He’s had his handgun, a Sig Sauer P938, since he was 21, a birthday gift from his oldest brother. It’s basic, compact, reasonably light. Just a modest and reliable self-defense weapon. Getting a Pennsylvania concealed carry permit was one of the first things he did upon moving to Pittsburgh. Good thing too, since it might’ve been impossible after he stopped having a permanent address.

Having it often made him feel a lot more secure, especially when he became homeless, a beloved tether to a sense of safety when he wasn’t sure where he would end up on any given night, what kind of situations he would find himself in. When it came down to it, he preferred sleeping rough to having to give it up to sleep in a shelter—the shelter was chaotic and dangerous enough, he couldn’t bear to sleep there unarmed.

He’s never had to use it, thank God, but he did threaten someone once. He surprised someone snooping around his tent coming back from class, and the guy, shifty-eyed and probably in withdrawal, looked Dennis up and down and got into a fighting stance. Dennis lifted his shirt to reveal the handle of his gun in its holster at his hip. The guy bolted.

Dennis didn’t sleep much that night, replaying the interaction over and over again, unraveling every millisecond in case he ever needed to do it again, analyzing what he should have done differently.

He’s had to make some really sketchy decisions. The University obviously has a no firearms on campus policy, which Dennis has violated on a number of occasions—if security was more effective, his whole life, everything he’s worked so hard for, could get fucked absolutely sideways in an instant. Dennis feels deeply ambivalent about that. Eventually, he has to start leaving it by his tent. Leaving it makes him extremely anxious, haunted by the idea of someone finding it and taking it even though it’s buried twenty paces from where he’s hidden his other stuff. When he finds his hiding place at PTMC, it’s a huge relief to know his belongings are reasonably safe even though sneaking past security with a gun in his backpack is one of the most nerve-wracking things he’s ever done.

He didn’t sleep at all the night after PittFest, thinking about everything he’d seen that day, the absolute carnage someone can unleash with a firearm. He’s been around guns all his life, they’re just part of the culture in Broken Bow, as in much of the United States. He thinks about home, about his brothers and his parents, what they might say to him if he called.

At Trinity’s, he keeps it in a lock box, with a trigger lock, in the back of his closet, unloaded. The ammunition is in the back of his sock drawer.

One night, Trinity tells Dennis about her history of self-harm. She tells him she’s been struggling with depression.

He doesn’t want to store his gun elsewhere, at first, though it’s one of the first things he thinks about after that conversation. The idea of not having it around invokes a mild but persistent feeling of dread, but nothing like the acute and justified concern that it is too dangerous to have in the house with someone experiencing depression. He wants to be as safe and responsible as possible, was raised to take firearms seriously, to respect their power. On that, he and his dad can agree, though the specifics of whether or not depression is real might be a bridge too far. And anyway, he’s already storing the gun and its ammunition separately, it’s not like it’ll be any use in an emergency. He doesn’t feel unsafe, doesn’t feel like he actually needs it for its intended purpose. There’s really no good reason not to store it elsewhere.

At the end of his shift, he asks Dr. Abbot for a word. It’s a little excruciating to be on the receiving end of that steely gaze, but he can’t think of a better person to ask, so he spits it out, asks Dr. Abbot if he’d be willing to store his gun.

Abbot doesn’t look at all fazed. “Do you have a safety concern in your home I should know about?”

The second part of that sentence feels like an out, but Dennis doesn’t feel like he’s dodging anything when he says no. They agree on a time for Dennis to come over and it gets dealt with, no biggie.

This all comes out one day when Dennis accidentally lets it slip that he’s been inside Abbot’s house.

Trinity raises an accusatory eyebrow. “And why, pray tell, was my little Huckleberry in his hot older attending’s house, hmmmm?”

Dennis tries not to blush, tells her about him keeping Dennis’s gun. Only in retrospect does he realize he probably should've predicted how she'd react.

“What the actual fuck, you had a GUN in my HOUSE?! And you didn’t tell me?!”

“Uh, no? Why would I?”

“Because it’s a fucking gun! In my house!”

“Yeah, which is why I could never blab about it like that?”

Trinity is looking at him like he’s a from another planet and Dennis is starting to think maybe this is one of those urban-rural cultural divide things everyone is always talking about. They go back and forth about what Dennis would consider a fundamental misunderstanding of basic firearm safety protocol when suddenly Trin goes quiet.

“Wait, why did you give it to Abbot then?”

“Well I just thought, since you…yknow…”

Dennis’s words wither watching Trinity’s eyes widen. She’s clearly hurt, deeply hurt, and Dennis wishes he had never brought it up, desperately wishes he could rewind just 10 minutes and not say the thing about Abbot’s furniture. Anger, worse than he’s ever seen, settles over her face. She doesn’t yell, she whispers.

“Oh, so you think I’m fucking crazy then? You think I'm gonna blow my brains out?”