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The suspect was fast. Younger than Mickey for sure and running on a cocktail of adrenaline and whatever drugs had billowed out of his car when he failed to stop at the Stop sign and lost control of the car, hitting it side-on against a tree.
He turned a corner, and she and Cassidy split up. Mickey continued to pursue as Cassidy went straight ahead, hoping to intercept.
“Sheriff’s Department! Stop!” she yelled, but the order fell on deaf ears, the young man not stopping. He cut another corner and began to scramble up a steep, muddy embankment, his boots tearing up clumps of wet earth and decaying pine needles.
Mickey didn’t hesitate, hitting the incline hard, her boots somehow keeping a grip on the earth, the cold making her every breath visible.
Somewhere behind her, she could hear Cassidy, but she couldn’t stop now. She was close… super close.
The suspect reached the top of a ridge and stupidly risked a look back, giving Mickey a couple of seconds to catch up and attempt to vault over the massive fallen tree trunk.
He misjudged, clipping his foot and went sprawling on the other side. Mickey’s hopes of gaining on him were quickly foiled for two reasons.
First, the lad got up and seemed to dash deeper into the forest quicker than he’d been running before; it was like he hadn’t tripped over the trunk at all.
The second reason was her own fault – she thought she saw an opening when he stumbled and launched herself over the trunk, intending to use her momentum to pin him down. It was a move she’d executed hundreds of times on the job.
But the trunk’s appearance deceived her, and as she planted her left hand to vault, the bark collapsed under it, her hand slipping. The momentum carried on propelling her forward, and she felt her body jerk violently to the side, her shoulder torqued at an unnatural angle.
Pain flared up, and she gritted her teeth, trying to pull her hand out of the trunk, just as Cassidy reached her, pausing.
“Go, go after him!” Mickey told her, and Sheriff Campbell carefully cleared the trunk, rushing after the guy who was now barely visible through the trees.
Mickey attempted to take a deep breath, slowly pulling her hand out, scrambling to her feet nonetheless, reaching for her radio, reading to call Cassidy, when she spotted the lad again, this time running… right back?
Gritting her teeth, she pulled herself behind the tree, timing her good arm snatching out perfectly to grab the lad by his arm and twist it behind him, forcing him down to the ground, somehow keeping him on the ground long enough to pull out her cuffs with her right hand, cuffing his right hand, struggling to catch his left.
“Hands, now!” she ordered, doing everything she could to stop blacking out from the pain as he seemed to listen, and she snapped the second cuff over his left wrist just in time for Cassidy to arrive, out of breath, pine needles and twigs all over the front of her uniform.
“He got you, too?” Mickey asked, letting Cassidy pull the guy up as she cradled her left arm against her chest.
“You alright, Mickey?” Cassidy asked, concerned etched across her face – Mickey’s shoulder and arm didn’t look right when she first ran past her boss, and it didn’t look much better either. A small trickle of blood was dripping down her hand and onto her boots.
Mickey opened her eyes, the adrenaline now receding, her pain level skyrocketing. The mild stream of blood on her hand didn’t concern her much, for it was just a scratch – it was her shoulder socket that was screaming bloody murder, the pain much worse than the last time she’d injured this shoulder.
“I’ll be fine, Cassidy. Just - let me catch my breath,” she said, slowly walking back to the car, sitting in the passenger seat to Cassidy’s surprise – Mickey loved being the one behind the wheel.
“Want me to drop you off at the hospital, Sheriff?”
“No, I’ll be fine. This isn’t the first time I’ve injured it. I’ll just stay in the station for the rest of the day. You happy to patrol solo, or you want me to assign someone else to you?”
“I’m good, solo, Mickey, don’t worry about me. If you need a ride…”
“I won’t, but thanks.”
*
In hindsight, Mickey Fox regretted not taking up Cassidy’s offer to drive her to the hospital.
She spent the rest of her shift at her desk, offering to do the paperwork on their arrest before catching up on other paperwork she’d long neglected, glad her right hand wasn’t the injured one, stopping every couple of minutes to catch her breath or to readjust her arm, each movement causing her pain.
It’s the same shoulder, too, what luck? The docs had told her when she’d injured her shoulder last that it would be prone to tear again, but after it hadn’t happened for years, despite all the tackles and physical exertion on the job, she hadn’t thought about that shoulder in years.
Well, it reminded her about its existence again, alright.
Her shift finished, and she slowly pulled on her coat, grabbing the keys and getting into her truck, turning the key before realising it was a bad idea to get behind the wheel in pain; after all, that’s why she’d let Cassidy drive.
She didn’t want to ask one of the other deputies to drive her home, no – they’d ask questions.
Sighing, she reached for her phone and called the one person who wouldn’t ask questions, because he was there when she first hurt her shoulder all those years ago.
Travis didn’t ask questions, but just double checked she was at the station before pulling up 20 minutes later.
Mickey was waiting by the back entrance, learning against the brick wall, her jacket draped over her shoulder like a cape, unable to wrestle her arm in due to the sheer agony she was in. She pushed herself off the wall as Travis got out, nodding at him as he opened the passenger door, and let her settle in.
“Bad?” He asked her quietly.
“More like stupid,” Mickey quipped, “I was in foot pursuit, and my hand went straight through a trunk. Landed wrong.”
“The shoulder?” He asked, leaning against the passenger door.
Mickey nodded, feeling nauseous from the pain – the painkillers she’d stocked in her drawer in her office weren’t enough. She reached with her good hand for the seatbelt, but Travis beat her to it, pulling the seatbelt across her chest and clicking it into place, before heading round the front and getting in himself, starting the engine and pulling away.
“Do you want me to drive to the hospital, Mickey?” Travis asked, noting how quiet Mickey was, none of her usual quips and charms.
She was definitely in more pain than she was showing.
“Okay,” she caved in.
Okay.