You're Not Alone

You Don't Care

"Whatever," Danny mumbled dismissively.
"Danny," Linda almost chided, getting annoyed. "We have to start looking. We can't live in your parents' house forever. We're not bums!"
"Whatever you want. I don't care."
"Exactly! You don't care. You don't care about your job, which you're not doing, by the way. You don't care about my job, which I'm not doing, cause, you know, I have a baby. You don't even care about Jack's graduation!"
"It's not a graduation. He's moving from pre-school to pre-k."
"It's a ceremony!" Linda was getting more agitated by the second. Her hormones were still strung very high, even though Sean was five weeks old.
"It's psychotic! They keep inventing new ways to celebrate mediocrity-"
"Mediocrity? Great. That's just.... great." She felt the tears coming, "at least now I know where you stand."
Danny rolled his eyes and followed her to the family room, "Linda-"
"Listen, Danny. You can yell and scream and degrade me all you want, because, hey, I'm just your wife, okay? But don't yell and scream and degrade our son. Okay? He's three years old, for Pete's sake! He needs his Daddy to guide him and to play with him! Go to his freakin' graduation or I'm gonna castrate you." She spun on her heel and walked to the stairs.
"Where are you going?"
"To tend to our new born baby. Or did you forget about him, too?" She stormed up the stairs, leaving her husband annoyed and somewhat confused at the landing. Recently, she and her husband had been at each other's throats. He was always pissed off and annoyed, she was always pissed off and crying. She thought he needed to show more interest in life and get back to policing; he thought she needed to man-up and stop crying at every sound. She sighed as she checked on Sean, "hey, baby."
Sean had woken up from his nap and was ready to eat. He started crying, suddenly he was starving!
"Aw, What's the matter, Sean?" She picked him up, "are you hungry?"
His little hands grabbed at her shirt, as tears streamed down his chubby face.
"You're hungry, huh?" She walked to the door, "okay, baby. Let's get you some lunch." She closed and locked the door, angry at her husband.
Downstairs, Jack came up to his Daddy with crayons and a coloring page. He plopped them on the table and climbed up onto the big chair. "Daddy, are you coming to my gad-du-matin?"
Danny smirked a little. "Are you kidding? I wouldn't miss it for the world." He ruffled his hair.
Jack smiled happily, going about his coloring task.
The detective rolled his eyes, looking at the side of the refrigerator. He sighed when he saw a picture of Linda, sitting on the floor with a three month old baby Jack. I'm fine, Danny reassures himself. Totally fine. She's just over sensitive.
***********
Danny laid awake that night, as he did other nights as well. He was completely used to the time change by now, but he refused to sleep. If he didn't sleep, he didn't have to see those ugly sights. He didn't have to see his wife dying in the most gruesome ways his brain could conjure. He didn't have to wake up panicked and sweating, immediately checking his wife's pulse. All those things he hated, therefore he just refused to sleep. He didn't realize how unhealthy that was for him, for Linda, for Jack, and even for Sean.