It takes him time to catch his breath. Tens of seconds, maybe thirty. Adrenaline surges through him, making his nerves tingle uncomfortably. It's been a while since he felt this way. Jenna, he thinks grimly.
Standing at the threshold in the short hallway outside the bathroom, still holding Olivia in a bearhug from behind, he can't decide what to do next.
There's blood streaming down her face, and he needs to tend to that. But is it the most urgent thing?
Can he release her now? Should he?
She's no longer fighting him; she isn't telling him to let her go. He pauses to think: Is that good or bad?
It's like all of her muscles have gone slack at once. Her head is tucked. She's standing on her own – so there's some sign of life – but that's about it. She isn't saying a word.
After all this, she's still only wearing a bathtowel, tied at her cleavage. The tie has somehow survived the tussle in the bathroom, but it's loosened, and a single jostle away from slipping right off. He's not sure she's even aware of it.
She's the most alert person he's ever met. Sleep deprived, sick with flu, drunk, poisoned or injured, she's always been back on her feet within the hour. She's been held hostage, had guns pointed at her head and never missed a step. But how she's behaving today? He's never seen her like this. Ever. It's scaring the shit out of him.
"Liv?" he whispers into the back of her head. "Where's the robe you were wearing last night?"
The only bit of her face he can see at this angle is the tip of an eyelash. Her eyes are open and she's breathing, but this is about all he can say for sure.
He knows he should loosen his grip on her waist. He doesn't know what he's doing to her. Physically, psychologically. She put up an impressive fight, but in defeat, she's completely docile. Not a word he would usually associate with her.
Did I hurt you?
The question plagues him as he pulls her a few steps back and maneuvers them both in front of the full- length mirror, taking in the full sight.
Chin tucked, she continues to look at the floor, refusing to acknowledge her reflection, or his.
"Can you say something?"
She offers back the barest of whimpers. Does it qualify as a response? Is she lucid?
"Did I hurt you?"
He peers at the cut on her face through the mirror, trying to assess the damage. He looks around for a towel or piece of Kleenex, but everything's in the bathroom. Pulling her a few more feet towards the desk phone, he releases a hand from the death grip he's got her in and dials the front desk. She stands there with him, like a hostage with Stockholm Syndrome, not trying to wriggle away.
The only thing she does is shiver.
"Yes, would it be possible to have a few bandaids and some antiseptic sent up to room 4018 please?"
With that done, he recaptures her – gently – and guides her towards the bed. But just as they near the edge, she abruptly pushes away from him and goes to the corner of the room, slinks to the floor by the curtain. Finally succumbing to the laws of physics, the bathtowel unties completely as she lands, crumpling around the tops of her breasts and exposing a sliver of her left nipple.
Her face remains impassive. Vegetative.
Say something, Liv! Punch me in the face!
He plops down to the floor next to her, grabs at the towel to retie it, his knuckles brushing against her breasts.
But not before something else catches his eye: the burn on her left breast, the one that's a perfect, chilling, impression of her housekey, is bleeding. How did that happen? When did it happen? Is it infected? He didn't catch a good enough look to be sure, but he thinks he spotted some green.
Did she claw at it? Did she do it on purpose?
He bites his lip, the dawning setting in at just how little care she's been given since her rescue nearly two weeks ago. Everyone's been nominally worried, but nobody's been paying real attention.
He thinks again about the brutality she endured: flaming objects pressed against intimate parts; repeated blows to the head; brought to the brink of a violent, gruesome death. All this, and nobody verified she'd received anything more than the most rote of medical exams.
She was humiliated for days, and then raped so violently that she blocked out the memory of it, and nobody verified that she'd sought counseling.
She gave a statement to the police that glossed over key details, culminating in an escape that was barely plausible, and nobody pushed back on it. In a squad full of supposed experts in recognizing trauma-induced memory-repression.
She cut her own hair in a bathroom at night. Everybody noticed, and nobody thought to ask her why.
Because it was easier to pretend that showing respect meant avoiding confrontation, when it was so obvious that she was desperate for it. Because it was so much easier to pretend that it was just a cosmetic impulse. Like a new shade of nail polish.
Did Brian even ask her about it?
Elliot feels familiar anger swell in his throat as he thinks about the missed opportunity, but he catches himself. Brian doesn't know Olivia as well as he does. Brian doesn't have three daughters and an ex-wife, none of whom would be caught dead cutting her own hair.
Elliot's known Olivia for fifteen years. In that time she's had more cuts and styles than he's had shirts, and each was stylish, sophisticated and most certainly professionally done.
Maybe Brian believed her when she fed him whatever bullshit she did about why she did it. Brian was never a very good detective.
But he, Elliot, was. He was a sex crimes detective. And he's the one who's spent the last forty-eight hours with her. Not asking about her impromptu haircut. Never mind that he's known for days that Lewis raped her.
So how did he miss this?
He knows how. For the same reason Cragen did.
Because it was so much more expedient to believe her when she insisted that she was fine. It fit the narrative of the tough, brave female cop facing down her attacker. Olivia has always taken pride in her identity as a stereotype-buster, as a warrior, as a survivor. And so when the four days were over, and she emerged alive and ambulatory and seemingly functional, it was easy – too easy – for everyone in her life to indulge the narrative, to gloss over the subtle signals that more had happened than she was letting on; to only see what she wanted them to see: That, despite the incredibly grim odds, despite Lewis' documented history, his physical advantages, his limitless appetite for cruelty, despite having two guns, that she'd still managed to outwit him, to overpower him. No other woman had ever done it, but she had.
Except she hadn't. Of course she hadn't. Because she couldn't. Nobody could.
"I think your robe's still in the bathroom," he says finally. "I'm going to go get it, okay?"
He stands, taking her in for a second, hesitates. He darts into the bathroom, grabs the robe off the door hook and a wad of Kleenex. The floor is dotted with blood, which for some reason he takes great pains not to step in. He glances at the 12-pack of disposable razors on the counter that he bought last night. He crouches, picks up the one from the floor. He grabs the wad of them and brings them back into the room, looking for a discrete place to put them. The minute he feels comfortable leaving the room, he'll toss them down the garbage shoot. It won't kill him to grow a little beard.
A sharp rap at the door as he's heading back to where she's still huddled in the corner startles him, almost as much as it does Olivia. She visibly jumps, but does nothing to try to cover herself.
"It's just the guy delivering bandaids," he tells her, frowning. "I'll get rid of him in two seconds."
He opens the door just wide enough to take possession of the complimentary travel-sized first aid kit, tightly packed in a little baggie, thanks the guy, hands him a five.
When he returns, she has slipped onto her side on the carpet, curled up in the fetal position, facing the wall like a punished child.
He retakes his seat on the floor next to her, drapes the robe around her from behind. When she makes no effort whatsoever to help, he tries to coax her. "Put the robe on, okay? It's chilly in here."
But she's not listening, or not hearing.
He sighs, realizing he will have to do this himself. He grabs her by the armpits and hoists her back into a sitting position. She doesn't resist, which itself is strange, given she'd just finished lying down a minute ago. He pulls the towel off of her, and, trying to look away, pushes her arms one by one through the armholes. He feels like he's dressing a toddler. He closes the robe around her, tying it around her waist. Her head stays tucked the whole time, looking at the floor. He thinks, though, that this is not the same look of vacancy he's seen from her all day. That had a shellshocked quality to it. This is something different. Is it despondency?
Or is it shame?
He pulls out a sterile gauze, dips it in antiseptic and dabs at her face, cleaning up the cut. "I'll put a bandaid on it for now, okay, but it's not too serious, so up to you if you want to go out like that."
He jumps up and goes to the bed, where he rummages through her bag of prescriptions, finding the antibiotic ointment. Returning to her spot in the corner, he takes her hand and squeezes the ointment onto her index finger. "Your burn looks infected, Liv. Put this on it." He guides her finger to her breast, hoping something will kick in, and she'll save him from having to re-expose her.
When it becomes clear that she isn't going to do it, he opens the flap of her robe and gently takes her wrist. Trying to look away, he grasps hold of her index finger like a highlighter, slides it over the infected area as quickly as he can, then hastily grabs another bandaid and, resigned that he's going to have to look to see what he's doing, slaps the bandaid on her breast and covers her up. There, he tells himself. It had to be done.
He watches her face for any sign of acknowledgment, of emotion. "Why don't you come sit on the bed, okay?"
He waits a beat, then takes her again by armpits and starts to pull her to her feet. She lets him lead her as if in a trance.
"Liv, can you say something? Please?"
"I don't … want to." It's practically a whisper.
"Okay then." And for the first time in nearly thirty minutes, she does something seemingly of her own volition: she climbs onto the bed and perches herself upright against the headboard, hugging her knees to her chest. She takes her left wrist in her hand, clutches it.
He climbs up and plunks down next to her, eyeing her worriedly. "Does your wrist hurt?"
Bolts of fear jab at him as he considers that he may have done this to her; that her wrist, which was encased in a brace not twenty-four hours ago, has not fully healed. Would she tell him if it hasn't?
Is it possible she flat-out lied that her wrist had healed at all, last night when she emerged from her exam?
He bites his bottom lip, reviewing his errors, the missed signals, the things he should have done.
She's let him touch her. For days, he's hugged her, held her; just two hours ago, she kissed him. She was tortured and stripped naked and raped, twice, but she hasn't once reacted to being touched. She's let him sleep in her bed two nights in a row.
But when he put his hand in her hair, she flinched violently. That's what triggered her?
And now this. She wasn't using the razor to slit her wrists. She was using it to shave her head.
Right after he told her she was beautiful.
Or does he have it all wrong? Is he stringing the clues together correctly? Is he missing any?
Yes:
He can't dismiss how much pain she's in. From fractured ribs, to flaming, blistering skin to unbearable headaches, she's been in terrible physical pain, probably for days. Unable to take any painkillers, too proud to admit it, could it all have come to a head today?
Or is it none of the above? Was this neurological?
His phone buzzes. He freezes, craning his neck to see who it is.
Dammit. Cragen.
"Don."
Olivia flinches at the sound of the name.
"Did she get a new phone?" demands Cragen, by way of greeting.
He lays a hand on her thigh. It's okay. I won't let him bother you. He hesitates. "Yeah, earlier today."
"Well, it's going straight to voicemail. Is she there? Can I speak to her?"
He glances at her. He thinks she's finally alert, listening, processing. "It's, uh, not a great time right now. Can I call you back?"
Cragen sighs dramatically. "No offense to your speaking voice, Elliot, but what I really want is for her to call me back." He pauses, as if sensing the tension in the room. "Everything … uh… okay there?"
Olivia's knees are pulled up to her chest, her right wrist still clutching her left around them. He reaches over and rubs her back. "Let me call you back in a little bit."
He ends the call before Cragen has a chance to protest.
"That was Cragen."
She hangs her head, shakes it.
Desperate to rouse her, he leans in, gently taps his cheek against hers. "Liv, I know you're in … a lot of pain. I know I can't begin to imagine it. But I need you to talk to me. I need you to just … tell me what you're thinking. What you're feeling."
Silence.
Again, he rubs her back, inches himself closer to her. "You know I'll do anything for you, right? But I need to understand what's happening here."
More silence. But there's pain in her eyes; she is reacting, feeling, hurting. So deeply, he thinks, that she doesn't know how to respond.
"I need to at least understand if … " He pauses, trying to figure out how to frame it. "… how much of the pain you're feeling is … physical."
He continues. "Because if it is, or if you won't … communicate that it isn't, then … I'm going to take you back to the hospital."
It's like he's talking to an empty room.
He continues. "You had a lot of injuries. You had a brain injury, you were even slurring a few of your words. Maybe it was just the heat, but I need to know if this … behavior isn't partly neurological. Because if it is, that's serious. You understand that, don't you? If you won't give me any information, I have to assume the worst, I can't risk your life – "
"Please, don't."
"Liv?"
"I don't want to go back to the hospital." The words come out in a whispered rasp.
I don't want to. Not, I won't.
He doesn't know what to make of the childlike phrasing. The Olivia he knows would never let anyone tell her what to do.
"Then you have to be straight with me. Tell me why you did this."
She shakes her head, then maneuvers to lie down, falling sideways onto the pillow, burying her face in it. "I can't."
"Was it because I touched your hair this morning?"
"Please … drop it, Elliot. I can't talk about it."
He's never heard her sound so vulnerable.
But at least she's talking to him. There's immense pain in her voice, but pain is a sign of life.
He scoots closer to her, puts his hand back on her shoulder. It seems important, somehow, to maintain physical contact. "The night Amaro and I came to see you. Wednesday. Why did you cut your hair?"
"Elliot, I want to sleep."
No, no. He can't lose her now. "But you started to tell me the other day, when we were at the river. You were about to tell me, but your phone rang."
"I'm so tired, Elliot."
She makes to get under the covers, but he stops her. "Wait, please."
"I don't want to talk about it. It's not the concussion."
He lies down behind her, wanting desperately to pull her into his arms, to feel her heart beat. But he holds back, afraid to spook her.
He clears his throat, not sure how to tell her. "Look, I know he did things to you that maybe … are too hard … to talk about. But this incident just now … I'm sorry, Liv, but I have to watch you now. I can't leave you by yourself. Do you understand that?"
"I'm not your responsibility," she rasps.
It's what she doesn't say that speaks volumes: It was a lapse, an impulse, a one-time thing. I won't do it again.
Tears well up in his eyes, and he swells with unspent emotion. "I know that," he chokes out. "But don't you see that I love you? And you're so traumatized. You need and deserve support from the people who love you."
She starts to cry softly, a pool of tears gathering on the cotton fabric of the pillowcase. "I can take care of myself."
He grasps her waist, rocks it gently. "I don't think you can right now."
She turns onto her back, furrows her brows in betrayal. Her eyes are flooded. "Please don't say that, Elliot."
Propping up on one elbow, he looks down at her. He rubs her forearm. "It's not a character flaw. What this guy did to you was sick. But you fought like hell with everything that you had, and you survived. The least you deserve, now, is for someone to be here with you to help you recover. Emotionally and physically. It's not right for you to have to carry that burden alone."
She shakes her head, turns back onto her side, away from him. "Please, I'm asking you to drop it. I just need to sleep. I feel like I haven't slept in days."
He glances at his watch. It's only six o'clock. He sighs. "Okay." He pauses. "But can you do one thing for me – no, for yourself – before you close your eyes?"
"What?"
He reaches to the nightstand, grabs the prescription bottle of anti-virals. "Conjure the strength, which I know you have, to swallow one of these."
"Elliot, I can't."
He's determined not to let her off the hook. "Liv, I know that you can. You know you can. You have to."
"It's probably too late for them to have an effect anyway, and none of the other victims contracted any STDs – "
"I know, but that's not the point. For those four days, he had that power over you, but he doesn't anymore. So don't keep giving it to him."
"I wish it were that simple."
He pulls a single pill out of the bottle, holds it up to her. "Make yourself do this one thing that you don't want to do. I'll be right here next to you. Take your power back, Liv."
She maneuvers to sit up in the bed. She takes the pill from him, studies it in the light. "It's a big one."
"Yeah," he agrees. "But if you can get this down, think how easy a Tylenol'll be."
She hesitates, still staring at the oversized tablet (it is pretty enormous, he has to admit), daunted.
He gestures next to her. "There's water on the night stand. Take it in your other hand."
She does as she's told, sits with one item in each hand, paralyzed.
"I don't want to do this." The naked honesty in the simple sentence breaks his heart.
He scoots closer to her on the bed, wraps an arm around her. "I know," he says. "But just remember, it's your hand putting the pill in your mouth, not his. You're controlling the action. He's not forcing you."
"I know," she whimpers, close to tears. "I know how ridiculous this looks. I'm a grown woman and I'm scared to swallow a fucking pill."
He shakes his head. "That's not – no. It's not ridiculous at all. It's natural to develop an aversion to anything that's associated with trauma. I got stung by a bee when I was ten, and to this day you can't pay me to step into a bed of flowers. But Liv, if you can overcome this phobia, if you can do this one thing right now, it'll be a first step to taking back control of your life."
She puts the pill in her mouth, hesitates again as she brings the water up to her mouth.
He watches her in profile. "You know, sometimes the dread is worse than the deed itself."
"Yeah," she agrees, but remains motionless.
"I'm right here," he reassures. "Close your eyes, and one-two-three, just do it."
He waits. Twenty seconds pass, but he lets her take her time. He knows she's going to do it. He knows she's decided to. Even after two years, he knows her that well.
And then she does. And it's done.
"Thank you," she murmurs.
"For what?"
"For making me do that."
"You did it yourself."
"You know what I mean."
He does. Shifting in the bed, he's glad when her phone dings, bringing an end to the awkward moment.
Her phone is closer to him than it is to her, and so he picks it up when it becomes clear she has no intention of even trying. "Your voicemail box is full."
She takes the phone from him, scrolls through, starts deleting the ones from unknown numbers. "Probably mostly reporters," she murmurs. She stops at the first familiar name: a call from Brian, dated May 22.
"Why did I keep this?" she mumbles to herself. She presses play.
"Hey Liv, it's me. Uh, look, I know we were talking about getting together tomorrow, but these guys are jerking me around over here and I gotta pull a double …"
Her face goes white as the message goes on.
All at once, Elliot realizes what he's just listened to. "You were supposed to get together, and he cancelled."
She bursts into tears. "Listening to that message, it destroyed me. I felt this sense of despair take over. It was the worst feeling – "
"Wait a minute," he interrupts. "You've heard this message already?"
She nods. "It was the morning of the second day, I think. He'd been burning and beating me all night, making me drink vodka hour after hour, I kept going in and out of consciousness, but I didn't let it get me down, because I knew I had plans with Brian and that there'd be this …. endpoint. And I was a bit worried that he'd be caught by surprise and wouldn't have time to draw his gun, but honestly, El, I was desperate for anyone to come, for anything to change the situation, that I built it up in my mind that he would save the day."
"Go on."
"Well, the second time I woke up – or maybe it was the third, I'm honestly not sure how many times I passed out, or for how long, I'd lost track of what time it was, or what day it was – I got confused, and I got it in my head that Brian must be due soon, that at any moment he'd walk through the front door and this would all be over. I was really invested in the idea, because the last round of … um … that was when he'd escalated from the cigarettes to the … um … metal objects in the pan. My skin still felt like it was on fire and I didn't think I could take anymore. I woke up that second time and everything was throbbing and I was so dizzy and I just couldn't … face … that there may be more, that at any minute he could do it again. But as hard as that was, I also kept thinking that every moment he was busy burning me was a moment he wasn't raping me. I knew that that was coming next, that there'd come a point when he finally got bored of torturing me this way and decided to graduate to … that. And those were the moments when I was paralyzed with terror. Anyway, that second time he tore the tape off my mouth and I decided to try to reason with him, even though I knew it would probably go nowhere, just to buy myself a little time. And then my phone rang and I started telling him that that was my boyfriend and that he was on his way and that he had a key and that it was in Lewis' best interest to get the hell out before he got caught. And I knew Lewis would think I was bluffing – even though I wasn't – but that was fine, because I knew that once Brian came, it would be over."
"But he never came."
"Worse. Lewis listened to the voicemail, and then he made me listen to it."
"And you knew he wasn't coming."
"Yeah. And Lewis knew I knew, and he saw on my face that I was shattered."
He takes in the information, processing it, an intense sadness sweeping over him. "I can't imagine how awful it must have been to hear that message in that moment. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry that no one helped you. That I didn't help you."
"You didn't know."
"I should have."
She's silent, tears still streaking down her face.
"I should have returned your calls," he says. "I shouldn't have ghosted – "
"Elliot. You didn't know. And the minute you did, you came."
"I came too late."
She waits a beat to answer. "Maybe you did," she acknowledges. She lays a palm over his thigh, cupping it. "But nobody's ever done so much for me as you have in these last two weeks. And frankly it's the people who haven't come – or even bothered to call – that I've really noticed."
"Like who?" he asks curiously.
"Alex. George. Casey." She pauses, looks at him sadly. "Simon."
"I'm sorry."
She shrugs. "All those cards I received, most of those people I hardly knew, barely remember, but they all reached out. The people who were in my life for a hot minute – Greylek, Monique, your old pal Jo – they all called afterwards to wish me well. Hell, even Dana Lewis managed to send a note from prison. But the people I thought were my friends, my own … family …" She leaves the sentence dangling.
He leans in, wraps his arms fully around her and pulls her into him sideways. He plants his lips into her temple. "To hell with them," he whispers.
She clutches his forearm as he kisses her, closing her eyes. "Yeah." A single tear drops from her cheek, landing on his pulse point.
It takes him an extra beat to fully register everything she said. "Dana Lewis is in prison?"
"Yeah." She laughs softly. "A lot's happened in the last two years."
"Clearly."
She starts to slouch deeper into the bed, making to lie down. "I really need to sleep."
"Okay."
As her head finally hits the pillow, and just before she lets go of his forearm, she whispers, "I'm so grateful for you, Elliot. I wouldn't survive without you."