Kate Beckett was only going to be stationed at the hospital for a week, but he had the dreadful feeling that it was going to be one of the longest weeks of his life. She was staying in a room on a floor he had no reason to be on, all of his current patients were either on level one or two, so it should have been easy to keep her from his mind, to avoid the thought of her completely, but she still got to him. It was as if her mere presence in the building had a magnetic effect.

He felt…connected to this woman, and just the thought of that cliché line had him cringing. At this rate, he'd be writing a romance novel all week. But now that Derrick Storm was dead, he didn't see why not. At least it would be something to get Gina off his back.

He held out for an entire 24 hours before he ended up ghosting the halls of the third floor between shifts, stealing a glimpse of her sleeping figure every time he passed her partially open door. Finally, after receiving a strange look from one of the nursing home attendants that had noticed his lingering presence as he had changed Kate's G-Tube and done a short series of exercises to stimulate her dormant muscles, Rick had forced himself inside. Maybe spending a few minutes with her would give him a sort of closure.

Katherine Beckett, whom he had only known as 'Kate' and only for too short of a time, had taken up a type of residence in his chest, somewhere near his heart, and after she had suddenly disappeared – from the subway and his life altogether – a feeling of emptiness had taken her place. Again, he felt ridiculous, feeling so deeply for someone he had never gotten the chance to truly know, but maybe that was the worst part. In the handful of moments he had been granted with her that night he actually saw her outside of their shared public transportation, he had perceived her as someone he might be willing to let past the surface and open his heart to. A privilege no one had been granted in a long time, not since Alexis…

Rick scrubbed at his face and approached the side of her bed, made himself stare down at the unconscious woman he had pondered over the idea of caring about for so long. She was colorless now - cheeks that were once flushed with life and ambition drained and hollowed, eyes that had remained fiercely vivid in his memory hidden behind closed lids that would likely never open again, and luscious curls that had shone gold in morning sunlight turned to a limp, dull mane strung haphazardly over starch pillows.

He sighed dolefully, reached out to tenderly skim a finger over the top of her hand.

"I'm sorry, Kate," he murmured, so quietly he doubted anyone – let alone her unconscious mind – could hear.

And then he left Kate Beckett's room.


Rick was getting his things together later that evening, packing up his messenger bag and feeling the strain in his rigid muscles finally beginning to loosen at the thought of heading home for the night. It had been one of those rare slow days at the hospital, which he hated. He preferred the constant action the ER usually provided compared to a day that dragged on and gave him too much time with his thoughts.

"Hey Rodgers, your patient in 308 is getting agitated," his head nurse, Lisa, called to him as she passed by with an IV pole trailing at her side.

"Room 308? I don't have a patient there. There's only a woman in a coma."

"Well, she isn't in a coma anymore, Doctor." Lisa told him dryly and he huffed but made his way to the elevator and took the car to the third floor.

He strolled into Kate Beckett's room expecting her to be lying unconscious in her hospital bed, as she always was. He nearly dropped the clipboard in his hands when he saw the woman who had been comatose for almost two full years sitting up with the help of the nursing attendant, eyes opened but flooded with tears and raging with distress.

"Kate?" he said softly, rushing to her side and subtly assessing her vitals. "Are you in pain?"

"No," she rasped, her voice gravelly and raw from the years of disuse. "No one will tell me what's going on. Where am I?"

Rick glanced up to see the young nursing home attendant from earlier in the day staring back at him in bewilderment.

"I just came in to check her G-Tube and vital signs a few minutes ago, sir, like I do every night. She was awake – sort of – and mumbling when I walked in so I asked Lisa to get you, you know, since I saw you checking on her earlier," the male nursing attendant, who he was pretty sure was still just an intern, explained hastily with his hands raised in a gesture of innocence.

Rick turned his attention back to Kate and motioned with a flick of his wrist for one of the nearby nurses crowding in the hall to come over while he spoke to his patient. "You're in the hospital," he said calmly. "Can you tell me what you remember last?"

She furrowed her brow and momentarily closed her eyes.

"I…I was going to meet my boyfriend for dinner, I think? My mom was with me and it was snowing, raining, something - but I drove. Was there...were we in an accident?" she breathed, peeling her eyes open with a great amount of effort to look at him.

Rick hesitated, but nodded solemnly. "I wasn't your doctor at the time, but as far as I know, you were in a car crash. You didn't suffer any severe injuries aside from the blow to your head, but you've been out for a while."

"Define a while," she slurred, begging for details with bleary eyes.

"Let me get in touch with the doctor who originally treated you, and then we'll discuss what happened."

She seemed reluctant, but used all the effort she had to nod.

"Get Lisa to do a general checkup on her," he instructed the intern still lingering in the room. "I'm going to find her neurologist and whoever else that's worked with her. Do not mention that she's been dead to the world for almost two years, alright?" he murmured to the nursing attendant once he was in the doorway of Kate's room and out of the patient's earshot.

"You got it, Doc."


Rick spent the better half of an hour trying to get ahold of her neurologist, Doctor Salazar, on his cell, but when he continued to receive no answer, he pulled up Kate's file on his laptop, assessing every detail of her accident, and cringing the more he read.

The other vehicle – a Range Rover that had crashed into Kate and her mother at a high speed – had been suspiciously empty when officers arrived at the scene of the wreck. The SUV had plowed into the passenger side of Kate Beckett's police cruiser-

His eyebrows momentarily quirked at that; she was a cop?

Her mother, Johanna Beckett, had been a DOA and Kate had been found bloodied and battered in the driver's seat, but with a pulse, and was quickly taken to the nearest hospital. According to her records, Kate had suffered severe brain swelling – what the doctors at the time assumed had sent her into the coma – but even after the swelling receded, Kate had never woken up.

She had scored a five on the Glasgow Coma Scale, indicating she was highly unlikely to ever wake up again, but Jim Beckett – her father, he assumed – still paid monthly to keep her on life support and cared for in the nursing home. And now…now she was awake.

He needed to call Jim Beckett.

Rick buried his face in his hands and scrubbed at his jaw in thought. He knew it wouldn't be easy for her – waking up from a coma was easy for no one – and he didn't look forward to watching her struggle. But he couldn't ignore the wave of gratitude he felt rippling through him.

There had been a part of him that had hoped when he saw her again that some miracle would occur, that she would be one of those remarkable success stories. He had never expected his feeble wish to come true. It gave him hope that maybe the universe didn't hate him as much as he thought.


When he returned to her room, Kate was alone once again, surrounded only by machines and darkness and allowing tears to free fall their way down her concave cheeks. Her eyes took longer than he would have liked to find him, but when they did, her fingers twitched and he instinctively quickened his step.

"Can you call my mom?" she asked in a gravelly whisper - still all she could manage. "Please, Doctor."

Rick hesitated, knowing it was too soon to tell her the truth, but hating the idea of lying to her when her world was already so upside down as it was.

"We're working on that," he attempted to assure her, but her fingers curled into loose fists.

"No one will tell me what's going on and I'm sick of it," she said, her voice quiet and gasping, but insistent. "Give me-" She had to pause, not enough air in her debilitated lungs to talk for long. He offered her the water from the small plastic cup on the bedside table, but she ignored him, concentrating on her breathing and her words. "Give me the truth."

He sighed and sat down carefully beside her hip.

"Almost two years ago, you were in a car crash," he began grimly. "The weather was bad and another car lost control. You were unconscious when the ambulance arrived at the scene and you have been ever since."

She swallowed but held his gaze.

"And my mom? Where's my mom?"

"Kate-"

"Please."

"She didn't make it," he blurted the truth, allowing the words to slip from his mouth before he could stop them, and he immediately saw the pain overtaking her beautifully broken face.

"No," she whispered, staring back at him in horror. "You're lying."

"I'm so sorry, Kate. The other car hit her side and she…she died instantly."

Kate forced her sluggish body to turn on its side, wincing through the movement but curling in on herself as a harsh sob wracked her trembling frame. Rick carefully put a hand on her knee, but her weak fingers brushed him away.

He watched her suck in a deep breath, and then another, and bite down hard on her quivering lip - her eyes closed and her brow furrowed as if she was willing herself to gather whatever strength she had left - and then she asked him about the other driver involved.

"I'm not sure. When officers arrived on the scene, the other car was devastated but empty."

The news made her glistening eyes open and fall to the floor in thought.

"And I've been…asleep? For two years?"

"It would be two years later this month," he confirmed, but she didn't say anything else, just stared down blankly at her bent knees. "But your speech and communication skills are good. A lot of coma patients lose them," he told her encouragingly, even though nothing he could say would ease the pain of the loss he had delivered. "We'll move you to the recovery wing of the hospital in a few days if you seem up to it, from then on, physical therapy will be your main activity."

She still said nothing, but Rick kept on babbling facts in hopes of breaking her out of the numbed look of indifference he had caused.

"You'll also see a psychologist tomorrow and probably for the rest of your stay here."

"Why do I need a psychologist?" she muttered, working hard to squeeze her fingers around the stress ball gripped in her hand. The nurses had given it to her to practice with, but her fingers didn't make a dent in the foam material.

"Mainly to assess your mental state. I'm sure they'll also want to determine if you suffered any type of memory loss, short or long term."

She sniffed, squared her jaw even though he could tell it required a lot of effort. "Do I have a brain injury?"

"Not as far as I can tell, not visibly, but we're still running tests to determine why you remained in the coma for so long and what caused you to suddenly wake up."

She did her best to nod, but her eyes welled with tears again and he handed her a tissue, wiped her cheeks for her when her fingers shook too hard to curl around the napkin.

"You're going to be okay, Kate."

"You can't say that," she whispered. "Don't say it if you can't be sure."

"You should sleep," he announced softly, beginning to ease up from her hospital bed, but she managed to snag the sleeve of his coat.

"I…what if I go back under?" she rasped, glancing to him with hidden terror in her eyes. "What if I don't wake up again?"

He pursed his lips and she surprisingly let him brush the errant hair from her face like he'd always wanted to.

"I can't promise you it's not a possibility, but I'll keep an eye on you throughout the night, and wake you every few hours." he assured her. It was all he could do.

She nodded and swallowed thickly.

"Will you stay?" she asked quietly, keeping her gaze on anything but him. "Just for a little while?"

He didn't know this woman, not really, but he could see that dependence was not something she embraced.

"Of course. I had planned to anyway."

She smiled at him, a small, weary thing, but the first real attempt at a smile he had seen from her, and he ignored the small stumble his heart took because of it. He didn't - he wouldn't - allow himself to see her in that way. It wasn't allowed anyway. She was his patient.