🐾 The Last Radio Call — Part 5: “Rest Easy, Partner”
The next morning came quietly.
Too quietly.
The sun poured in through the kitchen window as it always did, stretching long shadows across the worn tile floor. But something was missing in the rhythm of the house—no nails clicking on the wood, no soft grunt from the rug near the door.
Gerry knew before he looked.
Rex had passed in the night.
Curled on his favorite blanket, near the window where the light always came through.
One paw rested over the leash.
Gerry didn’t cry right away.
He just sat beside his friend for a long time, one hand resting on the dog’s chest, feeling the absence like a wound. The silence wasn’t empty. It was full—full of memories, of years spent chasing down shadows, of late nights and early shifts, of shared meals and mutual trust.
It wasn’t death that broke him.
It was the knowing—that Rex had waited. Held on for that last ride. That last radio call.
Held on long enough to hear, We’ve got it from here.
When the officer from Animal Control arrived, she offered to carry Rex for him.
“No,” Gerry said, his voice barely above a whisper. “He rode with me all those years. I’ll carry him now.”
They buried Rex behind the precinct, in the K9 memorial garden under a maple tree just starting to bloom. There was a simple granite marker, already etched with his name and badge number.
K9 Officer Rex
2009 – 2021
Loyal Until the Last Call
Gerry knelt beside it long after the others had gone.
“I thought I’d taught you everything,” he murmured. “Turns out, you had one more lesson left in you.”
He didn’t go home right away. He drove—no destination, just old routes. Past the bridge where Rex once pulled a lost child from the embankment. Down 8th Street where they chased a robbery suspect for six blocks, side by side. Past the school where they’d done K9 demonstrations, where kids had patted Rex’s head and called him a hero.
Everywhere they had served, together.
That night, Gerry sat on the porch, alone, a blanket across his lap.
No leash by the door now. Just the faint imprint where Rex used to lie.
He reached into the drawer, pulled out the badge—his own—and turned it over in his palm.
“I’m not sure what to do now,” he said to the night.
And then something happened.
From across the street, a flicker of movement—small, four-legged.
A stray dog, ribs showing, eyes cautious, hovered at the edge of the light.
Gerry didn’t move. Just watched.
Then, slowly, he reached out his hand.
“Hey there, fella,” he said softly. “You hungry?”
The dog stepped closer.
Maybe it was coincidence.
Maybe something else.
But Gerry swore, just for a moment, he felt Rex again—there in the breeze, in the stillness, in the way the stars blinked overhead like watchful eyes.
And as the stray crept onto the porch, tail tucked but curious, Gerry smiled through the ache.
Because some partners never really leave.
They just pass the call forward.
And the radio…
was never truly silent.
