As the doctor turns and shuts the door, the room immediately fills to saturation with sadness and dread. The collective thought process evident on all of the Reagan faces, 'how do we make this decision on behalf of a family, probably the most capable person to make a decision like this, as irony would have it.

"What are we talking about here? We know what we have to do," Danny huffs as he rubs his thick hand down his face.

Erin scoffs and looks to her brother.

"What?! Are we really even considering not doing this?" Danny pressures. "We have to at least give him a fighting chance!"

"And how are we supposed to decide which of those options would give him a better chance, Danny?" Erin cries. "Dad, please -"

"Erin," Henry interrupts. "That's not fair."
"Thank you, Grandpa," Danny declares.

"Danny I wasn't necessarily -"

"Thank you, Grandpa," Erin remarks.

"Erin, listen to me -" Henry tries.

Danny rolls his eyes. "Oh, this should be good."

As his family initiates the inappropriate fighting at the the path of his youngest sons life, he spies a familiar face rounding the corner of the sterile hallway he had forgetting existed outside of the tiny room that held he and his family. Nodding to the main, signaling that his salute was not required here, he bowed his head, laid out his hand for a gentlemanly shake, and back-stepped, allowing the smaller man's frame to slip into the tense room.

Clearing his throat, Sgt. Anthony Renzulli silences the room with his presence. Everyone coming to the realization at the same time. If Jamie dies, this is the last person to speak to him.

Erin breath flutters out of her mouth as she tries to say sometime to the man she has so many questions for. "Oh, Tony," she begins. "I - , uh, what're -" She stops. Nothing of any content is coming to the surface, so she slips a tightly squeezed knuckle to her lip and quiets.

"Sergeant," Henry greets, to which Renzulli politely, but still silently, nods.

Danny tries to think of something to say. All of the naturally flowing detective questions that Danny had in his mind became unreachable. This man had every answer to the questions he practically needed to vomit out, and yet he sat stifled by his sadness. Renzulli walks deeper into the room, looking directly into Danny's eyes, standing across from him.

Clearing his throat, Renzulli finally finds the courage to speak. "Have you gotten any word?"

Frank speaks, deceptively clearly, "They want to know if we think they should operate or leave the deeper fragments of bullet in his body." Taking in a deep, nasally breathe, he continues. "The doctor says if we don't operate, Jamie could die. If we do operate, Jamie could die." Looking at his family, showing them with that single glance that the arguing is over, he tells Renzulli, "We were just discussing his options."

"I see," he blandly states.

"Ton -" Danny breathes in sharply, and out again. "Tony, did he..." Danny loses his breathe once more.

"That's, in part, why I'm here." This is what Danny had been fearing. This is what his family thought may be coming, but Danny knew certainly was on its way. Pulling a crisp white envelope out of his uniforms inside pocket, Renzulli holds out his hand, not knowing who to present it to.

"You know the drill," Renzulli starts. "We all have these. I didn't know if I should give it to you yet," Renzulli's words fade as he implies Jamie's death is imminent. "I mean – you know, I didn't know – um, I -" sighing, he simply speaks from the heart. "I just didn't know what to do with this."

Frank wipes a tear back into his face that no one sees, and takes the letter from his officer. "Thank you, Tony."

"Yes, sir," he acknowledges. He turns to leave the family to their private moment, but Danny finally finds his footing. He lurches forward sloppily and grabs Renzulli's elbow.

"Don't – you don't have to go," he feared losing the answers to all of his wordless questions.

Looking towards his commissioner, Frank only nods and extends his hand. "Please."

Once again, "Yes, sir."

Erin sinks in to the chair behind her.

Henry holds his face to his chin silently.

Danny paces his way back into the center of the room.

Frank opens the envelop.

"Dear everybody..."

BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB

As Renzulli wiped a sticky finger through his tongue, he simultaneously held a cruller up as an offering to his young charge."Breakfast?" He asked, knowing full well he'd staked his claim with his licking his fingers.

"Hah, yeah," Jamie laughs to his Sgt. "I'd like a muffin and a shot of penicillin please!" He shakes his head and looks back at the nearly blank paper before him.

"Ah well," Renzulli began, half of his pastry already eaten and long gone. "They're beautiful today!"

Jamie's noncommittal, "Yeah" sent Renzulli across the small room, greedily peaking over the shoulder of his young officer. The dawning sense of realization as he saw the words, 'Dear everybody,' left him with a conflicting feeling of emptiness in his full gut.

"So," he awkwardly began the difficult conversation. "Whatcha got there, Reagan?"

Jamie sighed, putting his pen down on the table beside his empty note, and stretched on the chair he had been sitting in. "Matthews gave the widow of his T.O. his letter," he revealed. "You know, his 'goodbye' letter."

Renzulli took a thick gulp of coffee to force down the last bit of food and sat across the table from his young friend. "I know, kid."

"You have one?"

Renzulli took off his issued cap and ran his hand across his head. "You know something, kid? For the longest time, I didn't," he surprised Jamie. "It was long believed that a 'goodbye' letter was just another nail in the coffin. It's not something we want to think about, but it's something not a single one of us can avoid. I know that, if I were to get seriously hurt... or whatever," he waves off the alternative. "I know that nothing would be left unsaid for my wife, my kids, my folks, my siblings. Not for nobody! But I also know, that writing a silly little letter, giving them something to keep after I'm not around anymore, it wasn't hurting me or anybody else. So I wrote one, yeah." He thinks about the contents of his own letter home, and snarls at the image of his wife opening it up. "I hate it. Freakin thing took me two weeks to finish. I just thought, that whole time, what could I say? How is this gonna help anybody?" He chuckled at his own mental fistfight with himself, the one where no one wins. "But I realized, it ain't supposed to help nobody. It ain't gonna help me get into heaven, it ain't gonna give my kids their father back, and it ain't gonna put food on the table for my family. But in spite of all of the bullshit I put my family through – and, believe you me, vice versa – the note is just there to leave them with something. With a little piece of me. With a goodbye. Knowattamean?"

"Yeah, I think I do..." Jamie wondered.

"Yeah, well don't sound so surprised. I know stuff." The two men chuckled, attempting to dissolve the sweetness of the tender conversation they were having.

"It's just," Jamie explained. "I don't know how to do this. How do I do this to them?"

"Rookie, you're not doing anything to them, should they ever need the fricken thing! You do what you do, and you face what you have to. But you're not hurting anyone. You know?"

Jamie could only shake his head, knowing the sorrow his family has already faced.

"Look, I hope I'm not overstepping my bounds here," Renzulli tentatively started a new approach. "Can I ask you something?"

Jamie looked up at his Sgt., wide-eyed and listening. "Yes, sir."

"When Joe's effects were brought to your family. Did you ever get his letter?"

Jamie looked down at the table, the cold sadness socking him in the stomach, the way it always had at the mention of his lost brother. "Yes, sir."

"Well," once again, Renzulli tried to tread lightly. "Did he leave you with something you keep with you now?"

His eyebrows furrowed into his deep, lost blue eyes.. "How do you mean?"

"I mean... by the time you were done reading it, were you thinking of the cop who'd been shot down, or the brother that you grew up with?"

Jamie couldn't believe the depth of his T.O. He had never known Renzulli to be a sensitive guy, but, more than he could even believe himself, Renzulli had provided Jamie with the answers he needed. And as the familial memories began to flood to the surface of his mind, he put pen to paper, thanking Sgt. Renzulli, not even hearing him leave the room.

"Dear everybody."