1. Crash

Her ears were still ringing from the deafening crash. The doctors had told her she was very lucky to have gotten out of her car with only minor injuries. She'd been buckled up properly and the airbag had protected her. Her neck hurt a bit and she had a sprained wrist but aside from some nasty bruises, that was it.

The man she'd hit had not been so lucky. She'd rammed the driver's side of his car full on and he'd been severely injured. It was her fault. She couldn't remember every little detail but they had told her she'd ignored a red light. The traffic cameras would no doubt provide the proof soon enough. She knew she would be held accountable and she could only hope the other driver would pull through.

How could she explain that she hadn't been thinking clearly? That the case she had been working on all week had triggered severe flashbacks to her ordeal with Lewis, and that she'd been trying to get home to Noah as fast as she could while fighting off those flashbacks?

They were keeping her overnight for observation, just to be on the safe side, and she'd called Lucy and Sergeant Dodds to let them know what had happened. She had wanted to see Noah but had to agree with Lucy that it was too late to drag him across the city now. Lucy would spend the night at her apartment and would bring Noah to see her in the morning.

She wanted to see the other driver but her nurse had told her he was still in surgery. She had asked what his injuries were, but the nurse wasn't sure. She also wasn't sure if she should tell her at all.

...

She couldn't sleep. The woman in the bed next to hers was hooked up to a monitor that kept beeping each time she moved and Olivia was aware of every little sound in the corridor. She heard doctors talking and beds being wheeled to or from their rooms and got up after a while to see if she could find the man she'd hit. He should be out of surgery by now, shouldn't he? It was past one am already.

Before she could even leave the corridor to try and find the intensive care unit, she was stopped by a male nurse.

"Excuse me miss, are you a patient here?"

She figured the hospital gown would be a dead giveaway but kept a smart comment to herself. The nurse must have picked up on her mood anyway because he smiled, and added,

"I meant, are you a patient of this ward?"

She decided to be honest with the man, who was about her age, so he wasn't some rookie trying to be clever.

"My room is over there," she replied, pointing behind her. "I caused a car accident last night and I would like to know how the other driver is doing."

"Ah."

The man seemed to be debating in his head whether or not to tell her anything, and Olivia put on her bravest face.

"I just want to know if he's going to be alright, and to tell him I'm sorry. I take full responsibility for what happened."

"Well, he's out of surgery and has been taken to a medium care room," the nurse finally told her.

"Medium care? So that means he'll pull through?" she asked hopefully.

The nurse nodded and Olivia felt like a heavy weight was lifted off her shoulders.

"Can I see him?"

"Well, it's a special case. I ..."

The nurse hesitated again and she had to wonder what was so special about this patient.

"He suffers from memory loss."

"Oh ..."

Olivia swallowed hard. This wasn't good. Not at all.

"But it seems to us, that the memory loss was sustained prior to last night's accident. Maybe even years prior."

She was getting curious now and the nurse finally relented and beckoned her to follow him.

"He's been awake for about an hour now after the anesthesia wore off but he should go to sleep soon. He has a broken hip and leg, a few cracked ribs and a concussion."

"No internal bleeding?"

"No, thank God. Despite the seriousness of his injuries, he's been lucky. We put a few pins in his hip and leg and the rest is up to him now. The memory loss is somewhat of a mystery though. You see, he does remember bits and pieces of the accident, and what he'd been doing earlier in the day."

They had reached the man's room and the nurse let her in. There was only one bed in the small room and the curtain was drawn halfway around it. She approached the bed slowly, not wanting to startle the man and peeked around the curtain. The sight before her hit her like a ton of bricks. She gasped and her knees buckled. The nurse caught her just in time, or she would have sank to the floor. Her eyes were still fixed on the face of the man in the hospital bed, who had his eyes closed, and her brain was trying to process what she was seeing in combination with what she had just been told. This couldn't be. It had to be a mistake. Either that, or the gods were playing a very cruel joke on her.

She had just put Elliot Stabler in the hospital.

...

Dun dun! Just something that popped into my head and won't leave me alone. A short chapter to begin with. Let me know if this is interesting.
And no, I'm not abandoning my other two stories, 'Take Your Time' and 'Doddson - Because'.

PS. This is set in season 17 but in this universe, there is no Tuckson ... Leave a review to keep me motivated to write more! :)