AFTERMATH
September 23, 2005
My name is William Maitland. Officially I'm an Assistant State Attorney in Jacksonville, Florida. Unofficially I am THE State Attorney as far as day to day functioning goes, or I was. I think I must be dying. I've been shot by a crazed cop among a whole gaggle of other armed cops who weren't able to save me.
My friends, the few I have, called me Bill. My wife, when I had a wife, called me Bill.
I'm pretty sure the cop who shot me, Shawn Smith, who has made an unfortunate habit of shooting men in the back, got in a head shot because I'm bleeding like crazy, I can't see for the blood running in my eyes and I'm down on the ground. I'm trying to move but it feels like I can't move my arms and legs.
I wonder curiously how long it takes to die and wondered whether you really know what's going on as your life drains away.
I remember, somewhat incongruously, a great movie called "American Beauty" I saw a few years ago, which ends with the main character shot in the head and dying and he says the moment of dying lasts for an eternity.
In the movie the main character says that moment of dying is the afterlife and you spend an eternity reliving your life before the lights go out forever.
I wonder if that's somehow the truth of it and when I will start the long journey back through all the moments of my life.
It must have started already. Through a blood red haze, I see the features of the woman I have loved for 20 years, who convinced me she loved me and then destroyed me by giving her body and love to another man. It would be alright if I could relive the days when we met and when we had a happy marriage.
It's too bad I don't believe in reincarnation or second chances. If I could go back and learn from my mistakes I would never have taken a job in the prosecutor's office.
A man I respect told me once that we are all tools in God's hands and that I had served a greater purpose as a prosecutor by alleviating human suffering and balancing the scales of justice.
In God's eyes, he indicated, that role was greater than that of a husband to the beautiful Debbie and father to Kelly and BJ. I had sacrificed the chance of mere happiness to serve God.
I don't really believe in God and less in Heaven, but if I'm wrong and I wind up on a cloud somewhere staring up at the face of the Almighty, I already know I'm going to tell him to go fuck himself and just give me back the life he took from me, and if he's going to punish me for blasphemy, well let him try to hurt me more than he'd already done.
I don't think even God could do that.
I know he can't as Debbie's beautiful face comes closer. Tears stream down her face and I wonder if somehow I'm dead and watching from heaven.
As memories war within me, I know I hate her. God, how I hate her, but for now I'll just love her and her memory for a while. Maybe I'll just do it forever, if that "American Dream" flick has it right.
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September 23, 2005 -- 8:12 p.m.
"Let go of me, you bastards, let me go."
She struggled against the two men grabbing her arms and trying to keep her away from the bloody scene on the FOP floor. One was black and one was white. She was crying; watching the figure she knew so well covered in blood and spasming on the floor under the grip of two or three cops trying to hold him down.
There were bodies all over. Bill lay there with his head covered in blood. A figure that must be Shawn Smith lay sprawled on the floor a few feet away. He was bathed in blood oozing from what appeared to be a dozen places. Fortunately, he lay face down because there was a large hole oozing blood and white stuff from the back of his skull.
A big black man sat on the floor to the right of Bill and the men with him. A white cop was holding him as he leaned back and another pressed his hand down over the black cop's hand pushing down on his abdomen as blood flowed out around their fingers.
A tall, thin cop with thinning brown hair was being held up by two men. He breathed in and out with gasping sighs. A big bald cop was saying, "Breath in and out, don't force it, Phil. You're going to pass out if you panic and you need to stay awake. Hang in there. Rescue will be here in a couple of minutes, no more."
Debbie tried to kick one of the cops holding her in the balls but he turned so her kick glanced off the side of his leg.
"Let me go you sons of bitches. Let me go. That's my husband."
The cop holding her left arm stared at her and for just a moment relaxed his grip on her and that was enough. She wrenched her arm out of his grasp and jerked hard enough to pull free of the other cop. She threw herself down on Bill's bloody body.
There was so much blood, so much damned blood.
Two of the cops that had been holding his lower body down fell back and she pulled his head toward her. She felt the mass of blood that made the back of his head slippery to the touch but she forced herself to pull him until his head rested against her shoulder.
"You fucking idiot," she screamed in anger and fear. "Why? Why?"
"Just....stupid...I guess....."
She almost dropped him, bouncing his head off the concrete floor, but she managed to recover and put her arms around him to cradle his head, letting him lean back so she could see his eyes open through the film of blood that covered his face.
"Bill, you're alive!"
"Jesus Christ," said one of the cops that had been holding his legs down. "Jesus H. Christ I thought you were dead. I though the twitching was your last dying..."
Bill looked straight at him and incredibly a faint smile flickered on his bloody lips.
"Reports....of....my...."
He took a deep breath and blew out bloody bubbles.
"....death.....were....."
Somehow she read his mind and knew what he was trying to say. Being married and together for 20 years made it nothing magical. She just knew him and how his mind worked.
"Greatly exaggerated...." She said.
He smiled at her and somehow that made the tears flow even harder.
A black cop moved her hands away from the back of his head and held a handkerchief to the bloody mess there. Patting away the blood revealed a long gash almost deep enough to put a finger into, running from near the right side of the back of his skull to near the right temple.
She couldn't make herself, but the cop pressed in and a moment later said, "It's deep but it didn't penetrate the skull. No messy brain stuff leaking out. Maitland, you're the fucking luckiest bastard that ever walked the earth."
"Then why..." she asked, unwilling to believe yet, to hope that what she saw wasn't the reality of it.
"There are more blood vessels and they're closer to the surface around the head, neck and face than anywhere else in the human body. You bleed a hell of a lot when you have a bullet put a groove this size in your head, but I don't think he'll bleed to death. We need to mop up the blood. I'll get some rags from the bathroom. We need to clean him up enough to make sure there aren't any more bullet holes in his head, or anywhere else. Can you keep him supported until I get back."
She didn't answer, just held him tighter in her arms. Even now, there was a part of her that was pissed off at him. Why the hell had he risked his life, risked the life of his children's father, the life of his ex-wife's ex-husband so cavalierly. It was as if he didn't care what he was risking, as long as he was "doing the right thing."
But those were only words. She had talked with him often enough about his last memories of his father's leaving to know why they resonated so deeply in his mind and heart. For good or ill, they had scarred and shaped the man he'd grown to be.
But, goddammit, she thought, at some point you have to grow up. You couldn't be a crusader going out to battle evil and not caring if you lost your life in the process. You could when you were single, but when you married, when you brought two lives into the world, you lost the freedom to throw your life away in grand gestures and it seemed like he'd never grown up enough to realize it.
She had only been halfway sarcastic when she referred to him as "Saint Bill," to her mother and children. She had thought sometimes that it was like being married to a secular saint. Everybody looking in from the outside would 'oooh' and 'aaahh' about how wonderful it was to be married to such a noble creature.
But what it meant in reality was that she had never had more than a portion of him. No matter how much he swore he loved her and their children, actions proved more than words. When it came to the way he lived his life, for the last ten years he'd shown over and over again that he cared more for living up to the mythic legend of his father than he cared for the welfare of the people he said he loved the most.
She held him tight to her chest, cradling his head against her breasts, and she knew that if they hadn't torn each other's hearts out he'd have joked about the chance to feel her up making nearly dying worth while.
But they'd never joke like that again. She could still hold him against her and be glad that she wouldn't have to call Kelly and BJ and tell them their father had died in her arms.
He was trying to twist in her arms and she tried to hold him still. She understood why the cops had been trying to hold him still. There could be other injuries, damage to the spine and the general rule was to keep victims as still as possible in such situations, but he kept twisting.
"Bill, try to stay still. Even if the bullets didn't hit anything vital" - and here she couldn't help smiling down at him "and if they only hit your brain they didn't hit anything vital - you shouldn't be moving. Stay still till rescue gets here."
He returned a weak smile and managed to raise one trembling hand and wiped at the blood in his eyes.
"I feel....like shit....and I'm dizzy....but I'm not dying."
She let him twist around and he saw the cops holding up the man they'd called Phil.
"Oh shit!" he said softly. "Phil! Phil!"
His voice was still weak but the big bald man helping to hold Phil up heard and pointed to Bill. Phil looked up, saw him and his eyes widened in surprise.
"I thought you were dead." His voice whistled as he spoke and then he coughed up blood. He was gasping for air.
"What?"
The bald headed guy said, "One of Shawn's bullets must have collapsed a lung. At least he didn't hit his heart. He'll make it. We all thought you'd bought it."
Bill looked over at the black cop whose skin was starting to go a shade of pale gray while a current of blood kept gushing out around the white and black fingers trying to hold it back, now pushing hand towels against the growing tide of red.
"James?"
The black cop looked over at Bill and shook his head.
"You know you're a real pain in the ass, don't you Maitland? Or a pain in my gut, anyway."
"...I'm sorry..."
James took a deep breath, then spit on the floor.
