Just past 8:10 Tuesday night, as he drove away from Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas for the first time after a news conference, Mayor Mike Rawlings said he was considering canceling the next day's meeting of the Dallas City Council. At that moment, he said he didn't feel it would be appropriate to carry forward — not with two young Dallas police officers, Rogelio Santander and Crystal Almeida, clinging to life after being shot at a Home Depot, and a civilian, Scott Painter, likewise in critical condition. And at the time, the shooting suspect, 29-year-old Armando Luis Juarez, was not yet in custody.

"This is not good, to do this again," said the mayor who, less than two years ago, helped bury five officers slain after a downtown rally by a madman carrying an AK-74. Rawlings would later say he felt "off-balance," as though he were reliving a nightmare he thought he was rid of in the aftermath of July 7, 2016.

Wednesday morning, after discussions with some council colleagues, Rawlings had changed his mind about moving ahead with the meeting: "Our police officers have to go to work with heavy hearts, and the City Council needs to go to work with our heavy hearts," he said before morning prayers and the pledge. "I think it's right we get to the citizens' business."

On this day, that business included determining what to do with Dallas' Confederate monuments, which meant yet another morning's worth of speech-making and finger-wagging from dozens of speakers, some wearing the Confederate battle flag. Many prefaced their remarks with hasty condolences before plowing ahead with prepared speeches.

Officer Rogelio Santander was fatally shot at a Home Depot in Lake Highlands.

Halfway through, the mayor interrupted the public to break the awful news: Santander, shot in the head Tuesday evening, had died at 8:11 a.m. Rawlings ordered flags to half-staff, and the shouting over the causes of the Civil War was paused long enough for a moment of silence for the 27-year-old who joined Dallas' police force in December 2014.

Sgt. Mike Mata, president of the Dallas Police Association, would tell me later that Dallas Police Chief U. Renee Hall had hoped to inform the rank-and-file of Santander's death before the mayor made it public. Hall has lived through this many times over: Close to a dozen officers were killed in the line of duty during her 18 years wearing a Detroit police uniform. And her father, a Detroit cop, was killed by an unknown shooter when she was 6 months old.

All that death, Mata said, "takes a toll on your life."

Hall has revealed little so far about what happened at that Home Depot on Tuesday afternoon. Instead, she has asked only for prayers for the fallen and injured. As Mata likes to say, there is no rule book for how to handle a tragedy like the one that has befallen the Dallas Police Department yet again.

The memory of what happened that horrific night in July 2016 has probably faded for most; a sculpture honoring DPD officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith and Patrick Zamarripa and DART Officer Brent Thompson is not yet completed, as long as we're discussing monuments. For a moment back then, the nation mourned our loss. There were network headlines, candlelight vigils, services presided over by presidents and countless days of weeping in front of DPD HQ.

And then the fallen officers became more grim statistics: According to the Officer Down Memorial Page, 161 officers died in the line of duty in 2016; 135 the year after; this year, already, 46 have been killed. Santander's name and face have already been added to the Officer Down website. He is joined by Cpl. Eugene Cole, a law enforcement officer from Maine who was shot and killed early Wednesday by a man out on bond for a previous weapons charge. This happens everywhere seemingly every day.

I saw Mata at Presbyterian on Tuesday night, standing next to the DPD chaplain carrying a well-worn Bible. We were awaiting the arrival of Rawlings and Hall so the news conference could begin. Mata, in that whisper of grief, said this is the awful truth of this job.

"Just a bad guy with a gun," he said, staring at the floor.

Mata, like Rawlings, told me later this felt like July 7 all over again. He had just left the DPA's Cedars offices Tuesday evening when he received word that two officers were down. He said his stomach sank, then twisted into knots. One officer or two or five, it makes no difference.

"Just a different hallway and a different hospital but the same feeling," Mata said in the moments before Santander's body was escorted from Presbyterian on Wednesday. "It's like ..." A pause. "Numbness."

In the midst of high turnover and low morale, another Dallas police officer is dead. Another clings to life. The DPA's Assist the Officer Foundation will spend coming days collecting money for the families, planning memorials, helping in any way it can. All over again.

"But, and I know this sounds ironic, when situations like this happen, where it's emotionally taxing to every member of the Dallas Police Department, it brings us together," Mata said. "I know it sounds difficult to believe but it actually raises morale, because we remember why we're doing this — and who we're doing it for."