Sharon Raydor's hands shook as she exited her car and made her way toward the hospital doors. She was not used to feeling quite as helpless as she did at the moment. She had made this walk countless times. As the head of Internal Affairs, it seemed that she wound up in the cubic, white monolith that was the Good Samaritan Hospital at least twice a month- whether to speak with the victim of a trigger-happy police officer or, much worse, an officer wounded in the line of duty.
Unfortunately, this was a case of the latter and Captain Raydor's damned hands had not been steady since she had been informed that Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson had been shot by a suspect during an interrogation.
He's no longer simply a suspect, she thought darkly. She could understand much of her reaction to the news of the attack on Chief Johnson. Her anger was understandable. Had proper protocol been maintained, a suspect would never have made it to the interrogation room with a weapon. A little worry would be appropriate as well, as Sharon and Brenda had grown more than a little close during the whole lawsuit mess with Goldman and the business with the leak. By common definition of the word, they could even be considered friends, so her desire to find out Brenda's condition was totally normal. However, the sheer panic upon receiving Chief Pope's call about the incident and her blind rage at both the shooter and the bastard who let the gun slip past may have been less that fully appropriate.
She'd gotten the call at 8:30pm, just as she was sitting down for a very late dinner and she'd spent the past six and a half hours questioning the officers whose jobs it had been to protect Brenda and to keep an incident like that from ever taking place. She had cross-examined each officer carefully, her voice cold and precise, all the while fairly vibrating with the need to get to the hospital and make sure her friend was alright. It was imperative that she see with her own eyes that Brenda was still breathing.
As she followed a young woman in green scrubs down the winding halls of the post-surgery recovery floor, Sharon attempted to even her breathing and steady her still trembling hands. There was really nothing she could do to calm her erratic pulse or to ease the knot in her stomach but if she could just project the quiet poise that had become her trademark during her years of service, maybe she would feel like her old self in time.
Her guide stopped at an unassuming door of pale, sturdy wood and informed Sharon that this was Chief Johnson's room. Sharon inhaled deeply in a last ditch effort to stave off tachycardia. Her heart pounded defiantly back at her.
Well, she couldn't stall forever. She pushed her glasses further up on her nose, flicked her hair back over her shoulder, and strode into Brenda's room.
Brenda's mouth was dryer than it had ever been. On its own, that would have been unpleasant enough; unfortunately, that was not the only thing troubling her. She felt as if garden gnomes in pointy hats and baseball cleats were hosting a Double Dutch tournament inside her skull. On top of that, she was pretty sure she had woken up on the surface of the sun. There could be no other explanation as to why it was so unbearably bright and hot in her bedroom. It got hot in Atlanta, yes, and bright, but this was way beyond the norm.
She felt a cool hand graze her forehead and only then did she realize what had happened. She must've come home drunk.
"Oh, no."
The hand quickly retreated.
"I'm sorry, mama. I'm so sorry." Brenda Leigh had to explain things to her mama. She'd never had a hangover in front of her parents before. Her daddy was gonna kill her. They didn't even know that she'd ever had alcohol – besides a teeny, tiny glass of cheap champagne with the family every New Years. And now she'd ruined everything by – what? By drinking too much at a party, catching a ride home, and sneaking upstairs into bed only to be found by her mama in the morning? She was going to be grounded forever.