This is my first Life fanfiction. Completely un-betaed so all mistakes are mine and mine alone. Let me know what you thought.
Dani Reese never really gave much thought to her partner's wardrobe. Or at least not more than any woman needs to pause to appreciate a man with a nice body wearing expensive, well fitted clothing. But other than these passing impressions of the clothing she never really stopped to ponder it.
But as she waited for the paramedics to arrive she pulled the constricting tie from around his neck and ripped the button down shirt from his body. She balled the shirt up and leaned heavily against his shoulder to try and stem the flow of blood. She tried not to think of how expensive the shirt was. Tried not to think of the gaping hole in the left shoulder of the material that matched the hole in her partner. Tried not to think about the blood seeping in the fabric. Nothing was going to get that stain out. Nothing.
She followed the paramedics into the back of their rig as they lifted the stretcher that contained Crew's unconscious form. They seemed about to protest but she shot each man a withering glare and heaved her short frame up into the passenger bay as if she belonged there. And she did. This was her partner and she wasn't about to let him out of her sight.
In fact it wasn't until the cut away the material of the white tee shirt he wore that she realized what the clothing was, that she realized they were cutting away Charlie Crews' armor.
The damp, blood soaked material was pulled away to reveal scars. Lots of them.
There were a series of small round ones that ran up his right bicep from elbow to shoulder in a line along the inside of his arm like someone thought he was their personal ashtray. There was a long line between his ribs on the left side with neat rows of dots on either side that was all that remained of sutures. A scar like that screamed chest tube. So a collapsed lung then. A ragged pink scar ran from just above his right hip to almost above his belly button. Something had cut into him and it wasn't something surgical.
The paramedics rolled him onto his side to check for the bullet's exit wound and reported none found. In that time Reese managed to catch a glimpse of his back. If anything it was worse. She turned away willing herself not to catalogue the damage done to her partner's body. Willing herself not to imagine all the damage done to him that hadn't caused scars.
Intellectually she knew what prisoners would do to an cop inside. She knew it but she had never seen it. Hadn't seen how Charlie had paid for another man's sins with his flesh and his blood. And somehow this whole process seemed wrong. This unclothing him to heal him. She wanted to cover him up. Swathe him in one of the long sleeved shirts he always wore to protect himself from the world.
She looked at the blood soaked gauze pad. That scar had happened on her watch. There wasn't anything she could do to erase the last 12 years or smooth away the raised scars that were a testament to his time in prison. She could, however make sure that the macabre collection didn't grow any further on her watch. She had already failed him once. She wouldn't let it happen again.