I venture out to the Parade District. It’s particularly dreary today, the kind of gray that makes it feel like rain is always just about to start but never quite does.
I’m helping with cleanup work. The streets are busy in that familiar way—half instruction, half idle chatter drifting between people as they move through their tasks.
Constables pass through in steady rhythm. Usually alone, sometimes in pairs, always just present enough to remind everyone how things are supposed to stay orderly.
“Mrs. Constable… does your husband know you’re out?” a voice calls from behind me.
I turn quickly.
It’s John.
We both grin before I can quite stop myself from blushing. I step in, and we share a soft, quick kiss—brief enough to stay proper, long enough to matter.
“I made sure he knows. Can’t have you worrying,” I tease. “How’s patrol going?”
“Right as rain, poppet,” he says with that easy grin.
“Good,” I smile.
We linger just long enough for one more quiet kiss before we part again, each returning to our duties like nothing has shifted at all.
Lunch passes in a blur of friendly conversation and practical talk—what’s been finished, what still needs attention, what can wait until tomorrow. Afterward, we return to work.
Little do we know how quickly the day will turn.
—
A familiar hydraulic hiss cuts through the street—one of the nearby Bobby Poppers cycling through its routine pressure build.
Then it changes.
A high, uneven whine rises from within the unit, followed by a grinding mechanical stutter, like gears slipping where they shouldn’t. The rhythm of the machine breaks—pressure building too fast, releasing too late, then failing to release at all.
Someone inside starts hammering on the internal release controls.
“Open it!” a voice shouts.
Three people rush the external mechanism. It resists at first—locked, then half-releasing, then locking again as the system fights itself. The casing vibrates under strain, bolts audibly stressing under internal pressure.
Finally, the seal gives.
The door swings open—
—and a burst of superheated air and smoke vents immediately from within, followed by a sharp electrical crack as a damaged internal coupling shorts against the frame.
The system drops into emergency shutdown. Power cuts hard, leaving only the hiss of steam and the faint smell of burned insulation.
The Bobby inside stumbles out at once, coughing violently, disoriented but upright.
He’s conscious.
Smoke has caught in his lungs, leaving him rasping and blinking hard against the air. The lower edges of his uniform are scorched where heat vented closest to the seals, and his cuffs are singed and darkened. He keeps trying to straighten himself, as if insisting it’s already under control.
It isn’t.
Constables arrive within moments. John is among them.
He doesn’t rush. He never does. But something in him has already shifted the instant he saw the scene.
“Give him air,” he says, sharp but controlled. “Back everyone off.”
Another constable moves in beside him, and together they guide the Bobby away from the crowd—steady hands at his elbow and shoulder, not dragging, just directing him out of the noise.
A transport cart arrives quickly, its frame humming softly as it settles into place.
The Bobby is helped aboard. He’s still coughing, trying to speak between breaths that don’t quite cooperate.
“Medical station,” John says to the driver. “Keep him upright.”
The cart rolls away.
Only then does the street seem to remember how to breathe.
—
Work resumes, but it doesn’t feel the same.
People speak more quietly. Some stop speaking altogether. Even those who continue avoid standing too close to the Popper’s edge, as if proximity alone might invite attention.
John continues his rounds as though nothing has changed.
But I notice the differences.
He checks each remaining unit twice. He pauses longer than necessary at inspection points. He asks fewer casual questions and more precise ones—maintenance schedules, recent faults, servicing records.
When someone tries to dismiss it as “just a valve issue,” he doesn’t respond to the humor. He simply notes it and moves on.
Not angry.
Just attentive in a way he wasn’t before.
He finishes his shift as required. No earlier. No later. Like someone holding a line steady against pressure.
—
By evening, he comes home.
The uniform is gone, replaced by something quieter. The tension doesn’t disappear so much as lose its purpose.
He closes the door and looks at me for a long moment.
Not as a constable.
Just as John.
“Everyone’s fine,” he says first—automatic, practiced. Then, after a pause, more honestly: “It shook people up.”
He exhales, rubbing a hand over his face.
“They got him out fast. He’ll recover.”
There’s a silence that settles between us, heavy but not unwelcome.
“I kept thinking,” he says finally, voice lower, “how quickly it turned.”
He doesn’t expand on it. He doesn’t need to.
—
Later, the house is quiet.
No uniforms. No street noise. No machinery in the distance.
Just the two of us.
John sits close without meaning to, like his body has decided proximity is simpler than thought. Eventually, he lets out a breath that almost becomes a laugh, but doesn’t quite make it.
“Still right as rain, poppet,” he says.
It sounds less like reassurance now, and more like something he’s choosing to believe out loud.
And we stay there, letting the day finally lose its shape.
—
The next morning comes quietly.
Breakfast, routine, soft conversation. A couple of gentle kisses before we leave for work, like punctuation marks on something fragile but intact.
Later, I bake muffins.
I take them to the medical station.
Rodney is already sitting up when I arrive.
“Mrs. Constable… lovely day for it,” he says with a tired grin.
“Rodney, please,” I reply softly, setting the basket down. “You can call me Sonny.”
I offer him one of the muffins. He takes it carefully, thanking me under his breath.
We talk quietly while he eats—nothing important, just enough to make the room feel less like recovery and more like time passing.
When I leave, I tell him to call if he needs anything. Me or John.
—
Afterward, I return to work—cleanup, distribution, paperwork—moving through Wellington Wells as if the day is already trying to behave normally again.
And for now, it almost does.
