11.
Olivia jerked awake from a nightmare, a tangle of colors and pain, where Lewis was alive, but he wasn't, where he was holding her down and hurting her, blood and ocular fluid dripping from his ruined face, and she wanted to scream, wanted to die -
But when she opened her eyes, she was in a hospital room, breathing hard, a heart monitor beeping rapidly behind her. She tried to calm herself before her frantic heartbeat got the attention of a nurse - she wanted to get her bearings before talking to anyone. She was groggy but not in much pain, so she could only assume she was heavily medicated. Her injured wrist and fingers were wrapped and splinted, and so was one of her legs. When she reached up with her good hand to touch her face, she felt a ridge of stitches across her forehead.
She took a shaky breath. She had survived. For whatever reason, she was alive. Somehow, she would have expected this thought to make her happier.
Glancing around the room, her gaze fell on Amaro, dozing on a chair in the corner, a half-open book on his lap. She felt an unexpected lump in her throat at the sight of him. She'd resigned herself to never seeing anyone she cared about again, so him being here now touched her more deeply than she would have imagined. Another part of her felt a tiny pang of disappointment. Had she expected Elliot to be here, waiting patiently for her to awake? It would have been naive, if she did. Facing imminent death, it was fair to imagine other possibilities, a different way her life could have gone. Now, in the cold fluorescent lights of the hospital, it was better to remind herself that he was part of her past now, for better or for worse.
Amaro must have heard her stirring, because his eyes popped open, and his gaze blearily sought hers. He blinked the sleep out of his eyes when he saw her.
"Hey, you're awake," he said, his face breaking into a smile. He stood up and walked to her side. "How are you feeling? Do you need anything from the nurse?"
"I'm okay," she said. Her voice still sounded rough, wrong. She wondered if she'd permanently damaged her vocal chords. "What time is it?"
He glanced at his watch. "About 3 AM."
She nodded. "How long have I - how long since -"
His eyes were gentle. "You've been out for almost two days."
"Two days?" She shouldn't have been surprised, all things considered.
"Yeah, well, you've been through a lot. Docs say they almost lost you a couple times. But you're out of the woods. We've been taking shifts sitting with you until you woke up, all of us on the squad and Brian. You're not alone, Liv."
Olivia felt tears forming in her eyes again, but blinked them away. She wasn't going to cry in front of Amaro, not when he was wearing that look of careful compassion that she'd used on so many victims herself. Still, she was grateful. She loved her team. Maybe they weren't her family, but they were the closest thing she'd gotten. But the joy and gratitude that she felt at this confirmation that maybe they really did care about her was tempered by the knowledge that they'd never look at her the same way again, never talk to her without thinking about this incident.
And Brian - she felt unworthy of him, when she'd barely thought of him throughout her ordeal. Yet he'd been here, and Elliot had not, so what did that say about any of them? Why was a man she hadn't seen in two years more worthy of her final thoughts than the one who was probably worrying about her right now?
Her mind answered with a flood of memories, of a thousand jokes on long stakeouts, of wordless commiserations when the paperwork dragged them deep into overtime, of a hundred late night calls when they were both too haunted by the horrors of their job to get any rest. Of tense hospital visits just like this one, of simply sitting silently by his side, knowing deep down that together they'd be okay.
But they hadn't been, neither of them. And now, when she needed him more than she ever had before, he was gone, like he'd never existed. Like he'd been an illusion of light and sound, vanishing when she looked away. Like none of it had mattered.
She cut off the line of thought and looked down at her sheets. "Thank you," she said finally.
Amaro had watched the interplay of the expressions on her face, and whatever he had seen, he didn't look encouraged. "It's going to be all right, Liv," he said quietly.
It was a lie, and they both knew it, but maybe it was a lie she needed to hear. She nodded and sank back down on her pillows, and unconsciousness claimed her again.
Olivia's doctor was in her early fifties, tall and precise, her brown hair streaked with gray. She stood near the foot of the bed as she ratted off a list of injuries, her voice clipped and clinical. Olivia listened, her face set into a mask of impassivity, her hands trembling beneath the thin sheets. Amanda and Brian waited outside the room, at Olivia's request. She supposed Amanda, at least, might have already seen her medical report, if it was related to the case. But she didn't want them to listen to it with her. She wasn't sure she could take that.
Not much of the doctor's report was a surprise, anyway. Lewis seemed to have wanted her to be awake when he hurt her. Still, it didn't make it easier to hear. The list seemed endless. Her burns were mostly second degree. They would scar, but they would heal, as would the skin around her wrists. She'd barely missed needing skin grafts. The bone of her thigh was chipped but not truly broken, it would mend relatively quickly. They'd spent ages picking shards of glass from her back, but nothing had gotten in too deep. Her left hand and wrist were the most badly damaged. Beyond the broken bones, she had torn several ligaments completely, as well as a muscle. They'd need surgery to repair. There were other injuries too, but her mind shied away from them, focusing on the more mundane
"I want the surgery as soon as possible," she told the doctor, half her attention on Amanda, who was peering in worriedly.
"Understandable, but you realize that won't be soon. Any kind of surgery is traumatic for the body, and yours isn't up for it now."
"I understand. When can I leave?"
The doctor frowned at her. "You ought to stay here for observation for a few more days at minimum. Your burns have an extremely high chance of infection, and we'd like to monitor you for any possible effects from the drugs you ingested."
She wanted to snarl that she was tired of being poked and prodded and stared at, and she just wanted to go home, before she realized that she didn't even have anywhere to go. Lewis had violated her apartment too, and it was still probably a crime scene. Even if not, she didn't think she'd be able to ever feel safe there again, to walk inside without feeling Lewis's hand on her shirt, the burning pain from the cigarettes.
Her shoulders slumped, and she fell back on her pillow, feeling defeated. Even that bit of motion caused a twinge on her burns, even through all the medication.
The doctor saw her look of misery and misinterpreted it.
"It's not as bad as it seems," she said soothingly. "It's mostly just a precaution - but an important one."
She nodded her assent, and the doctor took her leave as Brian and Amanda walked into the room. She managed to paste on a smile as they entered, but it felt painful and unnatural. She couldn't meet their eyes, especially Brian's.
"How are you feeling?" Amanda asked, stopping by the bed.
"Better," she lied. She'd been in and out for another day and a half following her first conversation with Amaro. She had a faint memory, or maybe a dream, of waking up screaming, thrashing against the sheets, knowing for a certainty that Lewis was alive, nearby. Of hands holding her down as she struggled and cried, of familiar and unfamiliar voices trying and failing to soothe her until a sharp pain in her arm and a wave of drugs coursing through her veins dragged her down into artificial darkness.
Whatever it was, at least it was over. These new medications made her feel strange and oddly calm, like a bridge had been severed between her thoughts and emotions. She could feel horror and panic roiling frantically somewhere in her mind but it seemed distant, foreign, like watching storm clouds gather across the river. It was nice, in a way. But her hands still shook, so some part of her was clearly not fooled by the drug-induced serenity.
"Good," said Amanda. Her smile was uncertain, and didn't quite reach her eyes either. "The guys are coming by later, once the shift ends."
"Okay." She managed to keep her voice neutral. They would come, and they'd try and fail to act normal, glance at her injuries and glance away, sympathy in their eyes. It was almost enough to make her wish the doctor would come back and drug her into oblivion again. But the specter of Lewis lurked in that gray space between consciousness and unconsciousness, and she had to face her team again some time.
Amanda took a breath. "You also need to give your statement, whenever you're ready. It won't be to us, the brass is having a different squad handle this from now on."
Olivia nodded. It made sense. They were all too involved at this point to be objective investigators. And it would be easier, anyway, to explain all the humiliating details to an outsider, rather than someone she'd have to look in the eye again. "Tell them I'm ready whenever they are."
"I'll give them a call, then." Amanda bustled out of the door, phone in hand, seeming relieved to have something to do to keep busy.
This left her and Brian alone in the room, tension and anxiety hanging thick enough in the air that it was hard for her to breathe. She looked out the window, studying the expanse of the parking lot with needless intensity.
Finally, Cassidy spoke. "God, Liv," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
"Brian, don't." she said quickly, before he could continue. "Let's not - let's not talk like this right now."
She chanced a glance at him, and he was looking back at her, wearing that look of sweet-eyed concern that had melted many a secretary's heart, back in the day. She hadn't seen it often of late. His years undercover had hardened him, worn away his soft edges, calcified the blithe streak of optimism that had made him stand out in a unit like SVU.
Part of her had been hoping to find something like revulsion or pity in his gaze, something that would justify her thinking of a different man when confronted with her own mortality. But there was only guilt and affection and worry, maybe some exhaustion from sleepless nights.
She clenched her teeth and looked down at her sheets, starting to feel a new flavor of self-loathing in her already overloaded emotional cocktail. And it was insane - it was pathetic to worry about this now, wasn't it? Maybe thinking about right things would be worse, maybe thinking about what happened would crush her fragile psyche beneath its weight, but this wasn't much better. Lewis had known in a fraction of a second that the man she wanted to see was not her boyfriend. She'd seen the contempt in his eyes, and part of her had agreed.
Desperate for a distraction, she blurted out the first thing that came into mind. "How have - how have you been holding up? And my squad?"
"Uhh..." It was clear he had no idea how to answer the question safely. "Everyone's been really worried about you."
"Right," she sighed, already casting about for a different subject. There was nothing. Every innocuous conversational space filler seemed absurd in this context, like chatting about the Yankees in front of a house fire.
Rollins chose that moment to walk back in, and they both turned to her with some sense of gratitude.
"They said they can be by to interview you in an hour or so," she said. "But it's not a rush, especially with Lewis dead. You can take more time if you need it."
Olivia shook her head. "I just want to get this over with."
"Okay." She hesitated. "Do you want me to call a union delegate for you or anything? Have them sit with you for the interview?"
"What?" Cassidy spoke this time, his voice incredulous. "They can't be thinking of charging her with anything. Not after what he did to her."
"No, no," Amanda said hastily. "I didn't get the impression that they were. Still, a man died. You know they have to investigate thoroughly. It's just always safer to have a lawyer around for this sort of thing, we all know that."
Rollins had seen the body, Olivia realized. Her memory of how precisely Lewis had met his end was hazy, but she remembered enough to know that it was bad, that she had gone far beyond even the loosest definition of reasonable force. Had she been acting as a cop, they would have taken her badge already, charges would be in the works. But she hadn't been a cop in that moment, she'd been a vict- a woman pushed beyond her limits. Extreme emotional distress would likely save her from charges, but would it be enough to save her badge? Would they keep an officer who had been raped and tortured, and had responded by putting out a man's eyes before slitting his throat? She suspected she wouldn't like the answer.
Still, Lewis had deserved it.
"No," she said, shaking her head. "I did what I had to. I don't want a lawyer."
She was too tired to fight, too tired to do anything but let the cards fall as they will. And if they did find something wrong, if they did punish her, maybe she deserved it too. She deserved it for not protecting herself, for letting him intimidate her, for letting him have the upper hand every step of the way. He'd taken so much from her, and now that she was out, maybe the NYPD would take the rest.
William Lewis was dead, but somehow, he was still winning.