by Jesse West
“I need more than words. I need you to prove it to me. Prove to me that you are actually willing to better yourself. There is only so much I can actually do for you. There is a level of this that you need to take control of and work on it yourself. When you can accept that and show me that you are really speaking to me from the heart and you really mean what you say…maybe then we can be a family again…but I can’t trust you before that.” Jack spoke with demand and virtue as he expressed to his father what he needed in order for things to change.
“Ok Jackie. I’ll do my best.” Mike spoke with true and genuine sincerity that took Jack by surprise. Even though Jack wanted to believe him, he couldn’t trust it.
“Ok. Are we done?” Jack remained cold and withdrawn from emotion towards this conversation.
“*sigh* …yeah Jackie.” His father was visibly upset but there wasn’t much he could do.
“Alright, I’ll be back later. There’s food in the microwave. Don’t heat it up for more than a minute.” Jack went to leave.
“I love you son.” Jack heard his father say this as he walked out.
“Love you too pop.” His reply didn’t contain the affection it should have as he left without even turning a round.
“Be careful out there!” Mike shouted.
“I always am pop!” Jack shouted back as he left the apartment. He wouldn’t give him anything because he his mind he’s heard it all before.
He went out to a bar a few blocks away, a half-way point between his building and the precinct that most cops went to after their shift. Once or twice a month, him and Rick would have off the same time as a few other cops they got along with, so they would all meet up and have a few drinks together. They would share stories of outrageous calls they would get on duty, without spilling the serious information. Jack didn’t participate in this much since he was still feeling the effects of the call he responded to that got him suspended. So he listened, drank, and kept to himself.
Tonight was different though. He kept thinking about his father and how he left off with him. He was thinking that he probably should’ve given him a bit more compassion.
“He was being genuine…” Jack sat in the bar while the other guys drank and laughed. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. “Why was I giving him such a cold shoulder? I need to be more caring. I need to show him that I’m here for him.” At this point, Jack was on his third beer but he wasn’t drunk enough where he could say that he wasn’t coherent. He stood up and told the guys he was heading home.
He left the bar and began his long walk back to the apartment, still thinking about what his father said and how cruel he was to him.
“I need to be there for him…it can’t just be him by himself…I want what he wants and we both need to work hard to get it…I need him to know that I’m here for him.”
Jack rambled on in his head as he casually walked back to the apartment. He could tell that he had a slight buzz but he was only gone for about an hour or two at most. He just walked in his own mind, thinking about what they could do to get through this as a family.
When he finally got home, he approached his father’s door and knocked. He didn’t respond. He heard his TV was still on so he came in. He saw him lying on the bed and it looked like he was sleeping.
“You awake old man?” he said out loud to see if perhaps he’d wake up for a second so they could talk.
When he got no response, he stepped in to turn off his TV so he could sleep better. It took him by surprise that he was sleeping this early since he is normally up for half the night and asleep late in the day. He approached the side of the bed and kicked something on the floor. It was a bottle of his pills that he is supposed to take but it was empty. This didn’t worry Jack at first since he knew how many pills were in the bottle and it wasn’t enough to worry about. It did, however, upset him because he knew he wasn’t supposed to take these till the morning.
“You couldn’t even make it through the night could you?” Jack spoke with annoyance in his voice because he knew the medication was the stuff he was overdoing it with and after everything he said, he couldn’t keep his word for a couple hours.
“You give me this entire story about how you want to better yourself. I’m barely gone two hours and I come home to this!” Jack was getting angry and didn’t care about the tone of his voice.
“Wake up old man! I got a bone to pick with you!” he shouted with no response then he noticed something on the floor.
He bent down to see that the pills in the bottle were on the floor. A couple had rolled under the bed. He didn’t take any of the pills.
“You didn’t take ‘em…” he was relieved at this but he was still getting no response.
“I’m sorry pop, I thought you were bullshitting me again.”
Jack’s anger simmered as he began getting concerned that he wasn’t responding.
“Pop!” he shouted; No response.
“Hey! Pop! Wake up!” still no response.
“Pop!” he began to shake him and still no response.
“Pop?” his relief changed to concern as he continued to be unresponsive.
“…pop?” no response.
He checked his pulse on his wrist.
Nothing.
He checked the pulse on his neck.
Nothing.
“Pop?!” he shook him vigorously.
He didn’t respond at all.
He put his head to his chest and heard nothing.
“POP?!” Jack screamed as waves of panic ran through him.
“POP WAKE UP!” he yelled and shook him, expecting it to help.
“PLEASE!” he couldn’t contain himself.
He began to break down. He fell to his knees by the side of his bed; Tears fell from his eyes as every emotion he had ever contained inside himself was pouring out of him all in this moment.
“Please wake up! We need to get you better! We need to fix things! We need to fix our family! We can be a family again! Please!”
His head fell to his arm as he accepted that he wasn’t going to wake up.
“I need you…” he was crying as he spoke.
His voice was muffled in the bed but his words echoed in the room as if he was stuck falling down a bottomless pit with no chance of hitting ground.
Jack sat at the side of his bed for an hour before he called 911. The ambulance came and the EMT’s began setting things up to remove the body. Jack sat on the couch in the living room while EMT’s and other officers walked back and forth in his house. He knew the officers on duty so they allowed him to sit by himself while they held off anyone that was trying to ask him anything. They respected that he didn’t want to deal with anything in that instance.
The autopsy showed that his body gave out on him. It wasn’t an overdose; he just couldn’t keep himself alive anymore. He simply stopped breathing; fell asleep to never wake up again. This pleased Jack to know that he went peacefully and it helped him cope to know that in his last few moments, he was honestly trying to do the right thing.
He was given a few days off to get things together for the funeral. Some of his father’s old friends showed up along with a few officers to pay their respect as well as Emily and the girls. Jack didn’t pay attention to any of them. He sat in the chair in front of his father, shook hands, gave hugs, and barely made eye contact. He sat in a motionless daze. Even when people spoke to him, his responses came off recorded as if he was on autopilot. He refused to give a eulogy or have any religious ceremonies at the service. He decided the funeral would be that one day and then he would cremate his remains.
After the funeral, he went with the body back to the funeral home to have it cremated. He stood there and stared at his body one last time as it laid in his casket in front of the cremation chamber. He hated how they made him look after the autopsy. His face looked like a doll and his skin was pail. He reached over and grabbed his father’s lifeless hands.
“I love you, pop.” The only words he
spoke.
All of the emotion had left him. He told the funeral director that he was done. They closed the casket, pushed it into the chamber, and closed the door.
Jack stood in front of the door and watched the entire time. He stood there alone, watching his father’s lifeless body turn to ashes.
No emotion.
No thought.
The last image of his father was an unforgiving fire.
When it was all over, he refused to take the ashes with him.
When he got back to the apartment, he walked in and immediately felt empty. There was too much unfilled air to him. All this opened space in a tiny area. He saw all the little things in the apartment that reminded him of his father. He passed them by without a second thought. He opened the door to his bedroom and scanned over the last place he saw him alive. He walked into the room and though it was small, it felt endless.
He sat down on the edge of the bed. The last time he was there, he was discovering his motionless father. He sat and glared off into the walls; looking at everything in the room. He turned over and laid down in the bed; lying in the last place he saw his father alive.
Jack also realized that in this moment, it was the first time he was lying in a bed since he was in the academy. Those beds were actually cots so, in retrospect, the last time he slept in an actual bed was when he was a teenager still living with his mother. He slept on a couch when he stayed with Emily, he slept on a couch living here with his father, and he slept on a loveseat when he lived with the Viccaro’s. Years with sleeping on things other than an actual bed and here he was; lying on a bed for the first time and it was the last place he spoke to his father.
As he lied there, he could feel the imprint his father made from lying there for hours. He smelt him on the pillow and in the sheets. The atmosphere ran circles around his senses. He couldn’t control himself from breaking down again; for it was the last time he would think about this. He curled up into a ball and cried ceaselessly. Memories running through his head, whether good or bad, played over and over again in his head.
The day his father came back from prison.
The day he moved in with him.
Even the day he saw him stab his uncle.
Every time he lifted him off the floor.
Each time he fell asleep eating and he had to dig the food out of this mouth.
He never wanted to think about these things again.
He didn’t move for a while; he lied there and cried, only speaking once while he was alone…
“…I miss you…”
Nothing Left
Jeanette looked over at Jack as he sat on the couch in the living room. He was leaning forward in a deep thought and she could tell he wasn’t paying attention to anything. The house was quiet for what seemed like decades and all Jack did was sit there. He was leaning on one hand with the gun pressed against the side of his face; he almost resembled Auguste Rodin’s the thinker with how entranced in himself he was, not recognizing the world around him. He was illuminated by the lights from outside while he sat in the darkness, shining around him as if he was standing directly in front of the sun. The darkness in the house and all that was seen was his silhouette in the light.
Everyone in the room was sitting where they were, tied up or not and not saying a word or moving from their spot. They all just sat in quiet, motionless, uncontaminated nothingness.
“Jackie?” Jeanette called for him, breaking the silence in the room. She didn’t get a response so she attempted it again.
“Jackie?”
He snapped out of his deep thought and answering her.
“What?”
“You can’t do this anymore Jackie…” she was trying to get through to him.
Jack leaned forward slightly in his seat.
“If I needed advice on my life choices, you are the last person I would look to for it.”
She remained silent after that.
Jack leaned back on the couch and looked at the clock on the wall.
“Damn,” he thought to himself, “it’s been a half hour already? How did the time slip by me so fast?”
Outside, Emily and the girls had arrived up the street by the blockade and Emily was brought to the house. She left the girls in the car and told them to stay there with one of the officers. She was then brought to Lynn, Rick, and the captain as soon as she arrived where they explained to her what was going on.
“Do you understand the situation Ms. Cherchio?” Lynn asked her.
“Yes. I do.” Her body language and mannerisms weren’t hard to read and they could all tell that she was a bit shaken by all of this.
“You don’t have to be here if you don’t want to Emily.” Rick stood by her side. They had only met a few times but Rick was Jack’s partner for as long as they were on the force. She found comfort in knowing he was there to help.
“I’m ok Ricky.” She wiped tears from her eyes as she stared at the house.
“We have everything under control and if it all goes according to plan, he’ll be walking out of there in less than 30 minutes, unharmed.” Lynn expressed this to her to try and ease her worry.
“Is there a way I can speak to him?” she asked.
“He communicates to us through the radio.” Lynn went to hand her a radio till the captain intervened.
“You sure that’s a good idea, Lieutenant?” he declared.
“I don’t see the issue in it,” he replied.
“I don’t want him getting any more reckless or have anything else happen.”
“What do you mean?” Lynn asked the captain in confusion.
“We know he has his mother in there, we know his father is dead, how can we tell whether or not she’s going to cause an emotional attack on him while he’s in there with hostages?” Williger made his statement and though it made sense, Emily wasn’t pleased.
“Fuck off!” she yelled at him.
“Easy Emily, there’s no need for that.” Rick stepped in between her and the captain before she could shout at him anymore.
“See what I’m talkin’ about. An outburst like that and…” and before the captain could finish his sentence, he was interrupted by Rick who wasn’t happy either.
“That’s enough, Captain! Let the women speak to him!”
The captain looked at Rick then back at Lynn to see what he had to say.
“I don’t see a problem with it.”
The captain rolled his eyes and turned away from them, annoyed that he felt he was right and he had no power to stop them.
“Now remember, speak calmly to him. Everything should be fine.” Lynn handed her the radio while giving her this advice.
“OK.” She reached for the radio but Lynn kept his hand on it.
“If I feel the situation is getting too loaded, I’m going to take over and I can’t guarantee you’ll get to talk to him again. Do you understand?”
She shook her head in agreement and Lynn let the radio go.
She lifted the radio up and held it with both of her hands as she spoke into it.
“Jackie?”
He recognized the voice immediately, as did Jeanette, and he answered it promptly.
“Emily?” his tone was filled with anxiousness.
“Yeah Jackie, it’s me.”
“Emily…what are you doing here?” he was confused.
He stood up and ran to the window.
“They came and got me Jackie. They told me everything. Are you ok?” she asked.
Jack looked out the window and saw her standing there with Rick, Lynn, and the captain.
“I’m fine, Em. Where are the girls?”
“They’re here but I left them in the car.”
Jack was relieved by that.
“Em, why are you here?”
“Cause you’re my brother and I love you.”
Jack turned away from the window and lent up against the wall. He didn’t want her there.
“You can’t be here Emily.”
/> “You can’t make me leave Jackie. I’m here till you come out of there and I’m not leaving until I see you’re ok.”
“I’m fine Em. Just take the girls and go home.”
“It’s not gonna happen. You might as well come out now if you want me to leave cause I’m not just walking away.”
“Listen to me sis,” Jack began but was cut off shortly before he could continue.
“No Jackie, you listen. I’m your sister and I love you. You can’t tell me to leave and expect me to just follow your orders. I’m not leaving you.”
Jack slide down the wall and sat on the floor while staring at the radio in his hand.
“Do you remember the day I met my father for the first time? When we were kids? You stood there and held my hand the entire time. You barely understood what was going on but you knew something in me needed you there.”
Jack stared at the radio and listened to the story while the memory was clear in his mind.
“Now, here you are. Pushing me away and I know you need me. We may have different fathers and we both may hate our mother, but you’re my brother no matter what. I’m not leaving you.”
A single tear fell from Jack’s eye. He glanced away from the radio to see his mother staring at him, hope in her eyes as she thought this would be the end.
“Em?” he said into the radio.
“Yeah Jackie?”
“I love you.”
“I love you too, moron,” she replied jokily with a grin on her face. “Now you have to come out Jackie.”
Jack let his legs lay flat on the floor while he put the gun on his lap. He glared at it while he clenched the radio in his other hand. He tilted his head up against wall and looked into dining room. Looking at his mother and the look of restlessness on her face, waiting to see what he was going to do. Behind her, he saw Gene still leaning up against the wall; tied up and barely awake. Next to me, Sue didn’t seem to care anymore. If anyone was affected the most tonight it was her but he wasn’t concerned; he did it to help her and she knows that she is thankful for it. Or, at least he hoped she would be. Doubt entered his mind while he thought about everything that had happened. The focus tonight was supposed to be on bringing the truth to light, settling the score with his demons, and letting people know how wrong they are in their choices.