Chapter Three
"Touch me, so I know I'm not crazy" - Love Again, Dua Lipa
The first thing she noticed was the pounding headache, if headache was the appropriate word to refer to a truly singular, superlative, unfuckingbearable sensation that someone had used a can opener to open her skull and then run a hand mixer through her brain. The very same chef had stabbed her in both eyes as well. Everything was so loud and bright and her head hurt so bad that she couldn't think straight. She hadn't even tried to open her eyes yet.
It took several minutes, or hours or days, she couldn't be sure, to start actually processing the sounds. Sirens. Voices. Motors. A weirdly familiar clicking that she eventually realized was a turn signal. There were vehicle doors opening and closing and more voices with the distinct radio-muffled sound. Some of the voices were closer, some more distant, most of them shouting. She knew whatever was happening was likely very important and dangerous and she should, as an NYPD captain, at least have some idea of the situation. But her head hurt so bad and the flashing lights were so damn bright she could feel tears forming even though she still couldn't find the strength - or interest - to open her eyes and survey the scene.
Everything was too much. She didn't have time to deal with this mess. She vaguely recalled being in a hurry, rushing to get somewhere. She thought about Noah and feared something was wrong. Maybe she'd been running home because he was sick. Her heart started to race which intensified the pounding in her head, but it also helped her remember. Not Noah. Elliot. Elliot was sick? Hurt? In trouble? Maybe the flashing lights and sirens were for him.
Oh god, if he was dead…
She felt herself starting to panic, but it only made everything worse. She didn't have time to be sick right now, she needed to remember what was wrong with Elliot. She needed to know what was going on so she could help him. She wondered if the crushing pain everywhere in her body was what it felt like to live in a world without Elliot. Not a world where he didn't talk to her, but a world where he no longer existed. Fuck, she wanted to die.
She hadn't been paying any attention to the voices - there were so many and they were so loud and there was really only one that she wanted to hear anyway - and suddenly she was sure she finally heard it. "All the doors are stuck. Break it!"
The shout made no sense, not that anything going on made any sense per se, and had she been capable, she would have chastised him for yelling when she had a headache. But the shout was so much less egregious than the series of repeated bangs that followed. The banging mercifully stopped with a loud crunch and a rush of cold air. She really wanted to open her eyes and find out what the fuck was going on and why it seemed both wrong and right to hear his voice, except she was so tired she decided she needed to rest first. She could deal with whatever the hell was wrong after she had a nap.
It was the feeling of a hand on her throat that woke her again, an instinctive fear response to the thought that she was being strangled followed by even greater fear when it occurred to her the touch was a strange combination of pressure and softness.
And then that voice again, the one that soothed away everything, at least it did when it wasn't shouting. "She'd got a pulse, get me a C-collar!"
She really, really needed to find a way to ask him to stop yelling. But at least he was there, which meant she could relax and let him take care of the everything, especially whatever was making every part of her hurt so fucking bad.
Apparently, he had no intention of letting her rest. He kept shouting and Olivia really wanted to know what the fuck Elliot was doing that required both standing next to her and hollering like it was his fucking job to torture her. "Damn it, the collar won't fit. Get that door open!"
She was already cold and she said a silent prayer that no one would listen to his demand because she suspected it would undoubtedly result in her being even colder. Then there were more impossibly loud noises and she almost missed the shouting because the banging and clanging and now shaking and pressure were just that much worse. The lights and sounds and closeness of the voice that calmed her except when it was shouting in her ear were combining to make her want to scream out desperately for some peace, but she couldn't because it would only hurt her head more and she honestly wasn't sure she could take any more pain.
And mercifully, fate smiled her on her. The lights dimmed finally, even while someone brushed her hair back from her face.
But the voice shouted again, even louder up close. "Jesus Christ!"
A new voice joined in. "Mahoney, what's going on?"
"I know her. She's NYPD."
The throbbing in her head wouldn't allow for her to unpack what it was that felt so disconcerting about the exchange, so she put it away for later. Instead she concentrated on the soft stroking of a hand on her cheek. Finally, something that didn't fucking hurt so fucking much. She was so thankful for it that when the voice sounded again, low and rumbling and so very comforting, she had to obey.
"Open your eyes, Olivia, look at me."
She knew it would hurt. She knew the lights would feel like daggers, but she had no choice when it came to him, no free will. She forced her eyes open a sliver, her sight blurred by the tears that formed in response to the light.
"Hey, beautiful." His eyes were warm and loving and comfort personified and she wanted to stare into them forever.
She tried to move toward him, despite the pain, desperate for more contact, more reassurance, than the touch of his hand on her hair, but his hand held firm, keeping her still.
"Don't try to move. We need to put a collar on you and we can't do that until they cut through the door. Just stay where you are, ok?" His eyes darted away, his expression shifting to a more wary one, his voice returning to that damn harsh shout. "She's awake, we need to get the fucking door open!"
With her eyes already assaulted from the cruelty of flashing lights and the billion watt work light someone had set up, she decided it was time for that nap after all.
"No, no, Liv, look at me, stay awake, please, Liv." She didn't immediately comply and then his other hand was there, his fingers brushing across her lips and she couldn't do anything but look at him again because it was so very wrong but everything she wanted. But his expression was wrong, it wasn't the vulnerable one she expected when he was so close and his hands were on her face and she couldn't understand why he looked hard and suspicious and irritated. That wasn't how he looked at her, everyone else maybe, but not her. "It's Olivia, right? Do you remember me? I'm Mike."
Now she really had exactly not one fucking idea what was happening. Mike? This man was absolutely not Mike. And although, for some unfathomable reason, while she knew he wasn't Mike, she was so very confused right then that she couldn't even swear to herself that he wasn't Mike. He said he was Mike and it seemed like something he would know, so maybe she was wrong. She felt like somehow identifying him as Mike would result in something so devastating to her psychologically that she might never recover.
So she tried to focus on something else. He'd asked her, begged her, to stay awake, to look at him and she tried because when he'd made the request, every single fiber of her being had told her to trust him and she was still inclined to, even with his identification threatening to crush her. She kept still, though she didn't have much choice between the pressure of his hand on the side of her head and the immense amount of pain which hadn't faded at all. Her eyes moved around, slowly absorbing the images regardless of how much her eyes truly didn't want to work at all. She stared at the console, at the volume button for her radio, for way, way too long before she could place why the shapes looked so familiar.
She was in her car, though not in a position she normally found herself in her car. She was leaning forward, her head on a big white square where the steering wheel usually was and again, it took her much longer than it should have to realize her head was resting on the airbag. The statement not-Mike had made about needing to cut her seat made slightly more sense when she noticed that it wasn't just her that was leaning forward onto the deflated airbag, but the entire seat. Once she noticed that, she couldn't help but realize the angle and the weight of the seat were adding to why every part of her body hurt. She was more than a little frightened to realize that she couldn't mentally locate her left arm while she could feel the uncomfortable pinch in her left shoulder that she always had when she fell asleep with her arm over her head. She desperately hoped the limb had just gone numb from the position and wasn't actually missing. Fear made her try to look, try to turn her head, but the pressure increased on the side of her face where his hand was glued.
"No, Liv, you need to stay still. They're working on the door."
The use of her nickname drew her eyes back to him. The voice was right. The eyes were right. But everything else was wrong.
She didn't have time to get further before a tremendously loud sound came from behind her that threatened to knock her unconscious for how fucking loud it was. Her brain felt like it was about to explode and she felt tears welling once again. Without being able to look, she really had no idea what was going on and she didn't quite understand what the fuck was happening and she couldn't fathom why she was sitting in her car in this strange position with a maybe-but-not stranger while this cacophony played out. The terror must have been obvious on her face.
"Shhh, Liv, look at me, they're cutting through the door. We have to cut you out. Just stay still, they won't hurt you. I'm right here."
The fear sparked a brief moment of utter lucidity and she meant to ask how the hell he'd gotten in while she couldn't get out. And then she realized he hadn't gotten in. He was lying across the dash, his chest resting on the broken glass from the windshield she belatedly realized was missing. He had to be lying on the hood, having shimmied his way through the opening between the dashboard and the roof, which was apparently much closer than she'd ever realized.
Things slowly started to click, the mangled car, the pain, the flashing lights, the sirens. She must have been in a car accident. But that was where the narrative started to collapse. Something didn't add up, because the man who was talking to her, the one with the right voice and the right eyes, wasn't Mike. Last she recalled, although she was starting to question what she actually knew, he hadn't had a beard. And he most definitely wasn't a paramedic, which Mike appeared very much to be.
Maybe, she decided, she was hallucinating. Maybe, she figured, hallucinations went with the massive head injury she assumed would also explain the headache, the confusion, and the difficulty and delay with processing information. Maybe it would also explain the sound and light sensitivity she was suffering through.
"Go ahead, I've got her!" The voice was shouting again and she winced, but he didn't seem to notice. "They're through the door. They're going to open it, ok?"
In yet another move that seemed so very much like a man Mike wasn't, he crawled further through the windshield, positioning himself as well as he could between her and the door. Protecting her from further injury, she realized, when the window shattered and pieces of glass rained down as the door was pried apart.
And in a further bit of confusing information, she noticed a patch on the sleeve of the arm protectively shielding her. It somehow wasn't the one she expected, even knowing that Mike wasn't who she thought he was. Apparently things were very different here in this world with Mike who wasn't Mike and who shouldn't have been wearing a uniform, and if he were to wear a uniform it wouldn't be that one. She kind of wished she'd paid closer attention to all those sci-fi movies she'd always eschewed because she was pretty damn sure she was living in one.
Mike pulled back to his previous position, his arm still poised to provide support for her head should she try to move it. But the more time dragged on, the more confused she got, the heavier her head felt, and thus the less inclined she was to move anywhere. Even the uncomfortable position pressed into the steering wheel wasn't quite so bad. Her eyes were heavy and her thoughts weren't making any sense and she started to give in to the pull of sleep.
"No, Liv, stay awake. Look at me." His words were an urgent demand and once again, her instinct was to do as he asked.
Her eyes dragged open again, not quite able to focus. As long as she kept her gaze locked on his eyes, she didn't see the EMT and FDNY patches on the uniform he shouldn't be wearing nor the goatee, if she just looked in his eyes, everything would be fine. Mike wouldn't be Mike and the universe would make sense again.
"They're going to start on the seat now, ok? You have to stay still. We'll have you out of here in a minute." His eyes seemed to fix on hers more sharply, his brow furrowing as he stared, and then his look changed from worried to scared as he pressed two fingers against her wrist. "She's going into shock, hurry the fuck up."
Though the words made no sense to her, she tried to listen as another voice joined in. "You know her, Mike?"
Mike didn't look anywhere but right in her eyes. "Yeah, I do."
"Maybe you should get back, let me take over."
She could read the expression faster than any words he might have spoken. Like hell he was leaving. It made her feel better because even if he wasn't real, even if he wasn't who she wanted him to be, she wanted him to stay. "I'm fine, I don't know her that well. Just met her a couple of times."
It was probably a good thing that she had already determined nothing made sense anymore because those words would have destroyed her as completely as believing that Mike was really Mike.
Somehow she found the strength in her battered body to move her right arm, the arm she still had voluntary control over, reaching out towards him despite how damn heavy it was. "Stay," she forced out a raspy whisper that was so soft she couldn't hear it herself.
He was watching her closely enough that he caught the movement before she got far, his hand wrapping around hers and squeezing. "It's ok, you're ok." His eyes darted away for a moment before he leaned closer, close enough to be heard over the machinery running behind her. "I'm here, baby. I promise I won't leave you."
It sounded wrong. Something sounded off. Maybe it was this stranger calling her baby, but that didn't bother her for some reason. No, it was the latter statement that made her want to scream, but she really had no idea why. And it didn't really matter right then, not as long as he stayed with her.
The pressure from the seat that she'd barely noticed started to grow in intensity, enough that she started to fear it was going to crush her. Before she had the chance to panic, the pressure disappeared. At least, the pressure she'd grown used to. There was a different pressure, maybe hands, several of them, holding her in place. Then they weren't holding her in place, they were lifting her head, turning it away from Mike and the connection she needed more than she needed to breathe. She tried to fight them, but she didn't have the strength and everything hurt so damn much anyway, so instead she clung to the hand that was still holding hers, her nails digging into his skin to ensure that he wouldn't slip away from her.
More voices, louder now, perhaps because her head was turned and the ear that had been pressed into the airbag and steering wheel was lifted and open. She heard words she suspected meant something - or should have meant something - but they didn't. They were talking so quickly and she couldn't keep up anyway and she couldn't see Mike, just the deflated airbag smeared with streaks that she realized must have been her makeup, and she was almost embarrassed for how horrible she must have looked.
She couldn't see him anymore, but she could still feel his hand, his warmth, and she decided that would be enough for her.
And then that was gone too, after he'd promised and everything.
She didn't know what to make of the noises she heard. She still didn't quite understand what was going on. But she did know that she was alone, the feeling so familiar she hurt even more.
But then he was back, crouched next to her, looking up into her eyes. He gripped her left hand, the one she realized thankfully was still there, just completely numb. She wanted to ask where he'd gone, to say thank you for being there, to acknowledge his return, but there was something tight around her neck and constricting her throat and she would have screamed except she was afraid she wouldn't be able to breathe. Instinct made her try to fight against it, even though it was a pointless battle.
He seemed to notice her distress. "It's a collar, Liv, to keep your head still until we get you to the hospital." She didn't know what he was saying, but he seemed calm and she trusted him, so she gave up trying to talk. "We can't get a backboard in yet, they have to take the roof off. While they're working on that," he withdrew his hand and picked up something to show her, but she had no idea what it was. "I'm going to start a saline drip, ok? You're in shock and you need fluids and they'll put one in at the hospital anyway. You trust me, right?"
She was struggling to keep her eyes open, but through the heavy numbness in her left arm, she felt a sharp sting that jerked her back awake. Her eyes immediately found the source of the discomfort, something sticking out of her forearm, and although she knew she should care what was happening, all she knew was that Mike had absolutely no business doing what he was doing.
In retrospect, with how very much her head and eyes and ears and every single part of her hurt, she thought she would have noticed that the loudest of the noises had stopped but she hadn't.
She did, however, notice when it started again, the fresh insult to her senses enough to bring more tears to her eyes. She felt a squeeze on her hand and she forced herself to look, giving up the relative physical comfort of what darkness her eyelids provided for the emotional comfort offered by a pair of bright blue eyes locked on hers.
"I'm here, Liv, you're safe."
He was holding her hand in both of his and when he raised it to kiss the back of her fingers, she felt like she had completely lost her mind. Her eyes fell from his, instead focusing on his hands, on his fingers where they gripped hers, and, just like everything else, she knew that was wrong too.
She knew those hands, had touched them before, had seen them so many times they felt as familiar as her own, more even right then since her own body felt alien to her, but they were wrong. Missing something. A ring. There was supposed to be a ring there, a ring that she knew meant something important to him and something entirely different to her and it wasn't there and that was wrong and the fact that it wasn't there should have meant something to her but instead she only knew everything was different and wrong and she hated feeling so confused and she hated needing reassurance so desperately and being entirely unable to even request it
But he seemed to know anyway, one of his hands moving, his fingers playing across her cheek. "They're almost done, Liv. It's almost over. You're fine, baby, you're fine, just a few more minutes."
She wanted to argue, to tell him that her brain was so broken, her thoughts so scattered, that she would never be fine again, but it would be too much work to say it and she was so tired and it had suddenly become much brighter and colder and she wanted to sleep more than she wanted to argue with him and that seemed wrong too, but not so wrong that she could do anything about it.
Then there were more hands and shouting and something hard and cold pressing against her back and they were trying her down and she wanted to fight, but she knew she was so confused that maybe she needed to be held somewhere against her will. There was still a tight hold on her hand and she believed that meant he was still there even if she couldn't see him and so she didn't panic when the world suddenly flipped over and after a very long, very nauseating period of spinning, she realized that instead of leaning down over the steering column, she was face up.
It was harder to block out the lights once they moved her. The collar wouldn't allow her to turn her head. There was more shouting and a three count and then a sudden jarring.
All of the pain that had been diffused all over her body focused in that second. All of the pain she'd ever felt in her life reappeared right then, the most intense, sharpest pain she'd ever felt, her leg the source of a white hot fire that rolled her eyes back in her head.
She didn't even realize she was screaming until she ran out of breath. The voices converged around her, her ears desperate to pick out that one that made her feel better, although with how much she was hurting, she didn't know if it would help. She did know that he wasn't holding her hand anymore and she desperately missed that soothing contact as she twisted and shifted and tried to fight the straps and hands keeping her still.
"Compound fracture, right leg!" The announcement was followed by another flurry of activity, although mercifully no more jarring. At least he was still there. At least the shouting no longer hurt so much.
He reappeared in her line of sight. "Liv, I'm going to give you something for the pain, ok?"
She could see him holding a syringe and again the adrenaline surged through her body, the fear rising up enough to make the words sensible. "No, no morphine, no meds." Because she knew Mike wasn't who she wanted him to be and she didn't want to be drugged and tied down and helpless. Never again.
His eyes snapped back to hers, startled by the unexpected clarity. "Liv, there's no way to cut your leg free, we're going to have to move it and it's going to hurt more than it already does."
The idea of more pain was nauseating, but medication that would leave her too doped up to think at all was out of the question. She tried and failed to shake her head. "No morphine."
"Meds on board yet?" The voice dragged his eyes away from hers. "We need to move, Mike, she's bleeding. Clock's ticking."
"She's refusing."
"Knock her out, Mike!"
The eyes found hers again and had she not been so desperately confused by her entire existence at that point, she would have said he looked conflicted. "You need something for the pain, Liv."
"No." The panic was rising up, this time faster than she could even try to breathe through it. The binding straps she knew were supposed to keep her safe had changed. She needed to get up. She needed to move. She needed to run. Instead she was strapped down and confused and hurting and completely at someone else's mercy. She couldn't breathe anymore and when she closed her eyes, she was back there, waiting for the torture and death that was coming for her, knowing that a painful death was the only thing she had to look forward to, the only thing that would make the unimaginable pain stop.
She didn't have time to feel the sting in her arm. She just felt the rolling fog that started in her arm and spread upward at an alarming rate. She forced her eyes open to level an accusing stare at Mike, the bastard who'd betrayed her again, but he wasn't even looking at her anymore.
And even as she fought for consciousness, even as she saw him reach over and grab the collar of the other man and pull his fist back to land a punch and shout that she'd said no, she recognized the hurt, the deception, the abandonment from the only person she trusted and sadly, that devastating pain was the only thing that felt at all right about the whole experience.
It was with the comfort of that familiar betrayal fresh in her muddled mind that she finally gave in to the pull of sleep.
The din of a voice pulled her from sleep again. A familiar one, one that almost made her feel better, except Olivia knew she shouldn't have been sleeping around him and the idea that she'd been asleep with a member of her team in the room concerned her enough to wake up despite having definitely not gotten nearly enough rest. As expected, Fin was there, sitting in a plastic chair by the foot of her bed, having a conversation on his phone.
She took a moment to look around and get her bearings before he knew she was awake. She was in a hospital bed, monitors beeping away happily, an IV line taped to her left arm that almost made her smile for some reason. She had a headache and knew from the smallest movement that her neck hurt like hell, but it was a horrible throbbing in her right leg that got her attention. She had no idea what was wrong with it, but the fact that it was propped up on a cushion and wrapped into far too many layers for her liking made her suspect she wasn't going to like the answer.
Fin noticed that she was awake and disconnected his call, standing up to approach her while dropping his voice to a level that didn't seem quite so grating on her ears. "Hey, Liv, how ya feeling?"
Resolve came over her, as it usually did when anyone asked such a question, and she tried to sit up. "I'm good. When can I get out of here?"
"You had your car scrambled by a cement mixer. I think you're going to be here at least a couple days." Fin motioned vaguely at the array of machines next to her bed. His smile faded and his eyes turned soft. "To hear the guys on scene tell it, they're surprised you lived. Fire department had to cut your car into about a dozen pieces before they could get you out."
Olivia nodded, regretting the motion immediately. "Yeah, I remember something like that." She didn't, not really, but she knew better than to confess memory loss when she was trying to wheedle her way out of a hospital stay. She needed to get home to her son. "Noah."
"Amanda picked him up, took him to her place. She called when they were having breakfast, but you were out cold."
Knowing better than to nod again, she smiled, a tiny quirk of her lips that anyone who didn't know her so well would have missed. "You don't have to stay, Fin, I'm good. I'll get an Uber."
He chuckled and shook his head. "You have a concussion and had surgery, you're not going anywhere today."
With a groan, she started to understand exactly why her leg hurt so much. And while she still had no intention of giving in, she simply knew the argument was better had with her doctor than Fin. "We'll see about that." Trying, and failing again, to sit up, she sighed.
"Well, just in case, you get bored and need it," Fin pulled a cord from his pocket. "Your battery must be dead by now."
"I have no idea where my phone is." Of course, she didn't even know where she was at the moment.
"You had it on you, you texted me that you were on the way here."
" I don't remember doing that." Olivia shrugged, her mind turning to something she cared about a little more than her phone for the time being. "Was it my fault?" She was normally such a careful driver, but she hadn't been paying attention and she knew it, even though she couldn't remember why she hadn't been paying attention.
"Nah, apparently the other driver was high as a fucking kite." So at least there was that. It didn't help with the multitude of problems plaguing her, but it did make her feel a little better to have not brought more pain upon herself. "If you're good, I'm going to head out. Been a long night."
She smiled, honestly glad that he was leaving because although she'd never admit it, she was exhausted from the conversation. She let her eyes drift shut after the door closed behind him and tried to put her memories back together.
It took some time for things to start floating back to her - the moment before impact when she'd seen the truck and known there was nothing she could do, the paramedic who'd probably saved her life and had kept her from being hysterically scared, the panic she'd been in before the crash, the fact that she'd had a full on hallucination that Elliot was the paramedic who helped her. She had no intention of sharing that last bit, figuring it would reveal too much about her state of mind.
Not to mention it would undoubtedly delay her already overdue return home.
She looked around her room, trying to spot where her phone might have been placed. She tried to figure out when she would have had the foresight to let Fin know about her condition. The last thing she remembered was the damn paramedic injecting her with the morphine she'd refused. Making a mental note to find him and get him fired, she gave up on finding the phone without help. Her fingers played with the cord Fin had left her, as she struggled to concentrate. Her brain seemed to be shifting gears at random intervals and the effort of trying to focus on anything in particular gave her a headache.
It took several tries before she returned to the memories of right before the accident. Her heart started to race as she remembered the calls from Ayanna, from Kathleen. Her grip closed tight around the wire in her hand as the fear rose up. She was angry Fin had left her without finding her phone. She was angry the stupid paramedics had fogged up her brain and kept her from thinking clearly before Fin had left. She was angry at Ayanna for denying that Elliot was in trouble when he obviously had been. She was angry at herself for not realizing he needed help before a damn month had gone by. She was angry at Elliot for having hurt her so badly when he disappeared for ten years that she'd simply assumed he was doing it again. But it wasn't really anger. She was scared, terrified that something had happened to Elliot and she couldn't stand the thought that he was hurt.
So wrapped up in her own terror, she failed to notice the way the heart monitor started beeping wildly. Conveniently, the beeping summoned a nurse which got Olivia exactly what she wanted before she had even realized she wanted it.
The young woman barely had time to smile and assess that while upset, her patient was reasonably fine, when Liv grabbed the railing on the bed. "I need a phone. I don't know where mine is and it's an emergency. I'm an NYPD captain. Get me a phone."
The woman hesitated for a moment, reassessing the situation. "I'm sure someone else can handle the emergency while you recuperate."
If it had been within her power, Olivia would have climbed out of the bed and stormed out of the room. Instead, she used her hold on the side of the bed to pull herself to an upright position, a movement her battered body didn't enjoy in the least. The room spun around her as she flopped heavily back onto the bed. The spinning continued for a long moment while she pulled her thoughts back together.
"No more pain medication. I did not give consent to the paramedics and I do not give my consent now." She swallowed hard, fighting back the bile, telling herself that being a bitch wasn't going to help her in her current situation. "There are people who can handle the emergency," she lied through her teeth because she knew damn well she was the only person who was going to be able to fix whatever was going on with Elliot because all of Elliot's problems wound up in her lap. "But I have important information that they need. Please get me a phone."
"I'll see what I can do." The young woman moved around the bed, stepping up to the IV pump and pressing a series of buttons. "I'm going to stop it for now, but I have to let the doctor know you're refusing the medication." Then she reached over and dropped the plastic call bell next to Olivia's hand. "In case you change your mind, ok?"
She had learned her lesson about nodding and so tried her best to smile while she still felt so damn disoriented she couldn't swear which way was up. "Thanks," she croaked as she fought back the nausea that accompanied the room spinning.
"I'll be back in a little while when I have an update on the phone." The woman moved toward the door, but spun on her heel at the last minute. "I almost forgot, one of the paramedics who brought you in is waiting outside. He's been here all night. Do you mind if he comes in?" The younger woman smiled. "He's kind of cute."
She didn't want to talk to the asshole who'd shot her full of medicine that she didn't want. She didn't want to talk to the asshole who'd undoubtedly no longer resemble Elliot in the slightest either. She didn't want to make small talk while she heaped praise on the asshole who'd simply been doing his job and who clearly was expecting to receive said praise or he wouldn't have voluntarily sat in a hospital for hours.
But she could already hear Garland's voice in her ear, demanding she make nice with FDNY, and she realized she could get the name of the man whose career she had every intention of ending. With a deep sigh and a conviction that her head was already a little clearer since the nurse had stopped the damn painkillers, she smiled again. "Yeah, that's fine." The nurse disappeared through the door.
She took a deep breath and promised herself that she had to complete this one task before she could ring the bell and return to her quest for a phone.
The door opened again so quickly Olivia expected the nurse had forgotten something.
Instead, it was her new FDNY friend, the man in the wrong uniform with the wrong hair and the wrong beard and the right eyes who rushed through the door, hurried across the room, and offered his hand for her to shake. "Mike Mahoney, remember me?"