Consequences
By Dragon's Daughter 1980
Disclaimer: Other than being a fan, I have nothing to do with CSI.
Author's Notes: I wrote this short piece based only on watching the season promos a few weeks back.
As Crime Scene Investigators, we meet people on the worst day of their lives.
The worst day of our lives…
Is that phrase even capable of encompassing the agony that engulfs us now? Can any phrase adequately express our sorrow in any language?
Can any string of words convey the grief and anger, the pain and shock that reverberate through us with every breath, every heartbeat, every moment? Can any combination of syllables be enough to speak of the heartbreak carved on his colleagues'—his friends'—faces and the scars they will forever carry in their souls? Can any gesture be of any comfort to them?
How do we handle losing one of our own, someone who wasn't supposed to be in the line of fire, someone who wasn't supposed to be a victim of the violence we see every day? How do we hold ourselves together long enough, stem the tide of grief to the side, to give him what is too often denied to others: Justice? How do we restrain our anger, so it doesn't blind us to the Truth, yet still drives us to find the answers we so desperately need to know?
Yes, we're cops, enforcers of the law, entrusted with the public's safety and all that, with guns and badges and vests, but… the CSIs aren't quite like us. They're scientists first, cops second. They're somewhere in the middle of the divide that marks the difference between cop and civilian, but in moments like tonight, it doesn't matter. They're under our protection, they're one of us, and now one of them is dead.
A brother is dead, and we don't know why or who.
We're the people charged with finding the answers to the unknowable, the incomprehensible, the atrocious for the sake of the victims and all they leave behind. We're the ones who find the guilty and bring them to trial. We're the ones who close chapters of lives, for better and for worse, and give closure to the grieving.
Who does it for us when we're the ones who are the mourners, when we're the ones screaming silently in grief-stricken rage?
The phrase we're trained to offer them—"I'm sorry for your loss"—doesn't offer much.
Nothing can explain grief. It is a tidal wave of loss that drowns all it touches, plunging its victims into a waking nightmare that they will never awaken from for the rest of their lives. Time heals what it can, but it's too soon, too soon for the raw wounds to stop bleeding.
There is silence in the CSI labs, a furious and icy quiet that speaks of determination driven by grief. No one cries here; tears accomplish nothing. We were taught that—Science and Logic rules here—and it has served us well all these years. We're professionals, but we are human too, and so we grieve in our own ways.
Our vision blurs when we study microscopic trace, so we wipe our eyes on our lab coat sleeves and try again. Our hands tremble as we handle glass vials, so we take a moment before we put them into the holding racks. Our breaths catch when we unfold evidence, so we pause to breathe before we continue our work. We steel ourselves when someone calls out a warning and hide our flinch when the gunshots ring out, pretending that we're not imagining in our minds how the last moments might have played out, reminding ourselves that these gunshots will take no lives and commit no crime. We tell ourselves that every shot we hear will bring us one step closer to the truth. We continue our work because we have no other choice. We don't talk about what happened, the mourners that we are, because nothing will bring him back to us, nothing can revive the dead. We talk only about what we can do, for ourselves and for him: catch his murderer and make him pay.
Words can't console the inconsolable.
We know that now.
It's all hands on deck. Warrick Brown is our only case.
There's a mentality in the department that you have to be a part of to understand, one that kicks in when circumstances are at their worst. There's always going to be politics, rivalries, grudges and petty things that clutter up people's lives. Cops are as human as the rest of humanity, prone to the same mistakes and flaws as any person. But there's a change in attitude that shows up whenever someone in the department dies, one that calls a temporary truce to mundane quarrels and trivial bickering
Warrick Brown was a police officer, even if he was a CSI. He might have been a scientist first before anything else, but he carried the gun and badge of the department. He walked the same halls as the rest of us did, saw the same horrors as we did, lived with Death hovering over his shoulder as all of us do—he was one of us, a face, a colleague, a friend.
Regardless of his flaws and his mistakes, of his virtues and merits, it all boils down to these facts:
He was one of us.
He was murdered.
Let's finish this for him.