SURRY COUNTY, N.C. — Law enforcement across the state are feeling the emotional toll Friday.
Even for retired officers, it can be difficult to process.
"When you have an active shooter on the loose, uncontained, and you know you have people down, that's worst case scenario as a law enforcement officer," said retired Kernersville officer Sean Houle.
He knows the feeling all too well.
"Our job essentially is to take the bullet for the citizens so they can make it out alive," said Houle.
The retired Kernersville Police Officer spent several weeks in the hospital last year after he was shot multiple times during a traffic stop.
Having been in their shoes, he knows the emotional battles they're fighting.
"When I waved at my wife going out the door the night I was shot, it was just any other night to me, but in the back of my mind, I am thinking, you don't know, it could be the last night, but you try to push that stuff out of the way because you don't want it to affect your ability to perform," said Houle.
This weekend, Houle will take a different role in the response by volunteering with the Billy Graham Rapid Response team.
He's being deployed to Raleigh to provide emotional and spiritual support.
"We really just go to love on these people, we go to love on the officers, we go to love on the citizens involved. We want them to see in the darkest hour, and the darkest time the light, the hope that comes with a from Jesus Christ," said Houle.
Retired Surry County Sheriff Graham Atkinson was working in Raleigh when the shots rang out.
"The first thing that I always think about is the sheriff of the police chief or whoever the head of the agency is because they have so much responsibility, and they are trying to deal with the situation, they're trying to make sure that they're injured Officer's family is taken care of, that people are notified and at the same time they're trying to deal with those emotions that they have," said Atkinson.
Atkinson said just as these incidents rattle the law enforcement community. They also drive officers to come to work each and every day.
"It's also not just law enforcement officers that responded, there's EMS, there's the rescue squad, the doctors and nurses at the hospital, the ripple is so far into so much of the community and when you get that community support back, it makes you be able to get up and go to work the next day and do it again if you have to," said Atkinson.
A family that spreads far beyond the badge, a family that's much tighter after tragedies like this one.