FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 29TH, 2000

WHEN MY alarm goes off at 5:00 a.m., I push snooze.

I don’t want to wake up. I don’t feel like writing. Maybe tomorrow. I don’t want to go back to work.

Ten minutes later, the alarm goes off again. I push snooze.

I don’t wanna get up. Why do I have to type police reports for a living?

Ten minutes later, the alarm again goes off. Snooze is hit.

Holy shit, am I ever anxious. If I got up in the first place, I wouldn’t be feeling this way. I hate my job.

I drag myself out of bed at six fifteen, furious for not following through—again—on my promise to myself to get up early and write. I quickly shower, scarf down a bowl of cereal, then throw an apple, chocolate pudding and granola bar into my blue vinyl lunch bag. I’m just about to put on my wool sweater with the three lamb faces on the front when I notice Sasha’s dog dishes are low. This concerns me, even though Sam will be home in less than an hour. “You never know,” I say, topping up her food and water, “you just might be on your own today.”

I drive downtown and, as usual, arrive one minute before seven. It is eerily quiet in Records. When my supervisor sees me in the hallway, she asks me to go into her office. I figure I must have made a mistake typing a report, back before I left on holidays.

She shuts the door and looks me in the eye. “Sam’s fallen.”

Perhaps a broken leg or arm. The thought flits into my mind and out again.

“You have to call his inspector right away,” she says, handing me the phone number. “He’s waiting to hear from you.”

I’m puzzled as to why an officer with the rank of inspector wants to speak to me because inspectors don’t phone in incident reports. I sit down at my supervisor’s desk and am punching in the first few numbers when I make the connection between Sam’s inspector and Sam’s fall. This isn’t about a report.

“Hi,” I say when an older male voice answers the phone.

“Is this Adri?”

“Yeah.”

“Sam’s been in an accident.”

“Oh,” I hear myself say.

“Where are you right now?”

“At work.”

“Is your supervisor with you?”

I swallow. “Yeah.”

“OK, listen to me. Sam’s hit his head and we’re on the way to pick you up.”

“His head?”

The room suddenly feels different—as if the air is being sucked out.

“Yes. He’s at the hospital and we’re going to take you to him.”

Oh God no.

“Adri, are you there?

“Uh huh.”

“I need to talk to your supervisor now, OK?”

I hand the phone over. It feels as if my insides are caving in. I also have the oddest feeling that something has just begun.

My supervisor takes my arm and leads me from Records to the back alley behind the police station, where we wait for Sam’s inspector to pick me up.

“We had an awesome holiday,” I say quietly.

Her eyes widen. “I’m really glad, Adri.”

The police van pulls up and Sam’s inspector and Tom get out. Tom gives me a big hug, which is normal since I know him. But then the inspector hugs me, and this is worrisome because I’ve never met the man. The inspector gets back in the driver’s seat and Tom opens the sliding back door for me. I get in and he sits beside me.

Everything is wrong. I should be typing in my cramped cubicle, not sitting in the back seat of a police vehicle with Sam’s sergeant, who is supposed to be driving Sam home right about now. I ask Tom what happened.

“Sam was investigating a break and enter when he fell through a false ceiling.”

I look out the window. “I see.”

“He hit his head, Adri.”

“I know. Where are we going?”

There is a pause, then: “The hospital.”

I turn to look at him. “Yes. But which one?”

He tells me Sam is at the hospital in the northwest part of the city.

“Why didn’t they take him to the one in the south?” I ask.

“Because he needed to be at the hospital with the best trauma unit.”

Clunk. Like a coin landing on the bottom of an empty piggybank, the seriousness of Sam’s injury hits me. You don’t generally make it home to dinner when your day starts in a trauma unit.

“You know,” I say, “we had a great vacation.”