I’ll always remember my first day back at the precinct after blowing my knee caps out. And not just because of the good-natured gifts my fellow men and women in blue bequeathed upon me for successfully integrating back into the force.
Firstly, I recall being tired. Partly because I tossed and turned the entire night before, and also because re-qualifying was a lot harder after spending a few months on the couch than after the academy. My legs were still burning. As I sat in the briefing room waiting on my first assignment, my bullet proof vest chafed the mound of fat that had settled between the bottom of the vest and the top of my belt. According to Tommy and the others, I was looking “healthy”.
Chief MacCabe read through the morning shift’s assignments as he always had – standing like statue, staring at an aging tablet the precinct had given him as a welcoming gift. I hadn’t been around back then, but that hardly matters. Anyways, he was going down the list of assignments, and then he did something he hardly ever did, unless he was really in a piss poor mood. He looked up. Stared straight at me for what seemed like a minute. I’m sure it was closer to five seconds, but his stare had a certain gravitational pull to it. Like a black hole, which is supposed to slow down time, or something like that.
He was a hard man, but he was a fair man. But hard.
“Officer Kelly?”
I swallowed. And then something more terrifying than a dress down occurred. He smiled.
“Your fellow officers pitched in for some welcome back gifts that should help you get accustomed to your beat for the next two weeks,” he said, producing a cardboard box from inside the podium.
I would have been more relieved with a lecture on my gut or poor physical results while qualifying or probably anything else. I walked up to the front of the room, my fellow officer’s thinly veiled smiles of admiration and expectant eyes drawing a bead on me like an embarrassment SWAT team.
“Go ahead, open it. I’m sure everyone would like to see what you got. Different gifts from different officers, you know,” chief MacCabe said, stepping aside, giving me the podium. With the cardboard box.
The box was longer than the surface of the podium, so it must have been stored on its side earlier. Basically a lot of “gifts” to sort through. Fearfully, I pulled open the lid and rummaged through blue and black confetti for a second before grabbing hold of some cloth. I lifted it out of the box and held it where the office could see it. Black swim trunks with a blue stripe on the outside of the legs. And the familiar snap of cell phone cameras.
“Exactly what you’ll need on your beat for the next two weeks,” chief MacCabe stated, his smile gone. He was still enjoying himself, I’m sure. Maybe? He was the kind of stoic chief that smiled only as long as required. No one really knew what he actually liked. Except black coffee and punctuality.
That beat he mentioned? Beach duty. In the summer, officers from different precincts would be placed on temporary beach duty. Chief probably thought it would be funny for me to work off those extra pounds in the blazing heat solving the biggest threat to safety and security in Chicago: under-aged kids drinking during summer break.
Anyways, the box continued to offer up gifts for my new beat. Sun glasses, sun screen, a pair of sandals, and a membership gift card for the neighborhood gym. I smiled, saluted, and took my roasting.
“Wait, there’s still one more thing at the bottom!” Tommy yelled from the back of the room.
I dug through the confetti one last time and pulled out the final gift. Two clear plastic bags filled with marshmallows. Labeled “Knee Pads”. Tommy didn’t stop laughing until chief MacCabe barked at the room for silence and I made my way back to my desk. With my new “uniform”.
And that’s just what happened at the station.