My cousin is amazing. Yes, she is a girl cop in Vancouver. She is relatively short (5'5), blonde, blue eyes, round of hip. Cute. She took us all by suprise when she divorced her artist husband, quit her microbiology job, and became a cop. But (aside from my deep set fear of authority), I gotta say, it suits her.
After catching up for a couple of days (see July 30,2000 and July 31,2000), I asked her the question I should have asked her in the beginning. See any dead people?
She has.
She had to respond to a situation a few months ago where a guy was shot 8 times in the back with a 22 pistol. His crime, it turns out, was that his name was steve, but not the steve the perp was after. She got to him a few minutes before he went unconscious, and watched the blood run out of his face and onto the carpet. She held his hand, not knowin what else to do. She told me that she was stunned to see that what bullet holes really look like are like small snake bite wounds. Particularly a small caliber like a .22. Obviously most other calibers are exceptions to this rule.
She had to accompany him to the emergency room, because of the rather strange law that the victim is a victim until he or she dies, at which point they become evidence. She had to see if he was going to become evidence, and reclaim all bullets if this happened. So she spent 2 hours in the operating room, watching the process by which a human life is reduced to meat. 8 people swarming over him, giving life, but he was dead. dead.
So her job then was to collect the bullets, count them and put them into evidence. And since these things happen so fast, she walked out of the operating room and right into his family, who started yelling at her for her role in the event.
So my cousin, who I have swung on swings on, swam in seas with, lived in various countries with, my sweet cool, slightly fast speaking cousin, is watching death and protecting life.