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"I think so. Tonight she finally stayed on the line. Once she started talking, she told me she'd been trying to call for months. She kept hanging up because she didn't want to ruin his career." Janine was quiet for a second. "She was dialing 911 and hanging up for four months." She exhaled. "I'm guessing nobody at the station knew what was going on with him?"

I sat up in the bunk. The springs creaked under me. Across the hall, Sawyer's snoring paused for a second and then picked back up.

"Alex?"

"I found prescription bottles in his drawer. Pills that weren't his. I confronted him at shift change and told him to get help before the department found out." I looked at the exit sign above the door. "Then that happened."

"Alex, that's not your fault."

"He tried to kill himself today, Janine."

"He didn't try to kill himself because you told him to get help. He was using for months. You gave him a chance to fix it himself, and he made his choice." Her voice was steady. "That's not on you."

I didn't answer. She was right, and I knew she was right, but it didn't change the weight of it. I didn't know why Abbott had hit me this hard. He wasn't the first officer I'd seen go down. He wasn't even someone I liked. But watching Sawyer carry him through that doorway had reached somewhere I wasn't ready to look at, and I didn't understand why.

"Alex? You there?"

"Just thinking," I exhaled. "I'm glad you called. I was thinking about calling you tonight, but I didn't want to wake you. It's always good to hear your voice."

She gave a short laugh, more breath than sound. I smiled in the dark.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you too. We should go to bed."

"Good night, Janine."

"Go to sleep, Captain."

The department suspended Abbott three days later. Pending investigation, conduct unbecoming, substance abuse on the job. The union assigned him a rep. The chief's office started pulling his incident reports going back eighteen months, looking for patterns they should have caught.

Linda filed the divorce papers the same week. She took the kids to her mother's house and told Abbott's attorney she wasn't subjecting them to any more of it.

I followed the updates the way everyone at the station did, through the chain and through the talk. Abbott was alive. He'd been discharged from Mass General after two days. The burns were superficial, the smoke inhalation was not. He was in an inpatient program somewhere outside the city. That was the last anyone heard.

I knew it wasn't my fault. Janine had told me, and she was right. Linda had been calling 911 for four months. The crew had been covering for him. The addiction was in control long before I opened that drawer.

But knowing that didn't make it lighter. The facts were the facts, and the facts said I did the right thing, and the right thing still felt like a match I'd struck and couldn't blow out.

A-shift lost their captain. The department couldn't fill the slot until after the new year, and someone had to cover the gap, so I put my name on the board before anyone asked.

"I'm doing a feast for New Year's." Julio was standing at the counter with a notepad, writing a shopping list in handwriting only he could read. "Brisket, ribs, the works. Tanner left half a bag of charcoal in the bay, and I've got a smoker guy."

Sawyer looked up from his phone. "You know what that does to calls, right? Every time we cook, the tones drop before the meat's done."

"It's New Year's Eve," Amos said. "We're getting calls whether we cook or not. We might as well eat."

I leaned against the counter and let them talk.

Sawyer turned to me. "Are Janine and Hazel spending New Year's at Erin's?"

"Yeah, probably."

He studied me for a second. "You haven't been home since we pulled Abbott out of that fire, have you, Cap?"

"A-shift needs a captain."

Sawyer put his hand on my shoulder. "They should find someone soon."