AN: Sorry again for the delay, guys! I hope this was worth the wait! You'll finally find some of the answers you were asking me for.
Thank you for reading!
It's known for everybody that the worst thing that can ever be said out loud when a shift, in any job, is coming to an end is that "it was a quiet one". That right there is the moment when the luck flies out the nearest window. And that is also what happened to Station 19, next shift following Mrs. Herrera's visit, after a deafening scream came out of nowhere while part of the team was having coffee.
"Warren!!!!" Vic called from the locker room. "It's Andy, come over here! Now!" They all jumped from their seats and ran at the sound of their friend's name, to find her unconscious and lying on the floor with Hughes already checking her vitals. "She's breathing, but her pulse is weak."
"What happened?" Travis asked, arriving a few seconds behind the rest, because he had gone to pick up the aid bag. "I don't know, I found her like this when I came out of the shower." She answered quickly, still wearing only a towel around her, eyes not leaving Andy's unresponsive body. "Ok, give me some room, you go change." Montgomery told her, calmly. "I got her." He insisted, nodding reassuringly, when she responded him with a stern look and without moving an inch from Herrera's side. She obliged, and started to walk towards her bunk, but she stopped halfway and turned on her heels. "I think someone has to call the Chief."
"I'll do it." Miller offered, earning a short but deliberated glare from Ben, who was the only one besides him aware of the difficulty of that task. Thankfully for him, no one was craving to make that call, so nobody disagreed.
"Warren" Travis called to draw the former surgeon's attention, pointing at Herrera's abdomen, which he had just begun to uncover to patch her to the monitor and had revealed an extensive purple hematoma. "She's bleeding internally, how's that possible?" Ben wondered, at the same time that Gibson rose his hands to his head. "Part of the ceiling of the burning restaurant fell on her. But..she..she said she was fine. It wasn't too heavy and she stood up by herself a-and..." He explained under the disbelief looks of most of his team, as Ben and Travis kept working on Andy. "It was her first day back fighting fires. We only got a big call where she got hurt and you didn't think of telling me?" Bishop ranted, worriedly and visibly mad, their friends' expressions matching her own. "She said she was fine!" Jack defended himself. "And she gave me the don't-babysit-me look when I suggested her to get checked."
"Well, she wasn't fine." Maya stated, but they quickly let it pass because the whole team knew way to well how hard was to convince the lieutenant to take care of herself. To a greater or lesser extent, all of them had been there at some point. "Ok, we need to take her to the hospital. The Chief will have to meet us there." Montgomery announced, concerned, not leaving any more room to reply.
In the meantime, Miller didn't get any answers from Sullivan, so he sent him a short message.
"Andy got hurt. Call me back!"
A while later, they were all in the hospital occupying half of the waiting room. Since the captain had to checked in with the B-shift, she was the last one to join them, choosing a seat besides Vic, who instinctively took her hand as soon as the first had accommodated herself. "I was mean to her the other day, I told her she was boring. I just wanted to lighten the mood, you know? She's suffering, I know that's why she's all quiet lately… I just…" Hughes confessed, apologetically. "She knows you love her." Maya told her, squeezing her friend's hand. "Where's the chief?" Bishop asked out of the blue, once she noticed his most surely involuntary absent. "I couldn't talk to him, he didn't answer the phone. I left him a message…" Dean was still talking, when Ben srang up out of the chair. "This is stupid, I'm going to get him."
After a couple of hours investigating, Warren finally got to the address where Robert Sullivan was supposed to be. He double checked the numbers, left his car and approached the front door. It was a detached house with a nice little front yard on the outskirts of the city, that he didn't recognise as the property of anyone he knew. The curiosity was killing him. What was his Battalion Chief doing there? And what was more important, why was he there? He snooped around without any success, but eventually decided to ring the bell and when he saw who opened the door, he stopped dead.
"Hello?" The woman greeted him. "Hi! You might not remember me, but I'm Ben Warren, I used to work with your brother…"
"Sure! The surgeon, right?" Jennifer Ripley recalled. "Yeah, that's me." Ben confirmed, still shocked. "What can I do for you?" She offered, politely, following a couple of seconds of awkward silence. "I was looking for Chief Sullivan."
"He's not...how did you.." She hesitated. "Please, it's urgent. We've tried to contact him but he… His wife got hurt. He should know." The firefighter begged her. "Ok" Jennifer agreed, knowing that she couldn't keep Robert in the dark about something like that. "Sully!" She called from the bottom of the stairs.
"Warren? What are you doing here? How...how did you find me?" A bearded Sullivan wondered, when he arrived to the door. "Sir, hi! I don't have time to explain, we need to go to the hospital."
"To the hospital?" Lieutenant Herrera's husband shifted the weight of his body to the cane we was still using. "It's Andy. She's in surgery."
"What?! What happened?!"
"She got hurt in a fire. I'll tell you on our way there. Come on." Sullivan looked worriedly at Jennifer, without moving. He obviously wanted to be there for his wife, but he wasn't sure if he was wanted there or if he was going to be able to take care of her, hell, he wasn't even sure if he was able to take care of himself. She encouraged him, nodding briefly and touching his arm, a gesture that didn't go unnoticed by Ben and that he didn't like a bit. But like it or not, it worked and soon enough the visibly come-down Battalion Chief was leaving through the door.
"It's not what you think." Robert cleared out once the two firefighters were alone in the car, not being able to help the feeling that he was being judged by his former subordinate. "What do I think?"
"She's with someone, who is also living there right now. That was Lucas' house. Jennifer and Drew flew over here to help me when I called her." That was all that he was willing to tell Ben, so he didn't give him time to say anything back.
"And now, tell me what happened."