Chapter Four

When she got sick, Alex usually just took medicine and went to work. She couldn't miss court, wouldn't ask for a continuance.

Alex didn't know what to do with a sick kid. She gave her medicine, but Elissa couldn't keep it down. Elissa couldn't keep anything down.

The first wave of nausea had been followed by a second. The teenager had tossed up her dinner and dessert and was now dry heaving. She couldn't leave the bathroom. Every time she tried to leave, the nausea came back. She finally gave up, resigned to spending the night in the bathroom. At least, Elissa mused wryly, she wouldn't sleep on the hard tile floor. And if she didn't sleep, she wouldn't dream.

Alex had been there the whole time - and it had been hours. During a brief break from being sick, Elissa had thrown her hair into a messy ponytail. She felt sweaty and gross. It was embarrassing. She wondered what the cool blonde must think of her and blushed.

Alex didn't think she'd ever been that sick in her life. It had been two hours and forty-nine minutes. She was reconsidering her decision to wait until the morning to take the teenager to the doctor. It was late and it wasn't an emergency…but she didn't know what to do. Alex would feel better if they talked to a doctor.

"I'm taking you to the hospital," Alex announced.

Alex's tone left no room for argument, and Elissa was too tired to argue.

Somehow they made it to the hospital without having to pull over for the teenager to get sick.

They had taken Elissa to the hospital the night her dad was shot. The cops had pulled her off of her dad so they could take his pulse. There was none. They saw the blood on the teenager and thought she was bleeding. It wasn't her blood. It was her dad's. She'd been in shock, unable to tell them that she was fine. They'd called a bus. She let the paramedics lead her from her apartment to the ambulance. And she had never seen her dad again.

She closed her eyes, struggled to keep herself in the here and now, not in the hospital covered in her dad's blood.

She didn't even hear them call her name - Sarah Reynolds, didn't stand up until Alex made eye contact with her and put a soft hand on her arm.

A nurse asked her the standard questions and made notations as she answered. She wasn't allergic to any medication. She'd taken Pepto Bismol a few hours ago, but she hadn't been able to keep it down. No, she couldn't, she told the nurse, her eyes on the linoleum floor, a blush staining her cheeks, be pregnant.

She stepped on the scale and was surprised that she'd lost five pounds. She wasn't trying to lose weight. She just wasn't hungry. Plus, she felt slightly nauseas every time she ate. Her blood pressure was normal. Her temperature was 100.3.

The nurse took them back to an examination room to wait for the doctor. Dr. Cooper was a woman in her early fifties with curly brown hair. She asked the same questions the nurse had asked, and Elissa answered even though she knew the doctor was looking at the answers on her chart.

"It's probably a bug. We can do a flu test." As she gave Elissa the flu test, the doctor's eyes narrowed, looked closer. The teenager had dark shadows under her eyes, the purple contrasting startlingly with her porcelain skin. "Have you been tired? Stressed?"

She lost her dad, her home, her friends, her life. She had moved to North Carolina and was staying with a woman she'd only known for a short time, who, Elissa knew, didn't want her there. It was, Alex made sure she knew, only until they could place her with a family in the Witness Protection Program. She would be moving again any day now. She would be living with strangers and there was nothing she could do about it. So, yes, she was tired and stressed out.

Elissa merely nodded.

The doctor pursed her lips, looked over at Alex for help.

"We just moved here. Sarah lost her parents in a car crash," Alex supplied.

"I'm sorry," Dr. Cooper said to Elissa. "Were you in the car?"

Elissa was in the room when her dad was shot. Did that count?

Elissa couldn't stop the scornful snicker. "Yes, I was in the car."

The doctor looked the teenager over as if looking for stitches or broken bones. "Were you injured?"

"No," Elissa said flatly.

"You said you haven't been sleeping well?" Dr. Cooper said.

"No. Can you give me something for that?" Elissa wondered.

Dr. Cooper glanced at the date of birth on the chart, frowned. "Let's talk about ways you can sleep better without medication first. Do you drink a lot of caffeine?"

Elissa rolled her eyes. "I'm sorry, but giving up coffee and Coke isn't going to stop me from having nightmares about the car crash."

"You've been having nightmares? Have you talked to anyone? I can recommend a therapist," Dr. Cooper said, directing the last part more to Alex than Elissa.

"Alright," Alex said.

Elissa widened her blue eyes in shock and betrayal, narrowed them at Alex.

They left the hospital with a referral for a psychologist and a prescription for anti-nausea medicine. Elissa's instructions were to rest, drink plenty of fluids, and take Tylenol for the fever.

Elissa crossed her arms in front of her chest in the passenger seat. "I'm not going to talk to a shrink about a car crash that never happened."

"Alright," Alex said.

Expecting an argument, the teenager knit her brow. "Wait, what? You asked him to recommend a shrink. I thought you wanted me to go."

"I didn't ask him to recommend a therapist. He offered to recommend someone," Alex corrected. "What kind of an aunt would I be if I said no?" Her lips curved into a smirk.

"The kind that doesn't think her niece is crazy," Elissa said dryly.

Alex shot her a look. "I don't think you're crazy."

For a fourteen year old who saw someone shoot her father, Elissa was, Alex thought, surprisingly well adjusted. And prior to her father's murder, Elissa was as close to perfect as a teenager could be in spite of the fact that she was raised by a single dad who worked for a Colombian drug cartel. Of course, Elissa was blissfully unaware of her father's ties to the cartel, but still…

"I had to talk to Dr. Huang, before the trial," Elissa confessed. "Casey didn't really give me a choice."

Unsurprised, Alex stared straight ahead at the road as she drove. "It's not unusual to have a witness talk with a psychiatrist before they testify."

Especially, Alex thought, a child who had witnessed the brutal murder of a loved one. She would have done the same thing if she had been prosecuting Liam Connors. That way they would be covered if the defense questioned the ability of a traumatized fourteen year old to testify. In Elissa's case, that's all it would do.

Alex doubted that Elissa would have talked to Dr. Huang. Oh, she would have answered his questions, but the answers would have been careful and cautious, brief, yes or no, one-word answers. It would be, Alex mused, like talking to a brick wall.

Elissa didn't want to talk about her father. The only reason she talked about the night he was murdered was because she wanted justice for him. She didn't talk about the nightmares, and it didn't take a genius to know she was reliving that night in her dreams.

Everyone had tried to talk to the teenager, but she didn't want to talk, not to Casey, not to Olivia, not even to Elliot, who had an easy rapport with Elissa – right up until he asked if she was nervous about the trial.

For some reason, she talked to Alex. Alex didn't know why, but she suspected it was because she was the only one who didn't ask questions she knew the teenager didn't want to answer. Everything Elissa told her, she told her on her own, without prompting. And it was Elissa's voice that broke her out of her thoughts.

"It's normal?" Elissa asked.

"If the defense questions the ability of a witness to testify, the prosecution can call Dr. Huang as an expert," Alex said.

Elissa frowned. "He can't tell the judge what you told him, can he?"

"That's up to the judge," Alex answered. "He works for the FBI and consults with the NYPD. I would argue that anything said to him is admissible in court."

"I'm glad I didn't say anything to him that I wouldn't want anyone else to know," Elissa said, and Alex smiled, her lips twitching in spite of herself.

Alex parked in front of the pharmacy. It was almost midnight and she was the only one in the pharmacy. It didn't take them long to fill Elissa's prescription, but Elissa fell asleep while she was waiting in the car. Her head was back, resting against the car's seat, her eyes closed. Alex woke her when they were home.

Elissa took the anti-nausea medicine and went to bed. She didn't know if it was because of the medicine or because she was sick, but she slept for a long time – almost ten hours. It was a deep, dreamless sleep.

Alex was watching the news and drinking a cup of coffee when Elissa finally trudged downstairs.

"How are you feeling?" Alex's voice was sympathetic.

"A little better." Elissa blushed. "I'm, um, sorry about last night."

"You have nothing to apologize for. Everyone gets sick," Alex said.

And Elissa was sick for five days.

A little better, Alex learned, only meant that the teenager wasn't vomiting every five minutes like clockwork. For the first two days, she could only eat saltines and dry toast.

While she was sick, the teenager spent most of her time curled up on the couch. She wasn't whiny, but very grateful any time Alex did anything for her. Alex brought her medicine, Ginger Ale, and crackers, but otherwise left her alone and let her sleep.

"Thank you," Elissa said softly as Alex handed her a Ginger Ale. "Are you missing work because of me?" Elissa's voice was apologetic.

The teenager was always, Alex had noticed, thanking her and apologizing.

Alex shook her head and gave the teenager a small, reassuring smile. "No."

"Oh," Elissa murmured. "Is babysitting me a full-time job?" She tried to keep her voice light, but there was…something in her voice, something hard and cynical.

Alex's cool eyes narrowed. "I'm not your babysitter."

Elissa met Alex's gaze, held it. "Aren't you?"

"You're staying with me. There's a difference," Alex said.

"Ok," Elissa said quietly.

"I don't have a job yet. I have an interview with an insurance agency on Friday," Alex told her.

"That's what you did in Wisconsin, right?" Elissa said.

"Yes," Alex confirmed.

"Do you like it?" Elissa asked.

Alex shook her head. "No."

Elissa frowned. "Then why would you want to do the same thing here?"

Alex let out a breath. "The marshals helped me find the job. It's a lot of paperwork, and attorneys are good at paperwork." She tried to smile.

"I know you can't be an ADA, but can you be, like, a defense attorney or something?" Elissa said thoughtfully.

"I thought you didn't like defense attorneys." This time Alex managed a thin smile.

"I don't," Elissa said quickly.

"And you think I should be one?" Alex said.

"I would still like you even if you were a defense attorney," Elissa told her, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Why, thank you," Alex said dryly. "But I can't practice law, and, even if I could, I would never be a defense attorney."

Because she understood it would hurt Alex to talk about the career she'd worked for, the career she'd left, Elissa nodded and turned her attention back to the TV.

Although Alex gave her the remote control whenever she was awake, the teenager didn't want to watch daytime talk shows or soap operas. On the third day, which was the first day she was actually awake for more than a few hours at a time, Elissa looked at Alex's DVDs to see if there was anything to watch. Alex didn't have the action movies Elissa and her dad always saw together. There were no Bourne movies, Fast and the Furious movies, or Harry Potter movies on the shelf. Instead, Alex had old movies, none of which Elissa had seen. Remembering the teenager had read Slaughterhouse-Five, Alex recommended Casablanca. It was, like the book the teenager liked, set during World War II.

After they watched Casablanca, Elissa asked Alex if there were any other movies that she thought she would like. They watched Schindler's List, Gone with the Wind, and Roman Holiday. To the teenager's surprise, she actually liked the old movies. She wanted to read Gone with the Wind because books were always better than the movies. She would check it out from the library when she was back in school.

Had the teenager not been there, Alex wouldn't have, she knew, watched old movies. She never just watched movies, never just sat back and relaxed.

As an ADA, she was always working. She turned movies on for company as she worked on paperwork, made notes before a trial, or memorized her closing argument. She managed her time, used it to be productive.

Alex hated not working. It was lonely, miserable, and boring. It gave her time to think about everything she'd lost because of Liam Connors, too much time.

She didn't know what she would have done with all of the free time in the days before her interview, but she would have tried to find a way to be productive – anything to stop from thinking.

Author's Note: Thank you to everyone who has shown an interest in this story! I wanted to use these first few chapters to introduce Elissa and set the stage. I have ideas to move this story forward and bring Olivia, Elliot, and Casey back into the fold soon. I have this story planned and an idea for a sequel about Alex's return to New York. I would love to hear what you think about Elissa and which characters you would like to see more of. I know original characters can be hit or miss, and, if you don't like Elissa, she doesn't have to go back to New York with Alex.