ANNIE
Author's
note: I do not own any Law and Order Criminal Intent characters, nor
do I own any characters from Law and Order who might show up. Dick
Wolf, of course, owns them and has done quite well by them. I
do own the other characters in this story: Annie, the children,
Grandpa, and various other people (named and unnamed). They inhabit
my imagination where they live out their lives trying to fit into the
LOCI universe. This story goes back into the past and plays the "what
if" game. What if Bobby was married and had a family? So here is
a warning: There will be some necessary changes to canon in order to
fit Annie and the kids into Bobby's life, creating a parallel LOCI
universe. If you are not OK with that, you won't like this story (or
any future installments) and I completely understand if you pass.
Episode 2
September 11, 2001
Chapter 1
"Showers of blessing, showers of blessing we need
Mercy drops 'round us are falling
But for the showers we plead"
Annie sang along with the radio while she prepared breakfast. She didn't hear her husband come into the kitchen until she heard his voice in her ear.
"Nice beat, but can you dance to it?"
Annie giggled as she turned to Bobby and found herself engulfed in a very passionate embrace and kiss. She thought she might have stopped breathing for a moment. Bobby lifted his head and smiled down at her, and pulled her into a slow waltz around the kitchen.
"Not bad, for a forty year-old," Annie teased. He had turned forty the month before. However, Annie would also be turning forty in just two more months.
Bobby laughed down at her, went to the radio, and played with the dial. Dean Martin's voice drifted across the kitchen, singing "Sway". "Now that's more like it for a sunny Tuesday morning", he said and again danced her around the kitchen.
They heard giggling behind them and turned to find their five year old twins, Phillip and Andrew, watching them. With their curly, dark brown hair and soft brown eyes, Annie thought again how much they looked like their father. But no matter how cute they were, right now they were threatening to sabotage her morning schedule.
"Why aren't you dressed?" She asked, and then instantly regretted it as they began telling a long convoluted story of a lost toy car and the very important search that resulted in them still being in their pajamas.
"OK, OK, OK! Just go back upstairs and get your clothes on. No more toys, no reading a book, no wrestling on the bed. Get dressed and come back down for breakfast. Is Ally dressed?"
"She's in the bathroom. Ally's always the first one dressed." Andrew told her.
"OK, scoot! And tell Ally to come down for breakfast." The boys ran up the stairs. They could hear them laughing and calling Ally all the way up the stairs.
Bobby backed Annie up against the counter and kissed her again. She laid her head against his chest. She felt the beat of his heart and breathed in the fresh, clean scent of him.
Bobby asked softly, "You were up before me this morning. Are you OK?"
"I'm fine. I just wanted some prayer time."
He helped her finish preparing breakfast and then he set the table while she made three lunches. The kids came downstairs, the twins dressed but not completely buttoned and zipped. Bobby helped them straighten out their clothing and they sat down to breakfast.
Annie smiled at Bobby across the table as the children's chatter filled the room. The last two months since Annie had been attacked and she lost the baby she was carrying had been very difficult. But their family had come through it intact. She had gone to a very dark place in the weeks after the attack and Bobby had been there to help pull her out. If possible, she had fallen even more deeply in love with him. She breathed yet another prayer of gratitude for her tall, handsome husband, and her three beautiful children.
After everyone finished eating, the children were sent upstairs to brush their teeth, comb their hair, and collect their backpacks. Bobby helped Annie clean the breakfast dishes.
Annie told him, "If you and Alex aren't tied up at noon, I thought we could all meet at Sal's for lunch. I'm buying."
Bobby teased her, "Sal's? No tacos?" Tacos were Annie's favorite food—next to chocolate, of course.
Phillip and Andrew stampeded down the stairs, minus their backpacks, and were sent back to get them. Ally came down, dressed and ready for school. Bobby knotted his tie and pulled on his jacket. They left the house together, and Bobby helped to herd the children into the back seat of Annie's SUV. Before she got in, Bobby pulled her into another embrace and a kiss that left her breathless and the children laughing.
"I love you, Annie Paine."
She smiled up at him. "I love you Bobby Goren."
As he walked away towards his car Annie told him, "Call me later about lunch."
They each got in and drove off in opposite directions. Annie and the kids to the school and Bobby to One Police Plaza. She watched his car in her rearview mirror until he turned the corner.
As Annie maneuvered through traffic, she listened to Ally telling joke after joke to Phillip and Andrew, eliciting gales of laughter with each one. The sillier the joke, the more they laughed. Their laughter reminded her of their father's infectious laugh and her mind drifted back to the first time she heard it, the day twelve years ago when she first saw him.
It was a slow morning in the Emergency Room and Annie was checking each of the rooms to make sure they were fully stocked. The triage nurse found her in the supply room.
"Annie, we have a guy with a laceration to his right forearm. I put him in Sixteen."
"OK, I'll check him. Where's Dr. Ford?"
"In the cafeteria having coffee, I think. I'll have him paged."
Annie took the chart. As long as she was in the supply room, she decided to pick up a suture kit rather than use one that she had just put in the room. She was looking at the chart as she entered the room.
"So, Mr. Lewis, how did you…." She stopped in mid-sentence as she looked up and caught sight of the tall, dark-haired man standing next to her patient. She momentarily forgot her patient as she met the smiling brown eyes of his friend. He was very tall, well over six feet. His dark hair was short, but not short enough to eliminate the curls lying against his head. He was wearing well-worn jeans and a gray tee shirt that had streaks of grease on it. It seemed like forever that they stood there looking at each other. Finally, Annie blushed and pulled her gaze away from those mesmerizing eyes and back to the man sitting on the gurney.
"Let's just take a look at this." She removed a neat pressure dressing and asked, "Who bandaged this for you?"
"My man, Bobby, here. He knows how to do all kinds of things. Probably could take your appendix out if he needed to."
Annie glanced back at the other man, and then turned so that her back was to him. The sight of him was too distracting. She wasn't used to reacting like this to men, certainly not while she was working. She had always been completely focused on her patients. Until now.
After she removed the dressing, she looked at the eight centimeter laceration on his right forearm. It had bled quite a bit, but that had slowed thanks to the dressing. The wound was dirty with grease, but the edges were nice and even.
"OK, you are definitely going to need stitches. But I'll get it cleaned up first. It's pretty dirty, Mr. Lewis. How did you do this?"
"Bobby was helping with a '67 Mustang I'm restoring. I, uh, slipped while I was tightening a bolt and my arm hit the fan. Bobby wrapped it up and brought me here."
The other man—Bobby—didn't say anything, but he moved so that he could see Lewis' arm and watch what Annie was doing. She was a little unnerved feeling his eyes on her. She deftly cleaned the wound and opened up the suture kit, laying everything out on a sterile drape and covering them with another. Meanwhile, she asked Lewis questions about his medical history and previous injuries. Bobby still hadn't said anything, but he watched her every move closely. She could feel herself blushing and glanced at Lewis to see if he noticed. But his head was turned away from his arm to avoid looking at the wound.
"Are you allergic to any medications, Mr. Lewis?"
"Not to any medicine, but I think I'm allergic to needles and to the sight of blood."
Bobby laughed then and the sound startled Annie. Bobby reached over and lightly punched Lewis in his uninjured arm.
"C'mon man, don't be a wimp."
"Easy for you to say. You're not the one sitting here waiting to get your arm sewn up."
Bobby laughed again. Annie very much wanted to hear his laugh and his voice again. But she couldn't seem to think of anything to say to him. She didn't know what was wrong with her and felt like he must think she was a complete idiot.
Dr. Ford came in and talked to Lewis, asking many of the same questions that Annie had asked. While he sutured the wound, Lewis was silent and kept his eyes tightly closed. Bobby, however, kept up a steady stream of questions for the doctor. Dr. Ford told Lewis to return in a week to have them removed, and then he left Annie to finish up. She wrapped the arm and gave Lewis instructions to keep it clean and dry. She left and came back with two syringes.
"Mr. Lewis, since you don't remember when your last tetanus vaccine was, Dr. Ford wants you to have one today. And this is an antibiotic. Your arm was pretty dirty and we want to make sure it doesn't get infected. The vaccine will go in your arm. But the antibiotic needs to go in your hip."
Lewis began to protest loudly. Bobby laughed and told him, "Drop your pants, Lewis. Just get it over with. Maybe the pretty nurse will give you a lollipop."
Annie smiled as Lewis followed orders. She gave him the injections as he again kept his eyes closed tightly. She went to a drawer and pulled out two lollipops. As she handed Lewis his discharge instructions, she also handed him a lollipop.
"This is for being such a good patient." She turned to Bobby and extended the other lollipop. "And this is for being such a good…..helper."
Bobby smiled at her and she thought her knees might buckle. He reached out for the lollipop and wrapped his hand around hers and held on for a few beats. Annie stood frozen to the spot. She forgot there was someone else in the room. Actually, she forgot she was even in a hospital; all she could see was Bobby. Then through the fog that her brain seemed to have become, she heard one of the other ER nurses yelling something down the hallway.
"Code Blue Trauma Three!"
Annie snapped back to reality and pulled her hand from Bobby's. As she left the room, she told Lewis, "You can leave now. Be sure to come back in a week to have those stitches removed." And she ran down the hall to Trauma Three.
End Chapter 1