“Any questions?” she asked. Students shook their heads and began zipping coats and bags. “Alright, have a good week.”

A few days later, I opened a blank page on my computer screen and sat there for a moment remembering what she had told the class. Then, I began to type: Dear Sangeeta…

I held on to the letter for a couple of years, and then, last December, at the suggestion of the professor, decided to post it online.

* * *

In the years after Sangeeta died, Brian continued to self-medicate with alcohol. He sealed off her death, and all of the others, in a mental chamber he tried not to open.

“By sealing off, I mean I let it fester,” he said later. “I went through a very dark time.”

His job continued to plague him. Brian was one of the officers who closed in on Lonnie Cedric Davis, who went on killing spree in Shoreline, Washington, in 1999. Davis stabbed his mother and 18-month-old nephew to death in their home, before driving 100 miles per hour on the I-5, and crashing into a 64-year-old motorcyclist who lost part of his leg. Davis escaped into a Shoreline neighborhood, breaking the neck of an 82-year-old woman and beating a 63-year-old retired nurse to death.

“He went into a house that had guns in it,” Brian recalled. Police would later find five weapons, including a semiautomatic assault pistol, and lots of ammunition. “Then the fight was on. It lasted a couple of hours… fragments of my round hit him.”

Lonnie fired up to 50 shots at police, until a sniper round finally killed him with a gunshot to the head.

Brian’s drinking worsened. While he was on the force, his mother had died of cancer, his sister had committed suicide, and his father had died in a skydiving accident. His marriage ended.

All of the death. All of the misery. “What’s the point?” He thought those words would be carved into his tombstone.

After 10 years with Lynnwood Police, Brian spent seven years in the sheriff’s department, until one day in 2008, when he came to work drunk.

The sheriff fired him.

He could have given up on life right then. Instead, he gave up on alcohol. It was the last time he drank.

Brian got counseling. But it was too late. He couldn’t get his job back. He went to work for an organization called Safe Call Now instead. Established in 2009 by former police officer Sean Riley, it is a confidential 24-hour crisis referral service for law enforcement and emergency services personnel, which also works with the FBI National Academy Associates Inc. to do mental health training for first responders.

“How do you prepare or train an individual to see 26 children who have been murdered?” Sean said. “Those tragedies. Newtown. Aurora. For any human being, how are they supposed to handle that?”

Sean had previously worked as a homicide and sexual assault detective, and got to the point where he was taking 40 Vicodin a day. Too often, officers will try to cope on their own,” Sean said. “In the profession, they often have been trained to think, “I can’t show weakness, I can’t break down.’ You’ve got this shield, this bullet proof vest, because you have to do your job. Where is your outlet?....You think, ‘Is someone going to report me? Am I going to lose my job?’ You have to keep up this façade.”