Free The Year We Disappeared by Cylin Busby

who also grew up in Dedham, was the senior officer running my security detail the day of the show and tell, so he had to approve moving me anywhere the security wasn’t as good as my room. John checked out the space. It was a big amphitheater in Mass General called the “Ether Dome”—the location of the first successful demonstration of ether as an anesthesia back in the mid-1800s. Historical significance aside, the place was big and open and all the doctors at the hospital were invited to come and check out my face, so security was an issue. John called in for more guards, and they added a couple of guys at each entrance to check hospital IDs on anyone coming and going.
    Once the security was set up, a couple of guards and orderlies wheeled me down to the Ether Dome. It’s actually a beautiful space, with stadium seating along one side and a center stage lit by a stained-glass dome overhead. It feels almost more like a church than a hospital. The seats quickly filled with doctors. My doctors brought my X-rays and displayed them on a big lighted board. They talked about what they’d done so far and how they planned to rebuild my face. When they got to the part about future surgeries, one doctor said that it would take years to do the type of reconstruction they wanted to attempt. I felt my chest tighten up at the mention of years—who knew how I was going to eat, talk, or even breathe between now and then.
    I noticed one older-looking doctor in the audience nodding off, and by midlecture, he was heavily asleep. Made me nervous to think that this guy might be taking care of other patients in the hospital, and I hoped that he wouldn’t be in charge of anything involving my care.
    When they were done with me, it was back to my bed, tubes, breathing machine, eye patch, and pain meds. The room was starting to look a little bit like a shrine—my Catholic mother was a true believer and thought that if she attached enough saints’ medals and prayers to my hospital bed that I would survive. She had even added a signed photo of the Pope on my bedside table.
    On my fifth day in the hospital, I was holding my own when two good friends and former fellow officers, Arthur Pina and Mickey Mangum, came in to see me for a serious talk. The Falmouth Police Department was probably similar to a lot of other small-town police departments in that a great deal of the regular officers were doing part-time work as something else—some of them were school bus drivers/operators and a few worked in construction. Working as a cop didn’t pay great, so it was nice to have something else on the side.
    Some of the guys were what we called RACs: rent-a-cops, or “summer specials,” since the population of the town—and the crime rate—swelled in the summertime. Most of our RACs were guys who had full-time gigs in law enforcement, local government, or just about anything else from carpentry to bus driving and took on the part-time police work during the summers.
    About the time I came on the force in 1970, the town had grown enough that it needed to start hiring so-called “outsiders” to be on the force. Even though I’d grown up just outside Boston, I would be considered an outsider because I wasn’t a Falmouth boy. So we started getting full-time cops on the force who, like myself, came from outside Falmouth and wanted to do police work—not part-time police work. Some lines were drawn in the department, unspoken but still there. For the most part, I got along with everyone on the force—I didn’t care where you were from as long as you were doing your job.
    But even with new blood, the majority of the cops on the Falmouth force were still locals, especially the senior guys and the brass—all the way to the top—and they definitely believed in selective law enforcement. We could ticket, arrest, and hassle the tourists and Southie bums all we wanted, but there were some locals who were untouchable. No matter what they were guilty of,