Baby I don't care...Baby your love's got the best of me.

Raven listened to the steady breathing of the man lying a few feet from her for a long time. He was wheezing a little, but after having asked him if she should bring the nurse, he had assured her that it was fine—that he felt fine.

She wished she could say the same. While the shot of morphine they had given her had slightly dulled the pain, it hadn't taken it away completely. In order to feel remotely comfortable, she had to stay perfectly still, something she wasn't used to doing. Even the slightest shift of her legs would send a wave of blinding pain to her lower back, and that worried her. Scared her shitless, if she was going to be honest with herself.

She ran through scenario after terrible scenario in her head. She pictured Dr. Griffin walking in and telling her that she was sorry. Raven could see how the woman would grab her hand sadly, and inform her that she would never walk again—that she had snapped her back in half, or something like that. It was all she could do to remain stoic. She didn't want to cry.

The movement would hurt like a bitch.

So she focused instead on Murphy's breathing. It was soothing, almost. He gave her the strangest feelings.

She turned her head slowly towards him, relieved at least that she could move that part of her body with minimal discomfort.

Murphy's eyes were closed, his head lolling on his shoulder in her direction. His mouth was slightly open, which was where the wheezing sound was emanating from.

She examined his face, looking past the black and blue of his bruises. She focused on how his eyebrows were slightly furrowed in his sleep, and the striking slope of his nose. His jaw was sharp and his cheekbones high—His face was all angles.

There was something so attractive to her about him, and she wasn't sure what.

It seemed silly. Here she was, crippled and awaiting news, and she was admiring a man she had met under the worst circumstances possible.

Murphy jerked in his sleep, and opened his eyes… or as much as he was able to anyways. He had a nasty shiner on his left eye, and she wondered if he could even see.

The corner of his lips twitched as he attempted a smile, but it was pained.

"Have you been watching me sleep?" He rasped.

Raven couldn't tell if his tone was amused or annoyed, and she felt a hot blush creep up her neck.

"You're the most interesting thing in here." She said with a raise of her eyebrows, looking around their bare space.

Murphy snorted slightly. "Thanks. I'll take that as a compliment."

She turned her head away after that, trying to ignore the warmth that remained in her face after getting caught staring.

If anything, Murphy was a damn good distraction from her pain.

Raven heard the curtain rustling and braced herself mentally. She didn't have to look up to know that the person that had just walked in was Dr. Griffin. She kept her gaze on the white tile roof, counting them. She wasn't ready to hear what the doctor had to say yet.

Dr. Griffin cleared her throat and approached her bed.

"I have the findings from the x-rays, Miss Reyes." She said.

Raven bit her bottom lip, nodding at her to continue.

"Would you like to be moved somewhere more private, so we can talk freely?" Dr. Griffin gave Murphy a quick side glance, but Raven shook her head. She didn't care if he heard, because frankly, moving her was going to hurt a lot more than the hit her pride would take once they discussed her health.

"Very well," Dr. Griffin sighed. "I have good news, and bad news. Which do you want first?"

"Bad." Raven said quickly.

"The bad news is that you have a fracture in your L5 disk of your spine. This particular disk is the one that transmits signals to your legs, which explains the amount of pain you are in right now."

Raven squeezed her eyes shut. "And what's the good news?"

"The good news is that we can operate. I won't be able to tell how much nerve damage the fracture has cost until afterwards though, but there's a good chance you will retain function in your legs."

"How much function?" Raven said.

Dr. Griffin chewed on the inside of her cheek for a few seconds before answering.

"I'm going to be honest with you. " She said, and shook her head side to side slowly. "I don't know. You could retain all function, and you could retain only a little. But I'll tell you this. If you don't operate, you will never walk again. At least, with the operation, you have a chance. You have hope."

She squeezed Raven's hand. "However, this is a risky operation. There is a possibility that even with the procedure you won't have function in your legs. Your body could also reject the fusion we will have to place in your disk."

"But ultimately Raven, this is your life and your decision. I'll give you some time to think about it." Dr. Griffin made a move to leave her, but Raven held on to her hand tightly.

"I don't need time. I've made my decision. I want to go ahead with the operation."

Dr. Griffin nodded. "Very well. Is there an emergency contact you would like to be here, right now?"

Raven stayed silent. Besides Finn, she didn't have anyone she could call. Even though she didn't want to see him after the events that had unfolded, she knew she needed someone to be there.

"Finn Collins, his contact information should be in my insurance file." She said.

Dr. Griffin smiled reassuringly at her. "I'll make sure he's reached. We will begin the preparations for surgery soon."

With that, she turned and walked away, closing the curtain behind her. Raven blinked away the tears that had pooled in her eyes, but this time they weren't tears of fear or pain. They were a kind of tear that she hadn't shed in a long time—tears of loneliness.

She felt completely alone.

Yes, she would have Finn with her after the operation. But he had betrayed her. Finn had pushed aside her love, trust and friendship of over a decade. She didn't get how he could do that. She could never do something like that to him; she would have never done so.

And yet after everything, she needed him. It made her feel weak.

"I knew it." Murphy said, pulling her from her thoughts.

"Knew what?"

"I knew that you had a boyfriend."

Raven turned her head towards him, watching as he sighed loudly.

"And how would you know something like that?"

He shrugged. "I don't know… You're just…" He trailed off.

"Amazing? Yeah I know." She joked, a sour note in her voice.

Murphy's eyes lingered on her.

"Yeah… Something like that."

The silence stretched between them after that. It's tense for the first time since they officially met, which Raven considered to be strange seeing as they were thrown together in the ICU as total strangers. Shouldn't have their silence been awkward from the start?

But it wasn't, and that nagged at her.

Before she thoroughly thought through what we was going to say to break the silence, the word just tumbled out of her mouth on its own.

"Ex-boyfriend." She said.

"What?"

"Finn's my ex."

Murphy considered her words, his wheezing outlining his every steady breath. He waited for her to continue.

"He cheated on me with my friend."

"Crappy friend."

Raven shook her head. "She didn't know he was dating me too. I met her not too long ago, and we hadn't gotten around to introducing our boyfriends."

"Why'd you tell the doctor to call him?" Murphy asked.

She let out a long a sigh. "There's no one else."

"That makes two of us." He said, and she looked at him with wide-set eyes, but he didn't offer any more information.

But she'd be lying if she said that she didn't want to know more about this man lying a few feet away from her.

When Bellamy awoke, the first thought that crossed his mind was that he was very, very sore.

He groaned as the haze in his head flooded away, and his eyes adjusted to the lighting inside the room he was in. He fished around in the side of his bed for the handheld remote, and pressed the button signaling for a nurse to enter his room.

He was thirsty, and wanted to drink some water (hopefully they wouldn't have him munch on ice chips), but most of all he wanted to make sure that they hadn't contacted Octavia.

She was overseas at the moment. Octavia had followed his footsteps and enlisted in the Marines, and was now stationed in Japan. She was in the middle of her third year of enlistment, and though he worried about her every single day, he knew that she was doing something she wanted to do.

That she needed to do.

But he knew Octavia. He knew the second she knew something had happened to him she would ask for an emergency leave, and jump on the first plane that she could.

Bellamy didn't want that. She would be worrying for nothing, since he was fine. A little banged up, but the doctors patched him up just fine.

And speaking of doctors, he couldn't help but grin a little at the thought of the blonde woman from earlier.

He's not given a lot of time to dwell on her though, since the nurse walked into his room at that moment.

"Mr. Blake, you're awake." She chuckled. "That rhymed."

He recognized her as the nurse from earlier, the one that had been helping Dr. Jackson prep him for surgery before the blonde had entered the room.

"My name is Harper, in case you forgot. We put you under a lot of painkillers, so it's okay if you did. I won't take it personally." She smiled warmly as she rolled in a small cart. "I figured you would be thirsty so I brought you some water."

"You are the best." He said, his voice scratchy and dry.

Harper poured him a cup of water from a light peach colored pitcher, and handed it to him. BShe pressed a button in the remote of the bed to raise his back higher.

"Thanks." Bellamy took a sip of water.

"No problem. Dr. Jackson is still here, would you like me to get him for you so he can explain to you the procedures you underwent in more detail, or would you like to get some rest and talk about it tomorrow?"

"The doctor is still here?" He arched his eyebrows, looking at the clock on the wall that read two in the morning.

Harper sighed. "It's been a long night for all of us."

"I can wait till tomorrow then, that's not a problem. I have a few questions though."

"Sure, what can I help you with?" She smiled.

"Was my sister notified of my accident?"

Harper scrunched her eyebrows. "I'm not sure, I'd have to ask. I can go now and let you know, if you want?"

"Yes, please." Bellamy nodded.

Harper turned to leave, but Bellamy called her back into the room.

"Yes?"

"I was wondering if you knew the name of the woman who helped Dr. Jackson with my surgery, I would like to thank her personally as well."

"Oh yeah, that was Clarke. She's a med student here on rotation. I'll let her know to drop by tomorrow. She went home a little bit ago." She waved a hand in the air as she explained. "Her mom, the head doctor of this hospital, Dr. Griffin, ordered all the med students to go home. They don't get paid like the rest of us, so it was only fair they went home before the actual nurses and doctors."

"Makes sense. Thank you for the water."

"You're welcome. Ring if you need anything." She turned off the light in his room and wandered down the hallway.

Bellamy took a last slip of water before setting the empty cup on the adjoining table next to his bed. He lowered the back of the bed to a comfortable position for him to sleep, and he sighed.

Clarke.

Now she had a name.

Maya dug around in her purse for her car keys, waving with one hand to the remaining staff that lingered in the empty waiting room. She bid them goodnight, trying to stifle a yawn that snuck up on her, resulting in a few tired chuckles from the receptionist.

It was 3 in the morning after all.

She had been in the hospital for almost 18 hours, which was exhausting in itself. The fast pace and chaotic state of the past few hours had worn her out considerably, but she hadn't even noticed she was exhausted until things calmed down.

By now, most of the patients that needed to stay overnight had been taken care of, and the others had long been discharged.

The desert breeze hit Maya in the face the moment she stepped through the doors of the hospital, which wasn't doing much to help wake her up enough for her drive home.

Arizona summers were a funny thing. It could be over a hundred degrees in the middle of the day all the way to the peak hours of night, but at some point, these lazy cool breezes would whisk by you and you'd forget all about the sizzling heat of the day.

She sighed as she made her way to her old Toyota. It was a piece of crap, something her boyfriend reminded her off virtually every day, but it had been her mom's. She and her dad couldn't part with it.

She jumped about half a foot in a mixture of both surprise and fear when her boyfriend called out to her from behind.

"Geez, Jasper. What are you doing here?" She said turning around to face him.

"It's late." He replied, wrapping his arms around her and kissing her nose, to which Maya scrunched her nose. "I couldn't just leave my girl alone at these hours, especially with two loose criminals running around."

"I'm sure they're long gone by now." She laid her head on his chest, enjoying the side-to-side swaying Jasper was doing.

"Can't be too careful." He said, burying his nose into her hair. "Especially with you."

Maya looked up at him, noticing the hard glint in his eyes, and the tension in his jaw. "I guess it's been a rough day for you too, huh?"

He nodded, giving her a tight lipped smile as he disentangled them. He held her hand, rocking it between them as they walked together into the parking lot.

"I'm going to drive you home." He said, and Maya opened her mouth to protest, but he stopped her. "Ah-ah-ah, I know what you're going to say. But there's no room for arguing. Your clunker will be here tomorrow morning, it's not exactly an ideal getaway car."

She laughed, not that Jasper noticed, since he had started on his rant.

"I mean, does that thing even reach 50 miles per hour? It doesn't even have AC, which in the desert land that we live in is like a big problem. But not only that, only the windows in the driver and passenger seat are able to be cranked open, which can you say safety hazard? What if you rolled into a lake and the only way you could escape was through your backseat windows?"

"Then it's a good thing my boyfriend's a paramedic." She laid her head on his shoulder as they approached his car.

"Not funny." He said bumping his hip against hers. "But anyways," he took in a long, deep breath. "I'm taking you home tonight. It'll make me feel better knowing you're safe."

"I could have just texted you." She smirked.

Jasper extracted his hand from hers and held it against his heart. "Ouch. I see how much I mean to you."

Maya giggled and lightly punched his arm. "You're just overprotective."

His eyes widened in mock hurt, his mouth gasping dramatically. "Double ouch. Well fine, I was going to ask you to stay at my place tonight, but never mind!" He threw his hands up. "I'll just text you a picture of the pancakes I was going to surprise you with in the morning."

"No, wait!" Maya held on to his arm. "Are they legal pancakes?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, they're legal. I only make the other ones on special occasions." He stuck out his tongue at her and unlocked his car.

"I love your legal pancakes." Maya said as she walked around to the passenger's side.

"And I love you." He said as he got in the car, locking the doors with a push of a button.

Maya traced his jaw with her hands as he twisted the key in the ignition, wondering how the heck she got so lucky to have a boyfriend who loved her so much.

"I love you too, Jas."

The minute Abby walked in through the doors of her house, all the mental and physical exhaustion of the day washed over her. It would have been overwhelming if she wasn't used to it by now after twenty-some odd years.

Coming home to an empty house—that she wasn't used to.

But she pushed that thought aside as she wandered upstairs to her bedroom, the stairs already dimly lit with the impending sunrise. It wouldn't be the first time she got home just as the sun was beginning to trace its path across the sky. That's why she had great curtains and blinds to block it out.

She was just going to be home for a few hours anyways. She'd have just enough time for a quick shower and nap. Jackson had told her to stay home longer, but she wanted to be there when Raven awoke from her surgery.

She needed to be there with her when they assessed her for feeling and function.

It hadn't been too complicated of a surgery, not with the tragedies she had seen before come from car accidents. It had taken a little under four hours, and Raven's disk was repaired with titanium. She would be sore when she woke up, and Abby didn't doubt now, after taking a better look at her spine during surgery, that Raven would retain function in her legs. The question was though, how much function. Though it hadn't been a hard surgery, there had been a lot of nerve damage in the area.

Abby tried to shut that portion of information out of her mind as she showered. She didn't take too long, seeing as she was too tired to linger underneath the hot water for long.

Just as she stepped out of the shower, her cell phone rang, and she sighed as she wrapped a towel around herself and walked into the bedroom. She grabbed her phone from where she had dropped it on the bed, and answered quickly once she saw who was calling.

"Hello Marcus." She said as she walked to her dresser, looking for comfortable clothes to sleep in.

"Abby," he said, his voice sounding equally tired as hers. "I hope I didn't wake you."

"No you didn't, I got home a little while ago."

"Christ, I'll cut to the chase then. I'm sure you need to go back to work soon too." He said, and she could tell he was smiling through the phone.

"What's up, Marcus?" She said as she put the phone on speaker in order to get dressed.

"I just wanted to thank you. I hear you fixed up one of my men last night."

"Ah," she smiled softly. "The cop with the collapsed lung."

"Officer Murphy, that would be him." He sighed. "He's one of the two officers involved in last night's terrible crash."

"I didn't personally treat the other one," Abby said, pulling a shirt over her head. "But I'd say Officer Murphy was very lucky. I had to do an emergency lumbar fusion on another person involved in that same car accident."

"Innocent?"

"Yeah."

She heard him curse, and Abby cocked her head in surprise that he wasn't aware of all the accident details.

"Aren't you the Chief of Police? Shouldn't you know all this?"

"It's been busy. I've been at the prison since the mutiny—I haven't even gone into the office to look at the report. David took care of the accident, and let me know of my men's welfare as soon as he got word."

"Well like I said, Officer Murphy will be just fine. We'll keep him in the hospital under observation for a few more days to make sure no more fluid enters his lungs, and then if all goes well he should rest at home for a couple of weeks, and after that he should be good for light duty."

At this Kane laughed earnestly. "Light duty? Neither of my men in the hospital know the meaning of that."

"Well, be sure to explain it to them then." Abby yawned, not bothering to stifle it over the phone.

"You must be exhausted. I only really called to thank you, Abby."

"No need, it's my job."

"Still," he said, his voice lowered to a whisper "thank you."

The tick tock of the wall clock was driving Raven almost absolutely crazy when paired with Finn's sad eyes boring into her from his spot beside hers. She half-regretted having the hospital call him already, but at least her anger at him directed her away from thinking about the operation she had just underwent.

"You're going to be fine, Raven." Finn leaned over and laid his hand over hers, his thumb drawing soft circles on her knuckles.

She jerked her hand away. The mere thought of the fact that those hands had touched another woman disgusted her. Never mind the fact that the woman had been Clarke; it was more about the act than the person.

She didn't want him touching her, especially in such an intimate way. Raven hadn't had time to let her anger boil over yet, and Finn was feeling it in its entirety.

"Raven," Finn said, moving his hand to rest on the railing of the bed.

"I don't want to talk about it." She said, a note of finality present in her voice.

"We're going to have to talk about it eventually."

"Eventually, but not now."

That seemed to satisfy him, and he leaned back in his chair, giving her a little bit more space to breathe. He checked his phone, and she saw him texting someone from her peripheral vision. Thinking back to the past few months, she had noticed he had been on his phone a lot more often than not when they were together… She had never thought to ask him who he was texting, always attributing it to a friend or classmate of his.

Now she had a pretty good idea that he had probably been texting Clarke.

Or maybe even other women. Raven had no idea if there had been trysts with women before Clarke.

Maybe it was old fashioned thinking, or just her living in a fairytale—but she had really thought Finn was it for her. He had been her first everything, and she thought she had been his too. And to be fair, she could still have been, but Raven hadn't been his last.

Now with her surgery and the repercussions of the accident, she wondered briefly if he would still be it for her. It's not like there were many guys lining up at the door that wanted to date a cripple.

But I'm not a cripple yet, the doctor hasn't come in to speak with me.

She turned her head towards Finn, who was now eyeing the closed door intently. She traced her eyes down the familiar planes of his face. His hair had grown almost too long for her tastes. He hadn't let her cut his hair in the past month.

"Finn?" she said.

"Yes, Raven?" He turned quickly to her, leaning forward in his chair.

"What if she gives me bad news?"

Finn took a deep breath and shrugged. "Then we'll deal with it. I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm scared."

"It's okay, I'm here. I'm not going anywhere." He repeated, and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

But it did nothing to calm her. She didn't want to hear he was there, she knew that. She wasn't quite sure what she wanted to hear instead though.

She mainly felt strange… and lost.

Raven thought back to the stranger she had shared a room with in the ICU. Was she crazy to? Maybe she was, a little. After all she had known Murphy for only a few hours, and she had felt…

Different, somehow.

She wondered how he was doing, and if they had moved him from the ICU.

"Moved who?" Finn asked, his brows furrowed as he turned his eyes back to her.

"What?"

"You were just saying something."

"Just thinking aloud." Raven said, and Finn nodded.

They didn't say anything else for a while, and the silence that followed was awkward. Raven watched the clock hand move, her breaths separated by each of its ticks.

Finn cleared his throat. "Who were you thinking about?" He said, trying to sound casual.

"Someone."

"Do I know them?"

"No." She sighed. "Can we just please go back to not talking? I think I liked that better."

"Fine." He said, in that tone of voice she knew oh so well that in fact meant it was not fine.

But at this point she didn't care.

She only cared about two things.

One, the outcome of her surgery.

And two was Murphy. She couldn't explain it, and she was already done trying to.

She basically had no idea who he was—even if he was a good person or not. She barely remembered what his face looked like underneath the bruises of the accident, after all she had only seen him briefly at the restaurant.

Raven knew at this point she wasn't ready to just jump into another guy's arms—she was stronger than that. But she just knew that it wouldn't be like that with them. She wasn't looking for a replacement for Finn, he was still most likely going to be in her life in one way or another. She wasn't even sure what she wanted with Murphy.

But one thing she knew for sure, and that was that she was going to get through whatever it was that was thrown in front of her. She would pick herself back up again, even if she had to do it alone.

I'm alive!

I know it's been so so so so so so long since an update, but after finals things got a little crazy and I went out of the country for my cousin's graduation and didn't have any internet for the majority of my stay :(

Then I got back to the US for a DAY and unpacked and packed again to leave the country AGAIN for a family vacation.

(I went to Canada and it was great lol saw the falls, had some wine etc.)

But I am back now, and have been working to crank this chapter out!

I'm not sure what direction I'm taking this, I mean I have an idea, but I'm still playing around with some characters and stuff. I have to get through the heavy stuff of Raven's recovery (both physically and emotionally) before I can have some really cute Murven fluff which I'm totally excited to write.

Hopefully you guys are still reading, lol and if you are, feel free to leave me a comment to let me know your thoughts/ideas you'd like to see. I'd love to hear some!

-Jarleene