The iceberg you don't see.

My phone rang on the way in and he spoke to me in whispers, confidential tones, and my bottom dropped out right there on the highway. I played Stronger in a continuous loop all the way in as if the lyrics could bolster my courage through some kind of fucked up osmosis. Got in, got changed, and went to work on a case that had almost been thrown away by laziness and complacency.

The irony of it.

Then a text message and a secret meeting and the look of concern in eyes that I'd never seen worry before. Just how deep in this am I? It felt like someone had ripped through my chest and pulled my heart out, still beating. A black hole in the pit of my stomach.

Then the official meeting and the announcement that there might be lay-offs and they didn't know how many and they didn't know just what it all meant. Not yet. Just don't panic, don't panic. I fixed myself to the wall in the back to keep from falling, to keep from letting the chink in my armor be visible to any one of my brethren. There can be no weakness, not here.

And I tried like hell to make it out alone, to just get back to my car and hit the mean streets and resume the only piece of normalcy that I knew, the only answer I had for myself, my job. But it didn't work. First it was my Lieutenant and everybody clustered around and the don't worries, don't panic, we won't let this happen. Then the Captain, then my bargaining reps, and then my guys, we road dogs, my brothers, all. I could feel my eyes getting red and welling up and when I saw JD I knew I had to get the fuck out of there. The weakness coming not slowly but in waves that I could not control. I hit the door and didn't look back.

As soon as I called clear the salt water stung my cheeks in hot streams of devastation, disbelief. And just as soon I got a call and was thankful for at least a purpose. My phone blew up and I tried to ignore it because the love and support hurt even more than the terrible possibility of the meeting's news.

And of all days this was the one that they chose to get dinner in my bailiwick. I rolled through, stopped and parked. Looked at myself in the rear view and told myself to put on your game face, you have one hell of a battle ahead. All the while I talked to them and then later showed them my car I wondered how the hell I would ever be able to give them the news. I want to be just like you. I want to just go out and do what I'm meant to and now there might not even be that.

At a junction. Are you going to be strong enough? But I already know the answer. It's the waiting that is absolutely killing me. If I could just know what is going to happen, if I could just make a plan.

In the meantime there is prayer. God put me on this earth for a reason and I have to make good on it. Not like all the other names that are so often in red on my MDT screen.

St. Michael, guide me.