us does anything that we will regret. For now, I want your phone and your code to unlock it. I am going to grab a beer and go to my office."

She reluctantly handed over her phone and the unlock code, whispering, "Sorry".

I gave her a look and went to my office.

I unlocked her phone and started to go through it. Gee, all text messages have been deleted. Not a good sign. I didn't see any offending pictures, so I go through her apps to see if there is a dating app of some kind. No, clean. I then thought, I wonder if one had been downloaded in the past.

I went into the app store and looked up the first dating app that I could think of. No, that hadn't been downloaded. I then checked the second that came to mind. Yep, the little icon showed that it had been downloaded before. I re-installed it and started it up. Luckly Lisa hadn't thought that the password had been saved on the phone. I logged right in......

I first went to the status page. Sure enough it is her picture there and it showed that showed that she had made 5 connections. I started going through the messages for each connection. Last nights date didn't sound so happy after their "date" was interrupted by the fact that she was married. Based on their messages, it was the first date.

The first two connections looked like they were single dates that happened about 2 months ago. They didn't sound like they got physical, but then she deleted all the text messages, so maybe those would have shown something different.

Based on the messages, it looks like she may have had sex with the 3rd guy, but nothing definite.

"Shit", I said out loud as I started working through the messages for the 4th guy. His name is Tim. Looks like they had multiple dates and based on the photos, they did a couple of things that Lisa and I had only talked about doing, but Lisa had shot down. It also looks like the reason that she connected with the 5th guy was because the Tim was out of town.

Going further into the messages and photos with the 4th guy, they had started to get into some bondage and what I would classify as abusive actions, but she kept going back to him.

The cheating was bad enough, but I couldn't fathom why she would allow herself to get into that situation by returning repeatedly to him. I started to get over my rage over her cheating and started to be more concerned about her mental health.

I forwarded pictures and screen shots of the messages to my phone.

I heard the doorbell. Steve and Mary must be here.

I came out and stepped out the front door to have a quick word before I let them in. I said, "I asked you here because I caught Lisa cheating on me last night.".

Steve looks shocked and Mary asked, "Are you sure?". I recapped the story of pulling the car over the previous night and discovering Lisa on a date. I also mentioned some of the concerning things I found on her phone. I then said, "I wanted you here because this is likely to get ugly and I wanted support for both Lisa and me in case things got out of hand."

We then went in, and we all then sat down at the table with Lisa.

I started, "Lisa, I need to understand what is going on. At first, I was in rage at your cheating, but after discovering some of the things you have been doing with one of the men, I am now actually concerned about you. I haven't made a decision on the future of our marriage yet because I need to understand what is going on with you."

Lisa shakes her head and says again "I'm sorry" and buries her head in her hands. She then starts to cry and in her tears she says, "I don't know why it started".

I then ask, "Why did you allow him to abuse you?"

Lisa, just starts to shake and cry more, "Because I deserved it..."

Mary steps in and says, "Jim, I have never seen her like this, why don't you let me take her home and calm down. Maybe she will open up to me. I don't think we will get any answers while she is in this state."

I then calmly and quietly asked Lisa, "Is that what you want?" and she nodded her head.

I told Mary, "Why don't you take her home and get her to try and sleep. Then we can see how she is tomorrow."

Mary ran up stairs to our bedroom and grabbed some fresh clothes for Lisa and then for gathered her up and we escorted them to Mary's car. Mary said that she would reach out to me when she was settled.

After they left, I just collapsed onto the couch. Steve said, "I have never seen her like this. I don't know what is going on, but I think she knows the reason why this is happening, and I think it is deliberate."

He then asked, "Do you need me to do anything?"

I said, "No, thanks for coming to support me. I just need to try and get some sleep. You know, thinking about it and after seeing the texts and images, I had noticed that Lisa had some bruises, but she just kept saying that she fell. In a normal situation, I would have been following up and asking if her husband had done it, but since that was me, and I didn't suspect cheating, I just let it go. Did I miss some signs?"

Steve didn't have an answer for that. Patted me on the back and left. I headed to bed to try and get some sleep.

After sleeping for a few hours, the phone rang. I thought "What now?" and answered the phone.

I grabbed my phone and all I heard was Mary's voice "She's gone!!"

I said, "What, how could she be gone?"

Mary explained, "I thought that she was asleep, so I started to do some chores. I started some laundry and then went to the babies room to change his diaper and feed him. When I went to check on her, she wasn't in the bed and I couldn't find her in the house. I then found her phone and wedding rings on the kitchen table."

"I'll be right there", I said. I quickly got dressed and quickly drove to Mary's.

Mary's husband Sam greeted me at the door, and we went to the kitchen so I could look and unlock Lisa's phone.

There was one text message exchange with a phone number not in her address book. Lisa sent "Can you pick me up?". The reply was "134 McLoud St. in 15 minutes".

I recognised the address. It was the gas station 3 blocks over.

Sam and I jumped in the car and rushed over to the gas station. There was no one except old Phil that ran the gas station. Phil and I knew each other for years.

We rushed into the store. "Phil, have you seen Lisa?" I asked?

Phile replied, "No, I haven't. Were you expecting to find her here?"

I replied, "Yes, Would I be able to quickly check your video?"

Phil waved us to the back and rewound the exterior video. We found her about an hour earlier on the video. Just at the edge we could see a dark coloured vehicle and her running from the side of the building and jumping into it. Unfortunately, the camera wasn't good enough to have a clear view of the plates.

I called ahead to the station and asked if we could get a court order to trace a cell phone since I had the number that Lisa dialed. Unfortunately, these take time, so we had to wait. The initial check was just to trace it's current location, but the cell for that number appeared to be turned off. So, we had to extend the court order to get the address the cell phone was registered to from the phone company. Unfortunately, we weren't going to get that until the next day.

I had a sleepless night stressing where Lisa was, why she ran, what was going on, and what currently was happening to her.

In the morning, we got the address. It was in the rougher part of town in an old 4 story apartment building.

I accompanied 4 other officers to the apartment. Since this was my wife, I had to recuse myself and stayed by my cruiser while they went into the building with the building superintendent. Sam dropped Mary off and came over to me. George, the lead officer kept me in the loop over the radio while I waited downstairs with a running commentary.

"We are almost at the apartment.", stated George.

I could hear him pound on the door and then announce, "This is the police, open the door!"

I then heard more pounding on the door, and then silence. George said, "I heard a voicing saying 'help'." Then he said to the building super, "Open the door."

I could hear the door opening and the sound of the officers moving into the room. "There is a guy here on the ground, and then another one yelled, she's in here, she looks rough, but alive. Call for two ambulances."

I jumped on the radio and asked dispatch to send two ambulances to us. Worring about Lisa, I called up, "George, do you have an update."

George replied over the radio, "Stay down there. Lisa is alive, but you don't want an image of this place in your head. Just send the ambulance crews up here as soon as they get here. It looks like the male is dead. Probably from an overdose." Will give you a better report once we bring her down."

Mary and I held hands. The ambulances seemed to take forever, but they were at the scene in 10 minutes. They rushed up to the floor and came down with Lisa. I went to her and held her hand. The Paramedic said, she should be fine. She is out of it now, but she was conscious when we arrived. We started an IV as she appears to be very dehydrated. She also has a lot of bruising, so the hospital may want to do some x-rays. I asked Mary to accompany her in the Ambulance.

"Mary, go with her in the ambulance. I want to talk to George to find out what he found and will be right there."

The Ambulance left and I walked over to George to get more details. George gave me the breakdown.

"We first found the male in the living room. He was dead. There was a half full syringe on the floor beside him, so my guess is that he died from an overdose. Probably lucky for Lisa that he overdosed then, because the other half of that syringe might have been for her." He paused. "Now, this is the hard part. We found Lisa in the bedroom. She was naked, tied to the bed. She has bruises all over her. It was her that called out for help. Tom covered her with a sheet as soon as he found her. She was mumbling, but I couldn't make out much of what she said other than 'tell Jim I'm sorry'"

I choked up at that. George continued. "I untied her and then held her hand until the Paramedics arrived. You should go to her now. We have this place covered."

I said, "Thanks. Tell the guys my thanks as well.". I jumped in my cruiser and headed to the hospital.

I got to the hospital and an ER nurse pointed me to her room.

Mary updated me, "They have taken blood and are soon going to take her for x-rays. They think she might have a broken rib, and she is covered in bruises. The Doctor says that there is no head trauma, so thinks she is out of it due to exhaustion and dehydration. The blood test results and x-rays will tell us for sure." We sat there waiting for the Doctor.

The Doctor arrived and asked if I am the husband. He said, "We are going to admit her after the x-rays. We won't have the blood tests back until tomorrow, but I couldn't find any needle marks and her eyes were responsive, so I am hopeful that she is clean. The nurse will tell you what floor she will be going to. I will talk to you tomorrow when we get the results."

I thanked the Doctor and a few minutes later Lisa was taken for x-rays. An hour later she was wheeled into the room. I told Mary to go home and look after the baby while I stayed with Lisa.

I talked to Steve to give him an update and settled in for the rest of the day and the night.

Lisa had slept into the morning and woke after Mary returned to check in on her.

"Where am I?", she asked.

I told her, "Lisa, relax, you are in the hospital. We rescued you from the apartment. You are OK. We are here for you and we love you."

She started to cry, "I'm so sorry."

I replied, "Don't worry about the past. Right now you are safe. Let's get you healthy and then we can talk."

"No, I need to tell you something.", she said, "I have been hiding from this, but I need to confront it. You see, just before Mary had her baby, I had a Doctor appointment. I was having some tests done to see why we hadn't been able to get pregnant and found out that I can't have a baby. I'm broken, but I know you want kids, so didn't want to lose you."

I was shocked, but knew I had to keep it together as I knew that Lisa was fragile at this point. I give her a hug and simply said "You will never lose me. I love you." She hugged me back. I said, "We can go to counselling and work through everything, but I am not going anywhere."

She asked what happened to Tim and we told her that he died from a likely drug overdose. She looked relieved when she found out, but I didn't press her on her relationship with Tim.

The Doctor arrived and gave us her results. She had been beaten by Tim and had some hairline rib fractures. She also had a lot of bruising all over her body. The good news is that the blood work was clean. No drugs and no STDs. They want to keep her for a at least one more day and then she is free to go home.

We were all very relieved. I told Lisa that to just relax. We would talk and that I would find couples counselling that we can go to help us work through everything. I gave her another hug and she fell back to sleep.

The next day I brought her home. I took time off to take care of her. I slept in another bedroom, not so much that I didn't want to sleep in the same room with her, just so that she could physically recover. After a few days I moved back into the main bedroom with her.

The counselling started that week. At the start we met separately with the therapist. After she met with us, she added couples sessions.

In the discussions, we found out that Lisa went into a depression after she found out that she couldn't have a baby, but she tried to hide it. Each time we had sex as we tried to have a baby, it made her depression worse as she went through it to keep me happy, but secretly loathed each time we made love as it just made her feel more and more of a failure. She then started affairs tying to connect with someone where there were no strings attached where she could relax. When she met with Tim, things got rough In her mental state, she though that she deserved the violent nature of that relationship as punishment since she felt it was her fault that we couldn't have a baby.

In our joint counselling sessions, I was able to assure her that I still and always have loved her and that we can get past this and it doesn't matter that she can't have a baby. After a few months we were able to have sex again. After 6 months we were able to make love.

We started to look at fostering and adoption options.

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One year later, I was on the job and was asked to escort a Child Services investigator on a follow up with a family that had come to their attention. Susan gave me the debrief before we went to the apartment. The apartment was a few blocks from where we found Lisa.

"This is a family of 4. The parents came to our attention due to a disturbance call from the police and possible drug use. We met them last week to do the initial check. They seemed to be giving the children the care that they needed, but we wanted to do weekly follow ups for a few months to ensure that the situation doesn't change. The two kids are a 6 month old named Barry and 2 year old, Juliette. I requested a police escort because the building isn't known to be the safest."