He woke slowly, unwillingly. To wake was to think, and to think was to remember, and to remember, ultimately, was to hurt. But it was time to wake up. The physical pain he felt throughout his body didn't bother him. That pain, he knew, would go away. Slowly, he forced his eyes open. "Have a good nap?"

He looked at his partner. There was no trace of anger or upset on her face. "Where'd you go?"

"Home. I showered and put on clean clothes."

"Eames, I…I'm sorry. I was…insensitive…I…"

She laid a hand on his lips. "I told you not to apologize to me. It's ok, Bobby. You were being, well, you. I was tired and cranky. I'm sorry I snapped at you. It's been a long two weeks."

"Are you sure that's all it was?"

"Don't beat a dead horse, Goren. It's fine." She leaned down and rummaged through a gym bag on the floor beside the bed. She pulled out a book and two magazines, handing them to him. "Here. I stopped and picked you up some reading."

The book was entitled Forensic Entymology, and the magazines were Scientific American and Logic Puzzles. She knew him well. "Thanks, Eames," he said with a smile.

She sat down and studied his face. She could see pain and deep fatigue. He leafed through the Scientific American, but she saw his eyes start to close. She reached over and slid the magazine off his lap. "Go to sleep, Goren."

For once, he didn't argue with her.

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The room was dark, except for a small light over his bed. She was sitting in the chair by his bed. Deakins had come by about an hour ago, relieved that Goren was no longer in the ICU. His team was intact and he'd be getting them back. That took a load off his mind. She was reading a book Deakins had brought for her. Her one guilty secret: a romance novel. The captain knew her well. After five years, he should. She dealt with death and blood every day. It was nice to escape into a fluffy, non-existent world once in awhile. Bobby still teased her for her choice of reading material. She certainly was not as cerebral as her big partner. She didn't try to be. The Mating Patterns of Primitive Tribes in Papua New Guinea just failed to grab her attention. Their ideas of romantic reading were very different.

She looked up when he groaned. Pain had woken him. She set her book aside and stood beside the bed. "Bobby? Do you need the nurse?"

He shook his head. "No. I'm ok."

She watched him shift in the bed, saw the pain flare like fire in his eyes, and she got the nurse anyway. She took his blood pressure, listened to his heart and lungs. "Deep breath." He tried, groaning at the pain that seared through his chest as it expanded. She gently patted his arm. "It's ok, detective. Your lungs were damaged by the bullets and one of your ribs was fractured. It'll be painful for awhile, but you need to breathe as deeply as you can, as often as you can. We need to make sure your lungs stay open."

She pulled a syringe out of the large pocket in the front of her shirt and injected the medicine into his IV. "This will help. Tomorrow we're going to try getting you out of bed. Being hurt is no longer an excuse for malingering." He raised his eyebrows at that pronouncement. She just smiled. "Don't worry. I'll give you pain medicine before we start. It won't be so bad. Once we know your gut has recovered from all the trauma your body has been subjected to and you're eating well, we'll switch you to oral medicine and remove the IV. That's the next major step to getting you out of here."

She slipped the syringe into a red container on the wall and said, "Your dinner was sent to the wrong floor, so it's going to be a little while before the kitchen gets another tray up here. You're still on a clear liquid diet, detective. No cheating." She looked at Eames. "Would you like me to order you a tray?"

"No thanks. I'll get something to eat later."

The nurse nodded and left the room. Eames turned to her partner, watching him closely. He leaned his head back against the pillows. "You ok, Bobby?"

"Fine. Just…dizzy."

She rested her hands on his arm, watching him closely. His eyes were closed, but she could tell from his breathing that he had not gone back to sleep. He opened one eye and looked at her. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I was just…watching you."

"Why?"

"Because you're alive, Bobby, and I can."

He took a deep breath, winced, then coughed and doubled over. The pain subsided slowly. She laid a hand on his back, leaned over to rest her head against his and just held him. She knew how much it hurt to cough, but she also knew it was something his lungs needed to do to clear the gunk that had built up over the last two weeks. Slowly, he eased himself upright. "Remind me not to do that again."

She laughed softly. "I know it hurts, but they told me it was important to cough to clear the lungs."

"Great." He leaned back slowly, then turned his eyes back toward her. "Talk to me, Eames."

"About what?"

He knew her too well. He'd have to ease her into the subject he wanted to discuss. He coughed again, much more shallowly. It didn't hurt as badly, but he still had to wait for the pain to subside before he could talk again. "Tell me what's going on with the case."

"According to Logan and Barek, not much. They found some casings, but they haven't led to anything." "

He shook his head. "I want to go back to the park and look around."

"There's not much to see. They didn't find many stray slugs and all the…blood," she almost choked on the word, knowing some of the blood has been his. "…will be gone."

"I just want to look around. How many of us were hit?"

"A dozen…more than half the number of cops who were there."

"Fatalities?"

"Two." She watched the pensive look on his face. "There was a second shooting in the park, Bobby, across from another museum. They're questioning museum staff, but so far, nothing. They have more casings off the museum roof, but again, it hasn't gone anywhere."

"Any fatalities from the second shooting?"

She nodded. "One. What do you think you're going to find, looking around a scene or two at least several weeks cold and no longer secure?"

He shrugged. "I'll know it when I see it."

That was true. He always went to a scene open-minded and let the scene speak to him. Some investigators twisted the scene to tell them what they wanted it to. Bobby never forced a scene. He looked, touched, smelled, sometimes even tasted, and he let the scene tell him its story. He listened to the bodies, the clues…and he heard what they had to say.

"So when are we going to talk about what happened in the park?" he ventured.

His question surprised her. "We just did."

"That was cop talk. I mean when are we going to discuss it? You have been sitting by my bed this whole time, haven't you?" She just nodded. "Why?"

"I…" She stopped. What was she going to tell him? That she couldn't function without him, that she needed him, that she had been terrified every time she left his bedside—terrified she would come back and hear those dreaded words 'I'm sorry.' "Never mind," she decided. "Unless you want me to leave…"

"I never said that. I'm glad you're here." Why had he told her that? Did he want her to know how much he needed her? It must be the drugs…

But she didn't reply. She had simply accepted what he'd said, though another lump had formed in her throat. Why did she jump to the verge of tears so readily? She looked down at her hands, careful to keep her face averted from those probing eyes, eyes she knew were trained on her at that moment, carefully watching, cataloguing, interpreting everything she did. "What do you remember, Bobby?" she asked when she was sure she could keep her voice strong and steady. She didn't want to get into a discussion of why her voice was filled with so much emotion she couldn't keep it stable.

He wondered why she was retreating from him. But his head was still spinning, and he didn't really feel like getting into it. Not when he was feeling so groggy. What did he remember? He shuddered at that. "I remember hearing the shots."

Yes. She remembered the shots, too. She remembered looking around to see where he was as she started for cover, and she didn't see him anywhere, and she didn't get far. She remembered the people around her dashing about in near panic. Her panic was not in being shot at, though it should have been. Her panic was in not being able to find her partner. She remembered feeling that horrible burning pain explode into her chest, starting to fall…she'd heard his voice…

"Eames?"

Drawn from her recollection, she looked at him, "What? Oh, sorry. What did you say?"

"What are you thinking about?"

"Just…about you."

He looked puzzled. "What about me?"

"What you…did…" She trailed off, careful to keep her eyes averted. When he remained silent, she hazarded a look at him. He was watching her, silently, patiently. She wasn't sure she was ready for this. That park was still a dark place in her mind, visited only in her nightmares… "What else do you remember?"

"Eames…"

"No," she shook her head. "I'm not ready yet."

"Alex…"

She finally met his eyes, and she knew he could read the turmoil that was in her face. She had never been able to shut herself off from her partner, though she had tried. "You go first, Bobby. Ok?"

It was a dark place for both of them. "Only if you promise to take your turn when I'm done."

"Sure."

"Don't blow me off, Eames."

Damn him, he knew her too well. "We'll see, ok? I don't know if I'm ready yet."

"The longer you put it off, the worse it's going to be."

"This isn't about me."

"The hell it's not." Goren snorted in frustration. He knew she was having a hard time with this. But she was being stubborn, and he knew how stubborn she could be. He took a deep breath, wincing at the fire that flared in his chest. He adjusted his position carefully, drew a sharp breath at the pain that flared everywhere. And then he got angry. It was one thing for someone to target cops, to have taken him out, but this went beyond him. This affected his partner, and it caused her pain. That was inexcusable.

She saw his face darken, his eyes grow stormy. That was never a good look. "Bobby?"

He looked at her, and his face softened. She saw the pain flare in his eyes as he took another deep breath. "Ok, Alex. What do I remember?" He let his mind wander back in time, allowing the pain in his healing body to keep him grounded in the present. He remembered wandering about the scene right after they arrived, looking for something that just wasn't there. He let himself relax so his mind could seek the clues everyone thought were there. It was this startling absence of clues that began to trouble him; it was the lack of evidence that threw up the first red flags. Pulling on his latex gloves, he had turned, heading back to the body to examine it and seeking his partner to express his concern when the gunfire had erupted. His first thought had not been for his own safety. It never was. His first thought had been for his partner. He had been approaching the body from behind her when the shooting began. People scattered…and he saw her jerk, feeling his heart sink, knowing she'd been hit. He'd yelled her name…ran toward her. He caught her as she fell…instinctively knowing which direction the bullet had come from by the way her body had jerked. He'd twisted his body as they both fell toward the pavement, shielding her from the continued rain of bullets. His entire body had exploded in pain and he remembered nothing more. By the time they had hit the pavement, he'd lost consciousness. He described what his mind saw carefully, watching her to see her reaction.

She tried to keep the images out of her mind, images of her powerhouse of a partner on the ground, his lifeblood seeping from his body, breathing getting increasingly more difficult as air slowly seeped into his chest through the bullet holes, as well as out of his injured lung. She shook her head. Again, Goren watched her with those eyes…eyes that saw everything, feeding images to a brilliant mind that was able to interpret a look, a gesture, a movement, with flawless accuracy. "Ok, Eames, it's your turn now. Tell me what happened. What do you remember?"

She studied her partner, seeing him in a new light. They dealt with death and perversion all day, every day. He was always there if she needed him, to talk to, to help her cope. Intuitively, she knew that. They were partners. It was part of their relationship to support and protect each other. But this…this was somehow different. This was more…personal.

"Eames?" She pulled herself from her thoughts. "Contrary to popular opinion, I can't read minds. Talk to me."

"Damn it, Goren, you scared the hell out of me! It was bad enough getting shot, but hearing that you'd been shot protecting me, and you'd been badly hurt…"

She turned away from him. He was too damn good at reading faces, and she did not want him to see what was on her face right then…the turmoil…the fear…the utter devastation at the thought he might die and leave her…

"Eames," he said softly, shifting in the bed to relieve his increasing pain. "I…I'm sorry that you have been upset by this. But I'm not sorry for what I did."

"Bobby," she said quietly. "When my husband was killed, I never thought I would ever go through anything so…gut-wrenching…so…" She closed her eyes. "It was a very dark time for me. The darkest in my life, until now. I was terrified those doctors were going to come to me and tell me that they were sorry…that they had done all they could…just like they did seven years ago. I would never have survived that. Not again."

Not again? What could she mean by that? He didn't pursue that for the moment, though. He changed positions again, taking a deep breath but getting no relief. Ignoring his discomfort, he pressed her for what else was troubling her. "But there's more. What else is bothering you?"

What else was bothering her? She had tried to spare him from those thoughts that troubled her most, but if he was going to insist... "This was my fault."

He again looked puzzled. "You didn't shoot anybody."

"No, Bobby. Not the shooting. You getting shot. You got shot because I did. What the hell kind of partnership is that? Partners are supposed to cover each other, protect each other, watch each other's backs. You're not supposed to get your partner shot." She cut off the protest she knew was coming. "I know, I know. It's not rational. But I'm human. I'm not always rational. I can't intellectualize how I feel like you can, Bobby. This is how I feel, and that's all there is to it. I broke the cardinal rule of partnership. I let you down."

They were interrupted by an orderly entering the room with a tray. He set it down on the tray table that sat at the foot of the bed. He looked at the two cops, grinned and left the room. It was enough of a distraction to break the tension that had been building. The darkness that seemed to have descended on the room lifted. Alex walked to the dinner tray, glad for a diversion, a reason not to look at her partner.

He leaned back on the pillows, still trying to ignore the pain it took to breathe. He tried changing positions again, but that was the wrong thing to do. The pain intensified, and the room faded away to darkness.

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The light seemed far away at first, but it came closer quickly, accompanied by voices. He opened his eyes with difficulty, groaned as pain bit into his consciousness. The voices stopped. He heard movement, footsteps approaching his bed. His vision cleared and he saw his partner, worried brown eyes behind the blond hair that always fell into her face…

Before he could say a word, Eames laid her hands on his arm. "Bobby…I am so sorry."

Sorry? "Sorry for what?"

"For upsetting you too soon."

He waved her off. "You didn't."

Eames took a moment to meet her partner's eyes. She wished she had his ability to read faces because she couldn't read his. She had panicked when she looked up from the tray and he was unconscious, breathing harder than she thought he should. The nurse had come right in, called the doctor. His left lung had partially collapsed again, but they said it was ok, that it had recovered spontaneously. They heard good air movement, saw no evidence of free air in his chest. They were waiting now for x-ray to send up its portable machine and a tech. She heard the doctor tell the two nurses in the room to hold off on pain medicine for now. Wait until he woke and see how he was doing. He changed the order, changed the medicine they could give him for pain…something about how the medicine depressed his breathing...contributing to the collapse of his lung. He needed to take more deep breaths, he told her. 'Encourage him to breathe deeply as much as he can. It will hurt, but he needs to do it. And coughing is good for those lungs, too. The risks will decrease once we get him up and about.'

Bobby readjusted himself in the bed, fighting down the pain that flared everywhere when he moved.

The nurse came into the room. She didn't offer him a choice, injecting the contents of the syringe she held in her hand into his IV. "This is different than what we were giving you before. It's a little stronger, but not as prone to causing respiratory depression. You'll probably go to sleep, but sleep is good."

She left the room, and Eames looked at her partner. "Feeling better?"

He didn't answer right away, waiting as the pain began to recede. He nodded as a deep fatigue settled over him.

She watched his eyes close. The freight train had hit a brick wall, and he slept. Without fear of waking him, she laid her hand on his cheek. She wasn't quite ready to go home yet, so she picked up her book and sat down to read, looking over the book from time to time just to make sure he was still ok. She was slowly letting go of her fear that he was going to die. He was getting stronger, and the fact that they'd transferred him from the ICU went a long way toward settling her anxiety. He'd scared the hell out of her earlier, but the doctors had not been too worried. She could tell he was getting better, but every time she closed her eyes, she saw the park, heard the shots and imagined the still form of her partner lying in the middle of a pool of his own blood. He was right…she had to deal with this, and the sooner she did, the better off she would be.