The Ryan Report -- Episode 313 "Knockdown"

Ryan's Bio | Read the episode recap

You don’t join the NYPD because of the pension. You don’t join because of the dental plan (although it is pretty good.) You join because you want to make a difference. Because you want to make this city a better place.

And along the way, you discover a new family. A whole world of brothers and sisters in blue who have your back, who will look out for you and you for them.

So when Beckett started tracking down who was behind her mother’s murder, there was no question that Espo and I would be there to help her however we could. Little did I know this would eventually include getting flashbanged, kidnapped and shoved facedown into a tub full of ice water.

The things we do for family.

Of course, all’s well that ends well. Especially when it involves the bad guy getting captured and Espo and I getting the chance to watch as he’s handcuffed and driven off to jail. Plus, Espo got a particularly funny joke in about his mother – it wouldn’t be a regular day on the job without one of those.

It’ll be nice to get back to a regular day at the office, the kind where we just have a dead body at a crime scene, visit Lanie at the ME’s office, talk theory at the Precinct… and go home.Maybe it’s just me but it’s a whole lot better than being dragged to a random warehouse and getting a dose of hypothermia. Although it’ll make for a nice story to tell at the bar in, oh, a decade, I’d rather not have too many more nights like that one.

The next morning, I slept in a little later than I usually do. Truth is, I wasn’t really sleeping. I just laid in bed for a long while, my arm around Jenny, trying to live in that moment, to memorize it. Because when I was in that cold warehouse, when everything was about to go dark forever, that’s what I thought about. The good that I’ve had in my life and how I didn’t appreciate it enough until the moment when it seemed like it might be gone forever.

I got in an hour late, but I don’t think anyone minded. I got my coffee and I talked with Espo, as if it was a normal morning. That’s what you have to do, otherwise you go crazy. Otherwise you can’t keep going out there and doing the job.There was a take-away though. Every morning since then, I wake up a little earlier than I used to. And I lie in bed and appreciate what I have.