Despite everything, Tim hasn’t stopped loving his wife; he might hate what she’s become, but he can’t hate her. He married Isabel for better or worse, and this is about as bad as he can imagine without either of them turning up dead, but she’s still his wife and the vows he made still mean something to him, even if he can’t say the same for her. He wants to believe the woman he loves is still in there somewhere, buried beneath her addiction, but he just doesn’t know anymore.

He wishes to Hell she’d never agreed to go undercover. Working narcotics was already dangerous enough, but it wasn’t his place to tell her what she could and couldn’t do. He had to respect her decision, even if he didn’t like it, and he’d trusted her not to get in over her head, knowing how smart and capable she was. That she’d end up a junkie herself had never crossed his mind. She knew the dangers, had seen firsthand what addiction did to people. Even now he couldn’t understand how she’d let it happen.

It tears him up inside to see her like this, a shell of the vibrant woman he married. Every time he sees her is worse than the last, she just keeps slipping further and further away. He’s done everything he can to help her, but she hasn’t wanted his help. Not until today.

Now she’s in a world of trouble, and begging him to help her, making promises he knows she won’t keep, and he wants to help because she’s still his wife, but to do so would mean compromising his own integrity. He goes to her apartment anyway, finds the drugs, wanting to spare Isabel jail time, but in the end, he puts them back, because his rookie is right. As hard as it will be knowing he could have kept Isabel from serving serious time, he wouldn’t be helping her. She’d be back out on the streets in no time, looking to score again.

He loves her, but he can’t save her from herself.


The End