Author's Note: Thank you all so much for your time and feedback. I so appreciate everything! More to come...

He follows Kathy out the set of double doors and into the parking lot. Eli curls bob on his mother's shoulder as they make their way toward Kathy's Subaru.

The metal of the handle is freezing to his touch as he opens the back door and moves aside to let Kathy settle their son into his booster seat. Elliot searches the lot for the space where Kathleen parked and he spies the truck some dozen spots away.
"I'll pull the truck over and grab his bags," Elliot tells Kathy as she emerges from the back seat. His ex-wife nods and he sees her shiver in the cold breeze. "Get warmed up in the car, Kath. I'll put E's stuff in the trunk."

Elliot makes his way over the slick concrete toward his truck. He feels as though he is on autopilot, as though he is watching himself from another vantage point. Nothing about this night feels real and he doubts that his firm grasp on reality will return anytime soon.

His eyes itch with tiredness, but he knows that he still has hours ahead of him before he will be able to rest.
Olivia might sleep all the way through the night. She will have to have scans and tests run on her in the morning and he sure as hell isn't going to leave her anytime soon. The temperature inside the truck is colder than outside, but he doesn't bother to turn on the heat to drive a few hundred feet down the lot.

He feels strange being behind the steering wheel. The last time he sat in this seat he had been a different person. He doesn't allow himself to think too much. He can't fathom the implications this night will have for his future and he doesn't want to speculate about the changes right now.

His tires roll over the ground at a snail's pace and he knows he is going to have to reteach himself not to be gun shy about driving. A vehicle is a weapon and the weather can be a dangerous catalyst. He pulls up beside Kathy's car and turns off the engine before stepping down from the truck.

He moves to the side and opens the back door, climbing into the back seat for Eli's belongings. The rear seat is darker than usual because the makeshift blanket screen that Kathleen had put up still hangs between the seats. Elliot feels a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips when he hears the telltale sound of Cheerios crunching beneath his knees.

As he withdraws from the rear seat with Eli's bags, he hears the car door close and he turns to look at his Kathy. She wordlessly takes one of their son's bags from his grasp and sets it into the trunk. He copies the motion, placing Eli's remaining belongings in the trunk space. He stands beside her for a moment. "Kath," Elliot manages. "Thank you." Kathy seems startled when she looks up at him. "Elliot, I didn't do anything."

He shakes his head, "You did. You came." He isn't sure what exactly he is trying to convey, but he knows that he owes her so much.
"You'll call if you need anything?" She asks.
He nods in acknowledgement and Kathy continues to speak. "You're more than welcome at the house, you know? If you need to eat, or sleep, or take a shower." She smiles slightly and the sight makes the tightness in his chest loosen. "Might take you up on that tomorrow," he replies, gratefully.

"I better get the little one to bed," Kathy says, motioning toward the car. Elliot nods again, "Yeah, I'm gonna be sending the rest of them home shortly."
His ex-wife looks back at him, "Good luck."

He doesn't understand and she sees it in his expression.

"Do you really think they're going to leave you?" She asks, gently. Elliot feels a wave of emotion threaten to engulf him and fixes his gaze on the back wheel of the Subaru. He can tell that Kathy's question isn't rhetorical by the feeling of her hand on his arm. She is genuinely asking him, but he doesn't have an answer for her. "I don't know, Kath," he says, his voice low. "Well, I do," she replies, "Let them stay."

He presses his fingers into the tight muscles of his neck. "I don't want the kids here all night. I want them to get some rest."
Kathy laughs lightly, "I know you do, but they're all grown up, Elliot. You can't tell them it's past their bedtime."

Elliot shakes his head, but he knows Kathy is right and that all three of their children will put up a fight if he asks them to go home. "Be careful," he tells her. "Keep me updated," she says in reply as she situates herself in the front seat and closes the door.

The lights inside the hospital seem even brighter now that his eyes have become accustomed to dark parking lot, lit only by street lamps. Elliot tugs his sleeve back to check his watch before he realizes that he isn't wearing it. He doesn't remember, but he must have taken it off.

He walks slowly through the deserted hallways. His children weren't in the waiting room when he returned and he is sure that means they must have taken a walk.
He has decided to do the same.
His legs are tired, but every time he sits he can feel himself start to shake. At least he has the illusion of control while he is standing.
This hallway looks familiar, although they all start to look the same after a while. Elliot wonders how people ever figure out where they are in a place like this.

The image of the cross catches his eye and somehow he isn't surprised that somehow he found his way back to the hall with the chapel. He passes the small sitting room where Dr. Monroe first spoke to him an hour ago. How can some passages of sixty minutes go by in a heartbeat while others seem to stretch on for much longer?

His presses against the door with his shoulder and moves into the quiet space. The chapel is small by church standards, but it more than serves its purpose. It is dimly lit with wall sconces that throw parts of the room into shadow. There are five rows of seats with small benches for kneeling placed before each chair.

Elliot walks down the side aisle toward the statue of Saint Joseph. In Virginia, St. Joe's is his parish. He had taken Kathleen and Eli to mass two night ago - no just last night, Saturday.
It is unbelievable that it was just hours ago that he sat in his church five hours South, when he feels like he hasn't been home in months.

This night is strange, lingering on for what seems like forever. He knows traumatic events can effect one's perception of time and certainty and he is trying not to worry. He has to believe that he will receive some news soon. Elliot raises his eyes toward the front of the chapel where, illuminated by a soft glow, hangs the crucifix.

He swallows hard and sweeps the small space with his eyes, making sure he is alone. He moves to stand in front of the crucifix and genuflects, blessing himself with the sign of the cross. He lowers himself into a chair in the first row and kneels down.

He is unsure of what to say, if anything.

An hour ago, he had been certain that his God had forsaken him to the deepest degree and now...now he has to believe.
In his lifetime, his faith has been shaken more times than he is proud of as a man and as a Catholic. He thinks his job had something to do with his wavering conviction. The harshness and brutality of the things he witnessed on the streets seemed so irreconcilable with that he knew of a merciful God.

He would lay awake for long hours after Kathy fell asleep and wonder how God could allow these things to happen. The seven year old molested by her older brother. The mother of three beaten to death by the man she called her husband...The blood, the cries, the numb look in the eyes of so many of the victims. The job made it much easier to believe in hell on Earth than in salvation in Heaven.

But then something would happen to remind him. His family would remind him. Olivia would remind him. In their own unique ways, they would show him their goodness, their grace, their loyalty to him. Each time, he would relearn how to trust through their innate compassion.

Regardless of how long he stayed away, he always found his way back to the church and the belief that his trust and hope were not in vain. He thinks it has something to do with the desperate need to believe that there is something more powerful than all the evil that he has witnessed.

Here in New York, his attendance at mass was hit or miss. The job was always an obstacle to his timing and his schedule. He made regular visits to their church, but he can count the number of times he attended with his entire family on one hand.

Since the move to Virginia, he has been going every week. He thinks he is probably a hypocrite because he realizes it is so much easier to feel strong in faith when life is smooth sailing. It is something else entirely to cling to the life raft in the midst of a raging storm and keep believing.

But his time in Virginia has helped him, changed him, and healed him deep inside. Everyone always said that their unit should have had term limits. The degree of inhumanity they interacted with on a daily basis wasn't normal. Spend enough time in a situation, good or bad, and you begin to believe that it is the truth. Elliot has realized that his view of the world was so tainted by his time in the unit. He had believed the worst in everyone, his loved ones included. He had also believed the worst in himself. That revelation had been the most difficult to swallow.

They all should have taken their turn and moved on. The demons would have been exorcised from their heads long ago. He thinks that he stayed too long and now that Olivia has come to that conclusion for herself, he knows they are right.

He prays that he was able to help during his time with the NYPD. He prays that it will be enough. That he might have made someone's life a little easier. The knowledge comforts him and allows him to move forward. He realizes now that he struggled to maintain a strong faith in God when all that surrounded him was barbaric.
He had to leave the job, to leave the place where fear was included in all of his memories.

He has come to the conclusion that life wasn't like that for other people. They didn't see the their absolute worst nightmares during the waking hours of every single day. They didn't know the inside of the minds of perpetrators of the worst kind. Elliot didn't want to know anymore. He would always be aware on some level, but he didn't want to know any longer.

He understands that bad things happen. They happen here, they happen in Virginia, in Montana, everywhere.
For so many years his life has been constructed with fear as the building blocks. He sees the damage that the job has done, the toll he let it take on every aspect of his life. He knows that the anxiety he tried so hard to keep from impacting his children during their childhood seeped into their consciousness anyway.

He knows that this is the strongest appeal of his new life in Virginia. He has made it his mission to replace the fear inside of him with light and life and movement. He has craved gentleness and routine and a regular bedtime. He wanted a place for this children to call home and to get to know him, as he became acquainted with himself.

The light-filled farm house in Virginia has taken him away from the noise and the atrocities. There is no place for fear in an open field at dawn, when the colors of the sky wake so gently and paint the celestial canvas in the softest hues of pink and orange. There is no space for ghosts in the hammock on the back porch after dark when the deck is still warm from the sun and the fireflies come out to play, their numbers so vast that you can confuse their lights with the stars above.

"Please," he whispers aloud, "Please." He is unsure of what he is pleading for, but he hopes someone will put in a good word for him. There is so much he wants to ask for, for Olivia, for his children, for himself. Tonight has stripped all thought of the future away and forced him to focus on the now, now, now.
He has to wait for permission to see Olivia. He has to wait for her to wake up.
He has to wait.
Every second that ticks past is an instant closer to that moment and the growing expanse of his world has been abruptly halted by life itself. Wait.
The last year he has worked so hard to stop compartmentalizing every element of his life, but this night will make his well-honed skills come in handy. He has to focus on the concrete and the tangible. Not tomorrow, not next week.
Olivia. Right now.

He stills when he feels a change in the air behind him and he hears the gentle scuff of dress shoes on the floor.

Cragen lowers himself into the seat beside him and leans back with a deep sigh. His former captain looks as exhausted as he feels.
Elliot doesn't know what this man went through tonight and he isn't sure that he is ready to find out. In order to ask about Olivia, he has to open his mouth and speak. He has to will the jumble of questions in his mind into words.

"Capt," he starts and his throat aches with the effort. Don doesn't look at him, instead Elliot can see his gaze fixed on the statue of the Blessed Mother.
"She drove out to Woodbury to talk with the family of a seventeen year old girl. The girl got off the bus on Thursday afternoon and never made it the two blocks home."
Elliot leans forward, pressing his elbows into his thighs. He knows how this story ends.
"I told Olivia it could wait until the morning, but..." Cragen falls silent and Elliot can feel the older man's stare. "You know as well as I do that she wasn't going to let a family suffer through one more night."

Elliot doesn't have the strength to nod anymore. "I got the call and they described the accident to me and somehow I knew. I'm sitting in my car, going sixty in a forty-five zone and I'm listening to them give me the details and I can't explain it."

"What, Capt?" Elliot asks.

"I knew it was you. Somehow, I knew you were with her."
Elliot closes his eyes against the burn of tears. He doesn't know what to say.
He could confirm the story for his former captain. He could ask him if he has heard any news. He can't tell him about how he thought she had died, that she had left him. He can't tell Cragen about how small and lifeless she looked in the front seat. He can't talk about how he should have been beside her, how he never should have left her, how much he needs her now.

"I'm not telling her anything," Elliot rasps, suddenly and he is surprised that he is able to speak at all. "No, not yet," Cragen replies.
"Not ever," Elliot shoots back, "She doesn't need to know, Capt."

"Elliot."

He doesn't want to be told he is wrong. His mind settles on the question that has been sitting on his tongue all night. "Why was she alone in the car?" He asks, "Doesn't she have a-" the word hurts, "a partner?"
He knows the answer. Daniel McCabe. Forty-four years old. Commendations out the ass. Born and raised in the Bronx. Two kids.
Cragen nods.
"Where the hell is he?"
Cragen shoots a glance his way. "I think I'm looking at him."

Elliot stands abruptly. All at once, he is angry.

"McCabe's father-in-law died this morning, Elliot. Around noon, he asked for permission to go home to be with his wife and his children."

Elliot can hear by the measured tone of Cragen's voice that he is treading on thin ice. Don is being lenient with him because of everything that has happened, but he won't let him throw his weight around too much. He is no longer a member of the NYPD, after all.

"He should have been with her," Elliot rumbles and suddenly he isn't sure whether he is talking about McCabe or himself. He wants someone to blame for what happened tonight because the guilt is eating him alive.

Cragen lets him go. The man knows him well enough not to feed into his temper, no matter how badly Elliot wants to argue. He wants to feel something other than the ache and it has been a long time since he has been this out of sorts. He has to get himself under control.

"Elliot, it was an accident. Even if you had been beside her you couldn't have prevented any of this."
Cragen knows him too well.
"Capt, please don't try to shrink me right now," Elliot growls, turning away from Don's gaze.

He wants something else to focus on, anything to take his mind off of this. The gentlest tap on the door captures his attention and his oldest daughter slips inside.
"Dad," Maureen stops walking when she sees his former superior officer. Elliot can tell that she thinks she has unwittingly stumbled into their private conversation, but it is her interruption that has saved him. "I'm sorry, Captain Cragen. I didn't mean to-," she starts, but Don waves her words away.

Elliot finds Maureen's eyes. "Dad, you met Rebecca Raleigh earlier?" Elliot can tell by the look on his daughter's face that she knows he doesn't have a clue who she is speaking about.
Maureen is patient with him.
"Rebecca is a nurse here," she explains, "We were friends at school. She met you in the hallway earlier."

Nurse. Hallway. Purple scrubs. He remembers and nods. "She says she can take us to see Olivia whenever you're ready."

Ready. What a touchy word. Elliot forces himself to breathe.
Has he been ready for the last hour to just start walking into random hospital rooms, checking patient charts to look for her name? Yes.
Is he ready to see her bruised and hurt and nearly broken? No. The truth is this is something he will never be ready for no matter how much time he has to prepare.
He takes another breath and follows Maureen out of the chapel. He holds the door for Cragen and his former captain nods in acknowledgement. Before he steps out into the hallway, he turns and genuflects, blessing himself with the sign of the cross. "Please," he prays once more to anyone who might be listening. "Help me to help her."