So, since I've last updated:
#1: Student teaching has been going amazing! My students are awesome, and I'm learning so much from my co-operating teacher. I've taught a number of lessons, from phonics to read alouds, grammar to math and everything in between - I just love it! I teach 3 lessons this week, which is exciting! I'll keep ya posted on how they go!
#2: Unfortunately didn't get accepted into Teach for America - oh well. I didn't get my hopes up so I'm not that sad about it, all of America was vying for a spot. Now I have to look for a regular teaching job somewhere in the United States!
#3: The Patriots lost last night and I am VERY sad about it. The fact that it was so close and it ended the way it did, is devastating. But, like all die-hard fans, I still love them! Next year, ya better watch out - we're going for 5!
#3: I'm also on Twitter, fearLIZness17
He had been sitting in his hotel room flipping through sixty channels of absolute nothing on the television. Despite knowing that no matter how many times he circled the channels, he continued. It was a way to pass the time, and since his brain had been on over-drive the past few days, it was a welcome invitation to zone out. There were the usual soap operas, the ones that he couldn't stand to listen to. It was always the same song and dance, each episode starting and ending in a similar fashion to those from days past. There were the old sitcoms, the ones that used to be funny. The ones that were genuine television, it made him wonder what the world was thinking when they came to an end. There were the ESPN's and SportsCenter's that nit-picked every athlete and showed the highlights. The ones that were impossible to execute under any circumstances, but somehow miracles occurred despite this. He could picture himself as a young boy, idolizing his favorite athletes, wishing he too could make fantastic plays. Deep down, he wanted to be the hero. He wanted to save the day, to help the underdogs become great.
And then there were the CNN's, MSNBC's, and FoxNews. The channels that never seemed to have any happy news. There were the war-torn countries with thousands of displaced people and the funerals of soldiers who didn't make it back home to their families. The children with cancer who wanted one last wish before their final breath and the stories of people who had died tragically. The car accidents, the house fires, shootings, murders, and then there was her. The kidnapping, the torture, the escape. She was a household name, the world knew her face and her ordeal. They knew nothing of the person she was. They didn't know what made her laugh until she cried, or her drink of choice after a long day. They didn't know that when she was staring off into the distance, she was lost in her own head. They didn't know that when she insisted she was fine, it was just to save face. They didn't know how her smile could light up an entire room and they didn't know how it felt to truly call her a friend. They didn't know how much she loved her daughter, nor did they know how passionate she was about Special Victims Unit. They didn't know how many victim's lives she had changed just by being there and they didn't know how on some nights, she cried for hours at the atrocities she saw on the clock. They didn't know her, they didn't know her at all.
His phone had gone off twice, the sound barely audible with his mind racing. Truthfully, he had forgotten for a second he even had one. When he first left New York, it would constantly go off with people looking for him. It was a constant barrage of texts and voice-mails that he never even bothered to read or listen to. Over the years, people learned that with radio silence, it meant he probably didn't want to talk. The voice-mails and texts stopped coming, and the home screen never lit up. Now, his phone meant nothing to him. At one point, he had considered getting rid of it altogether, it was dead weight.
When he picked the phone up off the bedside table, he was shocked to see her name idling on the home screen. He wasn't expecting a response, nor did he think she was going to even read it. She had enough going on as it is, the last thing he'd expect was for her to give him the time of day. But that's the kind of person she was, always thinking of others before herself. Despite all the times where her plate was overflowing with life's curve-balls, she put herself last. He was one of the many things he admired about her, but no matter what was happening, she would always be there. If it was two o'clock in the morning and she was in bed with the flu, she'd tear herself away to talk to a victim. If she was eight months pregnant and felt like crap, she'd still show up to see one of his kids soccer games. She was never looking for any personal satisfaction, she just did it out of the goodness of her heart. Despite all the wrongs in the world, she was one of the rights.
She had been coughing all week, a cold looking like it was kicking her butt. When she had chased a perp down eight city blocks into Central Park, she had tried to pretend she was fine but he caught her doubled over behind a tree, trying to catch her breath. She had gone home that day, and he hadn't heard from her in three days. He knew that she never took sick days, and it took a lot to even come close to admitting that she felt terrible.
He had swung by her place after work on Friday, just to check in. He knew that she was alone, and trying to do her best to sleep it off. He had a key, but to preserve her dignity, he knocked anyways. He heard shuffling and a few bouts of coughing before the door slowly opened. Her hair was falling out of a bun and she was in sweats. She was propping her body up on the door frame, trying to keep herself upright. Her eyes were red, almost as if she had been crying. She looked exhausted, like the weight of the world was pushing down on her. Her breaths were short and staccato, in an attempt to keep from coughing. She looked like hell.
"Thought I'd drop by, hadn't heard from you in three days. How are you feeling?"
"I've been better," she laughed but was interrupted by a fit of coughing. She was struggling to catch her breath, despite the fact that her chest and her lungs felt like they were on fire.
"Liv," He reached his hand out for support, "You look terrible. Have you been to the doctors?"
She shook her head no, slowly regaining control over her breathing. Her eyes were full of pain, and she was trying her best to hide the fact that she felt worse off than she was letting on.
"Let's go," He said as he held out her coat, "put this on and your shoes, we're going to get you checked out."
She didn't even bother buttoning her coat, and she barely got her shoes on without breaking into a fit of coughs. It was a struggle trying to control her breathing, she felt like the world was closing in on her. The car ride to the hospital was long and torturous. Her lungs were on fire, and no matter how much air seemed to fill them, it still wasn't enough to feel decent.
The waiting room was slow, and everyone seemed to get helped before her. She had closed her eyes for some period of time, in an attempt to try to escape from the pain she was in. She had felt some discomfort in her shoulder, to the point where she had started to grit her teeth. She had placed her right hand over her shoulder, trying to massage it out. Her breathing had shortened even more, it felt like she was gasping for air, desperate to breath.
The doctors had quickly come to her aid, whisking her away to an exam room. She had been knocked out, she doesn't even remember. When she wakes up, she's in excruciating pain. When she lifts up her arm, she feels her skin pull at a small plastic tubing that snakes out from between her ribs. It's thick, bendable plastic, about an inch in circumference. There's a oxygen mask on her face, with green elastic bands rubbing against her cheeks. When she turns her head to the side, a few tears escape her eyes. She's never been so uncomfortable in her life, and she doesn't even remember what happened. When she tries to call out for him, her voice sounds so weak and drenched with exhaustion. But, somehow, he appears next to her bed. "Hey, it's okay. You're going to be fine."
Her brown eyes are red, and full of fear. He knows that she's trying to not completely lose it in front of him but he fills her in on lost information, "You're at Mercy. You have pneumonia, and pleurisy. Turns out, your left lung was 60% collapsed which explains why you were having so much trouble breathing." When he sees her looking down at the thick tube sticking out of her side, he tells her, "It's to get the fluid out of your lungs. You might need surgery to correct thinning lung tissue, but the doctors aren't sure."
The majority of her hair is falling out of the once messy bun, it falls over her shoulder and face. She feels fluid building up and she knows she has to cough to release the phlegm. She sputters at first, and then coughs forcefully three times. Her eyes are tightly squeezed shut, a few tears escaping the corners. It's excruciating, and when she finally leans back on the bed, she whimpers, "M'm s-sorry."
His heart aches for his partner. He knows she's in an incredible amount of pain and that she's confused. "Let me get a nurse, she can get you something for the pain."
She shakes her head, "M'm f-f-i-n"
"I appreciate the enthusiasm, but you're not." He smiles gently at her frail frame laying in the hospital bed. A nurse had come walking into the room to check on vitals but also noticing that she was awake. "I'm going to give you a sedative, it should help you with your overall pain. It should make you a lot more comfortable in a few minutes."
She nodded, trying her best to accept help. When she was first admitted, an intern tried to get blood from a vein on the inside of her left arm. It was a mistake, and her vein blew. She knew immediately that something was wrong when the intern's face went white and her arm was burning about as bad as her lungs were. The bruising was instant, it looked like a purple marker had bled up and down her inner arm. She feels the nurse adjusting the IV in her arm, the needle was pressed against the wall of her vein. She inhaled slightly, holding her breath as she felt the nurse wiggling the needle around. It was a quick fix, and as fast as the nurse had come in, she was gone again.
Her eyes were heavy, and when she tried to talk, her words were slurred. "I n-nee t-t ta-lk t-to y-you"
He felt terrible for her, she was truly a mess. It was just one thing after the other, the doctors kept finding new ways to torture her and without the sedative, she'd just be a puddle of tears. He nodded, letting her know that he heard what she was saying, "We can talk after you wake up, I promise."
She shook her head, trying to fight the exhaustion that was seeping into her veins. "So-s-sorry, f-for e-v-v-ery-th-thi-ing."
He remembered that they never did talk once she woke up, he just summed it up to be the sedative that made her forget. Even years after, he still wondered what she was going to say to him before she succumbed to the exhaustion. He had thought about asking her, but the thought was most likely long gone; it wasn't important anyways.
From the second he had met her, he knew that she was going to be extraordinary. He knew that he was never going to work with another partner that cared more than she did. It was astounding to see her on the job, he had seen nothing like it in all his years on the force. When it came to perps, his anger was directed outwards. He was scary to be around in the interrogation room, and he knew that. He felt that by intimidating perps, it gave him a chance to weasel himself into their heads. With her, she could play the perps game, even better than they could. She found their weaknesses, their insecurities and jumped on them immediately. If it took seven hours for her to break them, she would find a way, even in the most impossible of cases that came through the doors.
He was never the one to talk to victims, he knew it was part of the job but he couldn't relate to them the way that she could. Although she hadn't been in their shoes, she could always empower a victim. She always gave them her card, telling them to call her day or night if they needed anything. And unlike other detectives, she would pick up, regardless of the hour. She would show up at apartments and houses, bars and clubs, just to give the victim a piece of mind. She truly cared, about every single person that walked through the doors of the precinct and would see to it that justice was served.
He had found out she was a product of rape during a stakeout. They had been talking about why they became cops. He had joined the force after a stint in the marines, and with a decent pay close to home, he couldn't pass it up. His family was quickly growing and as terrible as he felt about not being with his brothers in uniform, he was still protecting the peace. He had been asked by Cragen to consider Special Victims after he saw his impressive record. Although he had never admitted it, he really just wanted to do his mother proud. His abusive father had torn him down time after time, but most of all, his father had demolished his mother's free spirit. He heard all of the fights, and saw how scared his mother was in the aftermath. He wanted to put people like his father away, to protect families. When the question was turned back on her, she hesitated. She quietly danced around something that had bothered her for years. She had originally told him that she took a class in college and decided that she would enjoy pursuing a career on the force. When she fell quiet, that's when he knew that it was a lie just to save herself the trouble of displaying all of her skeletons.
She was so composed when she threw her secret out into the open. She stated it very matter of fact, which shocked him. It was a short story, and when he heard Munch unknowingly joke about her father in the squad room later that day, he was livid. He was sure that she had rehearsed it in her head a thousand times, just to make sure that she could talk about it without getting emotional. She didn't shed a tear, nor did she falter at any point during the story. She had never talked about herself much, and he realized that it must have been huge for her to share her mother's story. She was quiet the rest of the day in the squad room, excusing herself to go to the bathroom or the cribs upstairs every now and again. At the end of the day, when he was gathering his things from his locker, he had heard what sounded like crying coming from within the cribs. Instead of leaving right away, he went back down to his desk to finish up a few papers from a case they were about to close. He saw her coming down the stairs, scanning the squad room to make sure that no one was going to corner her about why she had been gone so long. Her eyes were red, and she was sniffling in an attempt to hold it together long enough to walk out the door for the night. He had asked if she was okay, and in true fashion, she insisted she was fine.
She had always been one to keep things close to the vest, it was just how she operated. Keeping her pride intact was of the utmost importance to her, and she hated when she felt so vulnerable. He could always see right through the facade. She was never one to let on to how she was truly feeling. She hated letting other people see her cry, it was a sign of weakness. If she was sick, she'd push the envelope until Cragen forced her to go home. She never took days off, she lived for Special Victims Unit, but then again, it was all she'd ever known.
There were so many good times, and he loved when things were going well for her. It wasn't all bad, there were births of children; five of his and her with Kat. He remembered how she became instantly happier the moment she met her daughter, and how she realized that she had something more to live for than just herself. The way she smiled was incredible when Kat reached a milestone or said "Mama" for the first time. He also recalled the times where she ran on no sleep because Kat had been up all night with the stomach bug. She would come into the squad room looking exhausted, but with her, Kat was above all else. She was fiercely protective of her daughter, and when it came down to it, you didn't want to get in her way. With all the good days, the bad had to start somewhere, and when he really thought about it, the bad would somehow gravitate more towards her than it did with him. She had been stabbed twice in the stomach, after tackling a perp. Nothing was damaged internally, but she did end up with two wicked scars. She had broken almost all of her ribs at one point or another, and the pain did a number on her body. He could recall the bandages that were tightly wrapped around her abdomen to keep her ribs in place and how she would always move a little slower with each injury. There were the black eyes and bruises that lined her body from going head to head with perps. The right hooks to the face during a fight to get a perp to the ground or an elbow to the shoulder. The trips and falls as she ran down seven city blocks to chase down a suspect were always killer. When she would finally reappear with the suspect cuffed, her knees would be dripping with blood.
And then there were the injuries that he wasn't there for, the kidnapping and the brutal assault that soon followed. He had only seen a glimpse of her at her apartment the other day, and he had heard minor details from Fin, but he was very much kept in the dark. He couldn't have imagined how hellish it was for her to endure, and the fact that she came out on top was no surprise to him. That was who she was, a fighter, through and through.
It was then, that he remembered the text he had received. His eyes had scanned the message about a dozen times to fully convince himself that she had agreed to his request. It wasn't what he was expecting, if anything, he was expecting a "go to hell" or no response at all. When he had started to type, the words came natural to him: "I'd love to have the chance to sit down and really talk, about everything. Whatever you decide, you're in control, Liv."
As always, I'd LOVE it if you'd left a review. They always make my day! :)
