Jay was terrified of sleeping, since the first nightmare he'd had, the one where the woman was cutting Erin, every one of his dreams had been filled with images from those two days. Not a lot of images, it was the same thing over and over but that didn't make it any easier. The look of fear in Erin's eyes was what got to him, that and his inability to do anything about it.
He stayed awake as much as he could, he tried to talk to Erin but she didn't want to talk to him, all she wanted to do was sleep. At times he wished he could find sleep as easy as her, it would be nice to sleep all this away he thought, but sleep wasn't on the cards for him. Instead he filled his days with researching life as an amputee, so far the information he was finding was promising, the blogs and news stories he was finding from people all seemed to have the same message, life goes on and recovery was possible. He even found stories about other cops who'd lost legs and gone back to active duty. It gave him hope that his life and Erin's weren't completely fucked, that they would be able to get through this. He was motivated to get better, to heal, he was excited about starting rehab, he just hoped he could get Erin motivated enough to go along with him.
…
Erin was sitting up in bed; she'd been conscious for over a week now and had been transferred out of the ICU a few days ago. She was now sharing a room with Jay which was nice, she liked being close to him, though sometimes she wished she could be alone. Jay was worried about her which was sweet but also suffocating. He thought she should talk about what had happened but she didn't want to talk about what had happened.
He had dual reasons for wanting her to talk; one was his genuine belief that talking about things made them better; the other was his desire to know what happened. He didn't remember anything which didn't surprise her, he'd been unconscious most of the time, she remembered everything. She wanted to forget but forgetting wasn't easy. The only time she could get the images from her head was when she was sleeping, if she took sleeping pills, without the pills she had horrible vivid dreams but with them her world went blank. When she was awake it was the same, the images and thoughts constantly running through her mind, pain killers numbed them, she spent as much time as she could sleeping or medicated. At times she would lie about the amount of pain she was in, she'd tell them the phantom pain in her right leg was excruciating, it hurt, but not nearly as much as she suggested it did.
Now was one of those times Jay was trying to get her to talk.
"What are you thinking about Erin?" he asked her as casually as he could.
"I'm not thinking about anything," she lied.
"You're thinking about something," he said back to her, "I know that look on your face."
"Oh," she let out a sigh, "I was thinking about the future." Not exactly the truth but close enough, "about what's going to happen next."
Jay smiled at her, "I've been thinking about that too," he told her, "I think we're going to be okay."
"Yeah," she let out another sigh, okay was a relative word, "they still haven't caught the people who hurt us."
"They will," he offered, "Voight's not going to let them get away."
"But what if they don't. There are some people even Voight can't find."
"I don't know," Jay sighed, "I guess we just learn to live with it."
"Learn to live with it?" She hated that sentence, she'd had people telling it to her a lot these last few days and she understood why they kept saying it but it didn't help her feel better. There were a lot of things she was going to have to learn to live with but she didn't want that to be one of them. "I'm sick of people saying that."
"I know," Jay smiled, "but what else are they supposed to say."
"Nothing," Erin offered, "I hate this!"
"I know," Jay smiled, "I hate this too but unless you're planning on killing yourself, which I really don't want you to do, we need to learn to live with what has happened."
"That's easy for you to say," she retorted, "you don't remember what happened."
"I didn't say it would be easy Erin," Jay responded, "It is going to be bloody difficult but we don't have any other choice." She looked at him, annoyance and frustration all over her face. "I hate that you remember what happened Erin and I don't. I wish I could swap places with you, I wish I could take that pain away from you but I can't. I'm sorry." She looked back at him; he could see the fatigue in her eyes. She was hurting in ways he could only imagine.
"I'm tired," she said after a while, "I don't want to talk anymore." She rolled over so her back was to him, the conversation over.
Silently Erin cried, she didn't like fighting with Jay but sometimes he just pushed her buttons, even when he was trying to be nice. She was so tired; there were times when she didn't know if she wanted to keep going. Nothing was ever going to be like it was.
…
A few weeks later
…
Things at the district were getting tense. No one wanted to put Erin and Jay's case on hold, but new cases were coming in and pressure was building from above that they needed to put it on the back burner, let the FBI run with it on their own. No one was willing to do that yet though, they were getting close to IDing the man and women and finding them, they were sure there was just one piece of information missing.
So far they'd found two other pairs of victims, one in Detroit, and another in Cleveland. Ruzek had tasked himself with reviewing the files again; none of the victims had any idea who the biological fathers were or how was he identifying them. It seemed like too much of a stretch to think he'd been keeping tabs on all his children for so long. Nothing in any of the woman's records showed an overlap of men entering their lives. He was reading the interviews with the mothers again hoping something would fall out, that he could spot something everyone else had missed…then he found it.
Every mother had provided a list of names, they'd all said "I'd always thought it was 'so and so' but a paternity test ran a few weeks/months ago said it wasn't".
"Olinsky, I think I found something," Ruzek said sounding genuinely excited. Olinsky lifted his head from the paper he was reading and nodded for him to continue, "They all had paternity tests run. In the weeks leading up to the abductions, they had a paternity test. I think that's how he's finding them."
"Let me see," Olinsky held out his hand, Ruzek handed the file over. For minutes they sat there Ruzek, watching Olinsky read the file for himself. Eventually he looked up at him and smiled. "I think you're on to something," he told him, "give our FBI friends a phone call."
Ruzek smiled, they were on to something again, the case had a new round of traction.
AN: So that was just a little bit to keep the story moving. A big thank you to the two people who left the reviews last time, they are much appreciated and this is for you. If you'd like to see more please let me know. :-)
