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But those rioters were criminals who always hated the police because police stopped their criminality. The people Danni had faced two nights ago were, apparently, normal people who suddenly developed a vicious hatred of police because they were quick to believe a false narrative. This was different, Danni told herself. How can you protect so-called good people who hate you? The question haunted her. And asking the question finally displaced Gabe from her thoughts.
She fell into a fitful, restless sleep.
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“Sorry about the scar on your forehead. The jagged nature of the concrete that hit you made it almost impossible to be delicate. It’s a miracle your skull wasn’t fractured.” The doctor frowned and looked at Danni over his glasses.
Danni blinked at the mirror, assessing the scar now free of stitches. Bangs would cover most of it. She hated bangs.
“If my dad were alive now, he’d be the first to tell you my head is harder than any substance known to man.”
She tried to keep the conversation light. The last few days had been rough. Danni wasn’t sleeping well. The nightmares came every night. They weren’t always about Gabe, but they were always terrifying with mobs and chaos, and she was never in control. They tore her out of slumber in fright, her heart pounding. Would the doctor ask how she was sleeping?
“Hard or not, you were lucky,” he said. “A concussion is bad enough. How are you feeling overall? Do you want to go back to work?”
She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. Danni had to think about her answer. Her stomach still churned with indecision and something she wasn’t accustomed to—fear. It was the first time in her fifteen-year career she’d been injured on duty.
Thanks to Thomas Johnston, violent protests against police, while sporadic now, were still springing up in LaRosa. LA had quieted down, but Johnston and the Tribune continued to fan the flames of unrest here. Even though what started the riots had been exposed as untrue, Johnston and the crowd he spoke for still had issues with the PD. Johnston reiterated what seemed to be a scripted speech with every interview he gave, always ending with “The police are beyond reform. They need to be abolished. The community can police itself.”
Danni was surprised about Johnston. Not because she knew him personally, but because before the riots he’d been a fixture in the neighborhood around the Barton Plaza Apartments, and all she’d heard of him was positive. He wanted his neighborhood as safe and as crime free as possible. Who didn’t want that?
True to form, the LaRosa Tribune stayed anti-police. Every past example of police misconduct that could be found was mentioned and reprinted. Editorials appeared daily calling for the city council to get rid of the police department completely and try something else.
From what she’d heard from her partner, everyone was on edge, afraid to be proactive because they didn’t want to be in the next viral video. Did she really want to go back to work?
“I don’t blame you if you say no,” the doctor continued. “With all the mayhem going on out there.”
Swallowing, Danni formulated her answer, stomach feeling as though she’d just stepped off a ledge over a bottomless pit and was in a free fall. “You can clear me.”
Even as her lips formed the words, her mind said there was no way in the world she would go back to work—at least not now. The very people Danni had become a police officer to serve and protect were calling officers vile names and demanding her profession be done away with. The mayor’s stated goal was to get rid of the police department and hire the LA County Sheriff to patrol “sparingly,” whatever that meant.
Despite a lifetime of Christian teaching encouraging her to forgive, one question blared in Danni’s thoughts: Why should she continue to put her life on the line for such an ungrateful public?
