I know this story has probably been done a thousand times before, but I felt like writing it, and it's the first thing I've written in a while. Pardon any repetition. Rated for dark themes and some language.
There was a dead child that day on the subway tracks. And so Lindsay collected fingerprints from witnesses who only wanted to make it to the subway station, who complained that they'd spent $2.50 on subway fare and now nothing. She processed the train driver's car, checked the brake to make sure he'd attempted to stop, all while he stood behind her wringing his hands and asking if she thought he'd lose his job.
"I mean, in your experience," he coughed, the sides of his lips turning down, "When something like this happens, who do you usually charge? Who gets the blame?" The driver rubbed the back of his head and looked to the sky. "If I lose this job my wife'll kill me," he groaned.
Lindsay blankly snapped a picture of the spilled cup of coffee beside the seat. She picked up the cup and tucked it into an evidence bag.
She packed up her kit and walked off the train, past the cot that held a mound of something hidden below a sheet. The coroner, a sweet blonde woman in her thirties, flirted with one of the cops.
"Yeah, I mean, they're a great band and all, but they're a little mainstream," the coroner said, tipping her sparkling smile and her curvy hip towards the smirking cop.
Lindsay tested the coffee. She interviewed the mother of the child.
"Is … is my baby OK?" The mother said, although her eyes were dead and she spoke like a recording. She'd asked the same question over and over for the past hour. Her voice was hollow.
"Ma'am, your daughter is dead," Lindsay said, and somehow, she couldn't bring herself to muster compassion. It was too frightening, because compassion required sympathy, which she didn't want to feel.
"Will my baby be OK?" the mother asked. Her hair had escaped from her single braid, and stuck freakishly to the sky, surrounding her head like branches on a rotting tree. Her head tipped to the side. "Is my baby OK?"
Lindsay got up from the interview chair and walked out of the interview room, and breezed past Flack.
"Linds? Hey, Monroe? Where you going? Don't you need reference samples?" Flack watched Lindsay head to the elevators and disappear into the doors.
When Lindsay got down to the morgue, she ignored Sid's cheerful wave from his office, and headed for the slab where the blonde coroner was working.
"Can I have five minutes?" Lindsay said dully to the woman.
"I … yes, sure," the woman said nervously. Something about Lindsay's stare told her not to mess, and, plus, it was her third day, and she was terrified of being hazed. She scuttled out the doors, hands still gloved and mask still on.
Thankfully, the child's lower body was covered, or, what was left of it.
Lindsay bent down into a squat, until her face was level with the child's. Lindsay could see the shadow's beneath the child's dark, long eyelashes. There was a scab of a little scrape on the child's chin, a playground injury.
"Hi, Angie," Lindsay whispered. She tentatively lifted a hand and rested it on the child's short, wiry, curly hair. Lindsay brushed her thumb against the five-year-old's forehead and soothingly rubbed her head with her fingers. "Your mommy loves you very much," she murmured, "She's very sad right now without you." The little girl looked as though she were counting, keeping a secret, 'it' in a game of hide and seek.
Lindsay spent some time squatting there, rubbing Angela's head, whispering to her.
"You're OK," she told the little girl, "You're all right." And Lindsay stood and walked out of the morgue.
While eating dinner that night, Danny told Lindsay a joke and she started to cry. She rested her elbows on the table and put her face in her hands and shook, trying to scrunch her face up so that the tears would not burst from her.
"Woah," Danny muttered, and put a hand on her back and rubbed up and down.
"Nobody cares anymore," Lindsay shouted through her tears. Her face felt hot and angry. She swiped at the tears and snot with the back of one hand and stared pleadingly at Danny, "Nobody cares about anything," she breathed, and even though her voice was breaking and quiet, Danny heard her.
Danny knelt before her and took her hands and kissed them over and over. "You care," he told her, and he tucked her hair behind her ears.
"This is such a shitty place, it's such a shitty world," Lindsay told him, trying to make her shaking face serious and cold. She wasn't quite able to, and her lips quivered through the stony façade.
Danny frowned and pulled her up from her chair and brought her to the nursery. She sat down in the rocking chair, and she knew that he was going to give her the baby, because she always hugged the baby when there was a case with kids.
"It won't fix anything," Lindsay told him angrily, although she reached out her arms for the sleeping toddler, "Angela's still dead."
Danny carefully placed the sleeping child into Lindsay's arms.
Lucy, who'd been sucking on her fist, gave a tiny sigh and rested her head against Lindsay's chest. Her soft blonde hair tickled Lindsay's chin, and the warm, wet weight of the baby settled against Lindsay and wiggled to adjust to the position. Lucy was warm from sleep, and although Lindsay had been afraid she would, the baby didn't remind Lindsay at all of the little girl in the morgue, because Lucy was breathing, and Lucy squirmed, and Lucy was hers and she was there.
Lindsay leaned back against the rocking chair and kissed Lucy's head. She rocked back and forth slowly.
"It doesn't fix anything," Danny agreed, "But it always helps." He pulled over Lucy's toybox and sat on it, resting his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, and watched Lindsay rock back and forth in the tiny room, in the soft dark, kissing the baby and holding her close.