You are starting to fit in as a trusted member of your station. You proved yourself in every situation encountered, backed up others and volunteered to take incidents for others who were temporarily over burdened. Conveniently enough, a retired officer runs a little beer joint just across the road from the station. It is a great place to tip a few after work and a place where the bonds of brotherhood are sealed.
It isn't a cliche, this brotherhood thing. It is real. Your families go out to dinner together, they take trips with each other, babysit for each other and your kids play together. It is the very definition of an extended family. When someone hurts, you all share in the pain. There are constant reminders that you live in a bubble. You are held to a higher standard and when you fail you are punished harshly. There is also a shielding of some that are near the end of a career. They used to carry the weight of the department but now young officers like you step in and take up the slack and give them a break.
Shift work is something that thankfully is in your DNA. Your father worked shifts at the mill. It was so common that you never considered people actually worked steady daylight jobs. So when you are routinely scheduled to work triple headers you don't complain. A triple header is a diabolical invention of supervisors designed to maximize availability of manpower with the fewest resources. You work a 3-11 shift and take a patrol car home with you. You pray you are not called out during the night. Sometimes you are. If not, you arrive back at the station at 7 suited up and ready to go until 3 in the afternoon. You go home and have dinner, maybe relax in a recliner or lay down for a couple hours and show up for midnight shift at 10:30 or 11 pm. You then work seven straight midnight shifts and get a long weekend off after that. They are known commonly as triple headaches. Much later in your career, your union successfully negotiates an end to that torture but by then you have managed to get into plainclothes detective work.
You take your turn working the communications desk. At this rural station incidents during the week are handled by call out of the previous shift's officers who have taken the car home. Calling one of them out is like poking a stick into a mountain lion den. They are all scheduled to return at 7am for a full shift. A middle of the night call out means a tired grumpy response at best. At worst, later you might get hauled out of bed for a domestic or accident that mysteriously cant be located. You get the hint. As a new officer you are acutely aware that good decision making and the ability to handle incidents over the phone are valued traits.
So the night your mother-in-law calls the station at 4:30 am and tells you your pregnant wife who is her daughter needs to get to the hospital, you respond that your shift ends at 6:30 and she needs to hang on. Five minutes later your wife calls and tells you if you don't get home she's going to have your first child at the house without a doctor or a midwife. You make the call and a replacement shows up bleary eyed but understanding. You rush home, pack the wife in the car and drive so fast she reminds you to slow down in between contractions. The hospital is a 30 minute drive. You get there in 15.
On arrival, nobody seems to be much concerned. They take both of you to the birthing room and a nurse casually steps in saying she'll do a quick preliminary exam and then summon the doctor who is also on call and not at the hospital. After a few seconds her face gets serious and she exclaims, "My god she's 10 centimeters dialated, call the doctor!" Twenty minutes after arrival, your first child is born. The doctor makes it in time to do the delivery.....just in time.
With a newborn and a stay at home wife, settled into a house in one of the most rural settings your state can offer, you are particularly satisfied. Your work is a challenge but the bonds of friendship have been strengthened. A tiny Methodist church at the crossroads of fifty members adopts your family and makes you feel like this is home. There are plenty of deer and bear and some turkey and best of all a babbling brook trout stream just a short walk from the back door. Winters are vicious but you enjoy the cold and the wilderness atmosphere. At the height of your reverence and love of this place, your wife asks, "Honey, I'd like to move where my parents and brother are. Can you put in for a transfer?"