“Ow,” I repeat. The pain is blinding, stabbing. I let my eyes close.

“Nurse!” Brick calls. “We need some pain meds in here!”

“It’s not time yet,” a woman’s voice says. “Stop yelling, please.”

“Look at her face,” Brick thunders. “It’s time.”

Ow.

They argue. Brick is fierce. You wouldn’t expect it of someone in his line of work, but he’s fiercest when he’s fighting for someone else. I wonder if he knows that about himself. Or if he’d want to know. It’s probably not great for his street cred. I laugh to myself.

The pain is less now. I’m floating.

Brick’s hands are on mine. “You’re okay,” he says. “You’re okay.”

I’m not, though, am I? My shoulder is on fire. Even as the pain dulls from the meds, it still smolders. Is it broken? Am I broken?

“How’s the other girl?” I ask. The one I was running with. We tried to get away.

“What other girl?”

“I don’t know. There was a girl.”

Brick shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

Sadness floods me. I don’t know who she is. I’ll never know how the night turned out for her.

My hand relaxes under Brick’s. It’s hard to hold the bar anymore. I don’t see the reason to try. He places my fingers gently on my stomach. “Rest,” he says. “I’ll come see you again later.”

Brick’s here. He’s here for me. Things are okay even though they’re not okay. I can sleep.

I wonder what this medicine is. I can feel it getting all up in my veins, softening my body into sleep. Whatever it is, it’s the good stuff. Lucky my job comes with health insurance. This is going to be expensive.

OFFICER YOUNG

“They can’t keep this up,” O’Donnell says. “They’re gonna wear themselves out.”

“Not before we drown in paperwork,” says the desk sergeant. “Christ, look at all these arrest reports.”

O’Donnell throws a pen at him. “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, for God’s sake.” They laugh.

I laugh along with them—some things are automatic. Some things come easy. Some things, you don’t think about until after.

My mind is crammed with images from last night. Adrenaline does that. Makes you remember every tiny moment of stress. Particularly the moment—Crack!—when my baton came down, shattering the girl’s shoulder.

A girl. Small as anything. A hundred pounds soaking wet, as they say. Unarmed. In the light of day, I think, she couldn’t have hurt me. There and then, I wasn’t so sure.

It shakes me.

It shakes me, not being sure. You have to be sure. To lash out is a last resort. Always.

Always.

“They can’t keep it up,” O’Donnell says again. “Twenty bucks says it’s all over after tonight.”

A flare-up, we call it. A small dose of civil unrest. It never lasts. Look at the history. The worst offenders get arrested and the crowd loses momentum. Loses interest. When there’s no one to follow, everybody goes home. We crack down hard, to ensure it.