On The Job
"Ma'am, I'm very sorry to have to tell you this."
There were some days where Lieutenant Hares really hated his job. It was all well and good for the higher-ups; they might feel a twinge of guilt here and there, but they got to delegate the hard parts to other people. People who didn't matter if a grieving mother slapped them, or a little child screamed and clawed at their legs, or when a new widow just shut down in front of them, vacant and broken. The higher-ups didn't have to deal with that anymore, didn't have to face those evenings where you forgot all the good things you'd joined to fight for. They didn't have those evenings where you looked in the mirror and only saw the man who broke the hearts of every one in those families and plastered a smile afterwards like their pain was nothing, just another part of the job.
The worst part was when the family asked for details, for the reasons why they'd lost their loved ones. There was no good way to tell someone that their mom was never coming home, because some drunken college kid thought they were sober enough to drive. How could you tell someone that their son was dead simply because he got in the way of a police car chase? That he'd was only mentioned on the report as a footnote, because the important bit was that they'd caught the escapee. It was even harder when you couldn't tell the whole truth, because your duty was to the greater good and sometimes the needs of the many had to be put above the lives of the few.
On those days, he was tempted to scar that face he was supposed to be shaving, to make it ugly enough to reflect the pain he'd been forced to inflict on all those people. He'd set the razor down with shaky hands and remember that this was why they'd never issued him a service revolver and that he was one of the good guys.
And he was, he really was. He did his duty and protected the people, just as he'd been trained to. But sometimes, it just wasn't enough. Sometimes protecting people meant that others died. If he was lucky, those others were burglars or rapists or murderers and the tightening in his gut would be just a little less. But even they had families and it was still his job to approach those comfortable, nondescript houses and tell whoever was left that they were alone now. How was he supposed to act when the twelve year old daughter of a bomber looked up at him with watery eyes and asked what had happened to her papa?
When he'd been in training, they'd never talked about this part of the job. They never told him how his lungs would clench until every breath drawn was agony. They never told him how, after a while, you developed carpal tunnel from filling out all those damn forms. They never told him how, eventually, his heart would sink when those forms crossed his desk, not because of another life lost, but because it meant another day of his wrist cramping, another day of sobbing mothers and screaming children and too many eyes asking him why their loved one wasn't coming back. How could he tell them that it really was just another part of the job and that he didn't really care about their pain, because he had to see this every day and it meant that they were safer, because the criminals had been caught and he'd done his duty. Their pain was nothing.
There were some days where Lieutenant Hares really hated his job. It was all well and good for the higher-ups; they might feel a twinge of guilt here and there, but they got to delegate the hard parts to other people. People who didn't matter if a grieving mother slapped them, or a little child screamed and clawed at their legs, or when a new widow just shut down in front of them, vacant and broken. The higher-ups didn't have to deal with that anymore, didn't have to face those evenings where you forgot all the good things you'd joined to fight for. They didn't have those evenings where you looked in the mirror and only saw the man who broke the hearts of every one in those families and plastered a smile afterwards like their pain was nothing, just another part of the job.
The worst part was when the family asked for details, for the reasons why they'd lost their loved ones. There was no good way to tell someone that their mom was never coming home, because some drunken college kid thought they were sober enough to drive. How could you tell someone that their son was dead simply because he got in the way of a police car chase? That he'd was only mentioned on the report as a footnote, because the important bit was that they'd caught the escapee. It was even harder when you couldn't tell the whole truth, because your duty was to the greater good and sometimes the needs of the many had to be put above the lives of the few.
On those days, he was tempted to scar that face he was supposed to be shaving, to make it ugly enough to reflect the pain he'd been forced to inflict on all those people. He'd set the razor down with shaky hands and remember that this was why they'd never issued him a service revolver and that he was one of the good guys.
And he was, he really was. He did his duty and protected the people, just as he'd been trained to. But sometimes, it just wasn't enough. Sometimes protecting people meant that others died. If he was lucky, those others were burglars or rapists or murderers and the tightening in his gut would be just a little less. But even they had families and it was still his job to approach those comfortable, nondescript houses and tell whoever was left that they were alone now. How was he supposed to act when the twelve year old daughter of a bomber looked up at him with watery eyes and asked what had happened to her papa?
When he'd been in training, they'd never talked about this part of the job. They never told him how his lungs would clench until every breath drawn was agony. They never told him how, after a while, you developed carpal tunnel from filling out all those damn forms. They never told him how, eventually, his heart would sink when those forms crossed his desk, not because of another life lost, but because it meant another day of his wrist cramping, another day of sobbing mothers and screaming children and too many eyes asking him why their loved one wasn't coming back. How could he tell them that it really was just another part of the job and that he didn't really care about their pain, because he had to see this every day and it meant that they were safer, because the criminals had been caught and he'd done his duty. Their pain was nothing.