All right, I'll be brutally honest. This is my first Third Watch story ever. Ever! So please be gentle. All ideas have most likely been used before because character "death" and "revival" are very commonplace. Please don't shoot me. I'm not getting any money for this anyway.
When Ty first awoke from his mysterious slumber, he couldn't remember anything except the distant echoing of three sudden gunshots. The sound, nothing more than a memory now, was hard to place against the confused thoughts of the rest of the day.
Ty definitely remembered getting up and having breakfast that same morning. He'd been watching some old I Love Lucy reruns until Carlos, his roommate, had complained about the television being way too loud. Dismayed, but not completely, Ty had gone to the drug store down the street to pick up the paper and a cup of coffee. Upon returning from the hustle and bustle that was New York City on a weekday morning, he had plopped himself down at the kitchen table to enjoy the sports section and his new drink, pausing momentarily to laugh at the obnoxious snoring that erupted from Carlos' room every few minutes.
The morning had waned on normally enough, with only two telephone calls to speak of. One, a telemarketer, and the other being Ty's own mother. The former had been no real surprise. Ty and Carlos had been getting offers for cable and phone companies since the day they moved in, and still couldn't seem to shake them. But the other phone call had been unexpected. Ty always called his mom on the weekends, and she would call him on special occasions, or to tell him about whatever big news may be happening with her or his sisters. Her message that day, though, had been a rather uncharacteristic one...
"Ty, I'm worried," she began.
The seriousness in her voice had thrown him for a loop, and he allowed himself to sit, expecting bad news.
"What's up, mom?" he asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
"I don't know. I just have a feeling that something is going to happen."
Ty stifled a laugh, but could not withhold his grin.
"Mom, don't worry. I'll be fine."
There was a pause on the other end of the line, then an acquiescing sigh.
"All right, baby. Take care. Call me when you get home tonight, won't you?"
Ty's brow furrowed. "You do know what time that will be, right?"
"Eleven thirty."
He sighed. "All right, mom. I'll call."
"Okay. I love you."
"Love you too, mom. Bye."
He hung up, sighing. One glance at the clock told him he should start getting ready for work.
The day had continued on fine from there. Upon reaching the House, Ty was surprised to find his partner Sully in unusually high spirits (for Sully, at least) and Faith talking casually with her typically unruly partner, Maurice Boscorelli.
The calm wasn't untypical really, but more often than not Ty walked into the locker room expecting a heated argument to ensue from Bosco and Faith, and he was very rarely disappointed.
"Hey, Davis!" Faith greeted from the back of the locker room, finishing up the lotion bottle in her hand with one final squeeze.
"Yo," he replied, a grin on his face and a sparkle in his eyes to match. He picked his locker door open and began to shuffle through it, prepping to change into his uniform. "Nice day, huh?"
"Oh, it's beautiful!" Faith agreed, stepping up behind Bosco while rubbing her hands together.
Boscorelli sniffed the air a bit at her approach, then made an entertainingly disgusted face that allowed Ty a good chortle before slipping his button up blue shirt over his arms. "Do you have to wear that stuff?" he asked, casting a disapproving stare over his shoulder toward her.
Faith's grin immediately reversed into a frown.
"What 'stuff'?" she asked, rolling her head in emphasis to his debasing remark.
"That lotion crap," he spat. "It stinks up the squad car and makes me nauseous."
"Then ride with your head out the window!"
Ty turned to Sully, and the pair exchanged amused grins as the others' ceaseless quarreling. It seemed Ty wasn't going to be disappointed after all.
"Never a dull moment," the young man commented after Faith and Bosco had left, still fighting about...something.
"Tell me about it," Sully laughed, finishing the button on his left sleeve cuff. "You'd think they were married with all that nonsense bickering every day."
"Now that's a scary thought," he replied while wrestling with the top button on his shirt.
Sully laughed again and gave Ty a short wave, saying that he'd see him at roll call.
And so the day had continued on, relatively slow but no less entertaining thanks to some idle chatter that the duo was able to maintain throughout their shift. Ty told Sully about his mother's phone call and got nothing more out of it than what he had told himself.
"She's just being a mom."
"Yeah, I know, but I hate for her to worry," Ty had responded.
Sully gave an exasperated sigh. He hated for Maggie to have to worry too. After what had happened with her husband, Sully had been quite amazed that she'd allowed her son to become a cop as well. Not that the man wasn't grateful, he'd never had a partner like Davis. True, the kid was idealistic, perhaps too much for Sully's personal liking at times, but he was as trustworthy and good humored as his old man, and Sully liked to think that they were close for partners.
"I'm sure it's in her head," Sully tried to convince his partner earnestly. "She's just having one of those days, you know? It'll pass."
He cast a look in Ty's direction. The kid was nodding, seemingly satisfied with that response.
"You're probably right, Sul."
Soon dinner had passed, and the pair was facing their last hour before the shift ended when the call came in. There'd been a mugging out by Battery Park and 55-Charlie was being called in to investigate.
"So much for a quiet shift," Sully grumbled, turning into a parking lot to head back in the direction of the call.
"Too good to be true," Ty agreed before radioing in the response.
The park was completely void of any civilians, which wasn't all too rare on a New York City night. Especially one as cold as tonight. When Ty and Sully left the security of the RMP, they both groaned at the biting gust of wind that hit them full in the face, as if tempting them to just go away and drive back to the promising warmth of the Precinct House.
Or warning them.
"Let's head back," Sully said after forty give minutes of waiting, not really caring to hear a response. They'd been searching and grazing the grounds without so much as a shred of evidence that there had been a disturbance. "It's getting cold, and I'm not seeing anything."
A devious grin danced across Ty's handsome face. "What's the matter, Sullivan? Scared of the dark?"
Sully turned a glare on his partner, although there was a very obvious grin being held in his eyes. "No, but I'm sure as hell not one for freezing to death."
Ty nodded in agreement. The concept didn't sit well with him either, but he hated to just walk away if someone had really been getting beaten up out here.
"Tell you what," the young officer proposed, pulling his right hand up to rub the edge of his nose for it was swiftly going numb. "Why don't you go back to the car, start it up, warm it up, and meet me on the other side of the pathway here. That way you can be warm, I can do a bit more checking, and we'll be back at the house in time for someone to pick up some dinner when the shift is over."
Sully frowned. He didn't like the idea of leaving his partner alone, though he wasn't sure why. Something, a small knot in the center of his abdomen, was telling his brain not to do it
"Look," the young man went on. "It'll take you just as long to get back to the car and around the park as it will for me to get through it. If there's nothing here then we'll call it a night."
"And if there is?"
Ty cast his partner a questioning gaze, then shrugged. "You said it yourself, man. There's nothing here. What's to worry about?"
There was a glimmer of doubt in Sully's eyes.
Touched by his partner's concern, Ty nearly considered acquiescing to Sully's desires, but he really didn't think there was anything to worry about. Chances were, the perpetrator (assuming there even was one) had run off a long time ago. Despite his previous feelings, Ty was pretty sure they weren't going to catch anyone tonight.
"All right. I'll meet you at the edge of the park," Sully said with another sigh. "Don't take all night."
"Yeah, yeah." Ty flashed a grin and started on down the path. "Just don't get distracted and head for that new doughnut shop across the street. You'll ruin your dinner."
"Shut up!"
The younger cop's laughter echoed far into the surrounding darkness. No one could get away with teasing officer John Sullivan like that, except for Ty, and he never missed the opportunity to take advantage of that option.
He continued down the path alone. And that had been that.
Each bullet that rang out was heard by the senior officer circling the park, and each one acted as an anchor, plunging his heart into a deadly, dark cold. Despite his hopes and common sense, something told him that those bullets had been deadly true to their intended target: Ty.
He had been walking for about five minutes when three gunshots rang out into the nighttime air, shattering the quiet, cold calm that had so deceptively and cleverly pulled Ty into its trap.
The first bullet fired took the young man out just above the knee, compromising any attempts at running away or towards help. The second had dipped into his shoulder, causing him to overbalance and slip backward into a sadistic dance for the wily sniper. His limbs flailed as his face contorted into the truest image of pain anyone had ever seen. In one single motion, Ty stepped back on his weakened leg and his torso became fully exposed to the faceless gunmen who did not miss the opportunity to finish his prey off mercilessly.
The third, and final bullet, broke right into Ty's chest cavity, ripping the pulmonary artery and sending a shower of blood behind him that sprayed into a fifteen foot wide arc. The young man fell to the pitiless, cold cement with only one thought on his mind; he couldn't breathe!
Again, the memories of the gunshots rang forth in his head, mixed with the sirens of a squad car and the desperate screams of sheer terror from Sully at the sight of his partner's broken body...
...Ty blinked, staring at the ceiling of his hospital room before pulling his gaze down to stare at the body in the bed next to him. His body.
"So, that's it?" he asked no one. "I'm dead?"
"Pretty much," came an unexpected response. Ty lifted his gaze to see Alex smiling back at him knowingly. "Amazing, isn't it?" she asked, peering at the dead Ty Davis Jr. with a little emotion in her eyes. Her gaze skipped back to the nervous man sitting in the chair beside his own body. "You expect it to be more, you know?"
Ty frowned, not understanding.
"Death," she went on. "When everything ends, you expect it to be more...dramatic or something. You know? Because that's what we see from death. But when it's your turn to go, you're just gone. You don't get to see the weeping and the tears. You don't see other people dealing with their losses, because it's not you, watching from the sidelines, or even right up close and personal to the person who died. It's you who's dead, and you don't get to see the consequences of it."
Ty didn't respond, bringing a sigh from Alex.
"There's no point in staring at yourself," she promised. "I can tell you, there ain't nothin' gonna happen with him anymore." She slapped the corpse's leg. "Come on. Let's go."
Ty looked up, frowning. "Go? Go where?"
Alex shrugged, looking around the room casually. "I dunno. Anywhere but here, I guess."
There was a pause.
"How long have I been dead?" Ty asked, his eyes still not leaving the paralyzing sight of his own dead body.
"You were pronounced dead on arrival last night," she said with a much softer note in her voice. Her hand found Ty's shoulder and stayed there for a few moments.
"I was?"
Alex nodded.
"Is there anyone here?"
The young woman cocked her head. "For you, you mean?"
"Yeah."
Her head bobbed to the side as if to peer out the window. When she came back, she grabbed Ty by the arm and dragged him out of the room. It had been closed off originally, the door was locked tight with no open windows to speak of, but apparently that didn't apply to them. At once they materialized outside of Ty's room, where a slew of police officers waited along with a few familiar faces from the F.D.N.Y.
His mother was sitting in a chair purposefully segregated from everyone else. Ty's sisters were talking to Kim and Faith while Bosco paced around the lobby casting apprehensive looks over his shoulder every few seconds. Carlos, like Maggie, sat dejectedly off to the side of the group, while Doc kept a frantic checkup on his watch while looking around the room as though searching for someone.
"What's going on?" Ty asked. He did not need to wait for Alex's response to find out.
"I told you everything I know!" roared an all too familiar voice. "Now leave me the hell alone!"
With that being said, officer John Sullivan came barreling through a pair of double doors opposite the corridor where Ty and Alex stood, invisible to those around them. He looked, quite simply, like hell. His expression was haggard; skin pale and beaded in sweat. There were bags and dark circles under his sunken eyes, indicating that, if he had gotten any sleep at all over the past twenty four hours, he'd cried himself there first.
"Sully!" Ty yelled, forgetting already his predicament. Alex moved to protest his actions; tell him they were futile and not even worth his vain attempt.
Both, however, were surprised when Sully stopped just short of Ty's outreached arms. But the big man's eyes, however full of tears, did not focus on Ty, or even Alex. Instead, they drifted to his left. Ty followed his partner's movements to find that they were both staring into the room that held his body.
Without a moment of consideration toward what those watching him might have been thinking, Sully approached the glass and lay a desperate hand atop it.
"I'm sorry, partner," he said, and the message drifted back to Ty, finding his heart and locking it onto this horrible scene. Damn it, he never meant to cause so many people this much pain! He'd never even thought on it before. He didn't like to think that people would weep when he died. It seemed so arrogant to think he would be missed. He had hoped that he would be missed, but he'd never thought on the fact with any certainty. Had he known that so much pain would have been caused by his passing, he would have been a lot more careful...
"Don't be, Sul," Ty responded, praying Sully could somehow hear him in this newfound connection between the living and the dead. "It wasn't your fault."
"He can't hear you."
Ty turned around after remembering Alex's presence, and found himself suddenly slightly annoyed with her. "Then how come I can hear him?"
"Because that's how it works, Ty. We hear them, but they can't hear us."
"Why?"
Alex sighed, her sorrow becoming evident on her face. "Because we're not the ones who need to move on, Ty."
The young man considered this, his eyes closing on the panged expression of his partner's face.
"Is there a way I can say goodbye?" he asked at length.
Alex stepped up next to him, a hand on his shoulder. "There is, but you'll have to wait."
"Until when?"
Fin-a-la chapter one. Please review, as they are highly appreciated and encouraging.
