"What we got in here?" John Carter asked as he stepped into the trauma room and snapped on a pair of gloves.

He saw Luka standing frozen at the foot of the bed, his hand pushed into his hair, his eyes staring at the limp form on the gurney. Abby snapped her head towards him.

"Sam!"

John felt the blood leave his body and he looked at Luka again.

"Get him out of here!" Abby shouted again and John grabbed on to Luka's jacket.

"No! I want to stay - I need to stay!" Luka protested as he attempted to shrug out of John's firm grip.

"No, you need to get out of here and let us help her," John told him and pushed the taller man through the doors.

He watched for a moment to ensure that Luka didn't attempt to come back in and then walked up beside Abby who was in the process of intubating Sam, and Gallant who was using the ultrasound to see into her belly.

"There's a lot of fluid... We already called surgery. They're waiting for her."

John looked to him and nodded.

"Sats are dropping and she's on one hundred per cent oxygen!"

"She needs the OR," he told them all and they nodded.

"She needs to..." the heart monitor beside them started screeching and Abby jumped onto the bottom rail of the bed as she shouted:

"She's crashing!"

John jumped towards the crash cart and pulled it towards the bed.

"Round of epi!" He shouted to Chuney who was already holding the needle over Sam's chest and stabbed it into her. "Charging to two hundred! Clear," he waited until Abby pulled her hands away from Sam's body and then compressed the button on the side of the paddles and saw Sam's body jerk.

"No change!" Abby yelled into the room as she continued compressing and Gallant intermittently squeezed the bubble that supplied their ailing friend with oxygen to the lungs.

"Charging to three hundred - clear!"

Again he waited and then compressed and saw her body jump off the bed.

"Got a heartbeat," Abby said, relief flooding her voice as she looked up to John with a look of panic on her face as the monitor started beating rhythmically.

John inhaled a deep breath and looked back to Abby who was now standing over Sam, her hand on her bloody face.

Looking down at Sam himself, John finally took in her battered appearance. There was a deep laceration stretching across her forehead, her eyes were swollen shut, her whole face covered in bruises and blood dripped from her nose, lip and a deep gash down the left side of her face. Her clothes were torn from where the emergency response team had pulled her out of the car and he could see that her whole body was bruised. He could see that some of her ribs were broken, as they jutted out from her body. Her belly looked swollen slightly. Her leg was sitting at an odd angle, telling him that it was broken.

She had been battered.

"We're going to need to do a rape kit..." The detective said as he popped his head around the door and the silent occupants of the room turned to him.

"What?" Abby asked, shocked and turned towards John who had a similar look of disgust on his face.

"It's mandatory in all domestic cases of this stature."

They were in silence and Abby looked back down to Sam's broken body and swallowed.

"What did that bastard do to you?" She asked quietly as she stroked her unconscious, intubated friend, as she stroked her head.

"Do you know who did it?" John asked as he turned his eyes away from the body.

"We have two suspects," the detective confirmed and nodded, looking directly at John.

"Two?" Gallant asked, surprised, his eyes darting out the door to where he had last seen Kovac.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss their names at the moment." There was a silent beat before John stepped away.

"We need to get her up to the OR," he said again and Abby nodded.

"I'll take her up," she told him as her and Chuney began to un-brake the wheels and move the gurney out of the room.

John stood silent for a few moments, his eyes closed, his thoughts on Luka and Abby. Luka had been through so much in his life - this was just the icing on the cake. He had looked utterly lost, his eyes filled with such a deep anguish that John couldn't deny the truth any longer. And Abby... Abby had seemed empty too, as she too must have seen Luka's reaction to Sam. He wouldn't wish this on anyone.

His own panic, worry, fear for Sam was barely contained and he knew that Luka would be in much a similar state - only deeper, more desolate. He always had tried to bury things within him - but now John wasn't sure Luka had anywhere else left to bury things.

Leaving the room, the detective following him, John headed up to admit and saw most of the ER staff gathered there, listening to Gallant tell them about Sam's condition.

"Hey, has anyone seen Luka?"

They all looked up to the attending and shook their heads.

"No," Neela said as she bit her lip and John could see tears in her eyes - she had been rather close to Sam.

"Hey," John said and reached his hand out to Haleh as she passed him. "Do you know where Luka is?"

Haleh shook her head and shrugged her own tears in her eyes.

"I don't know. I haven't seen him since he left."

John frowned.

"When was that?"

Haleh shrugged again and blinked rapidly.

"About ten minutes ago."

John nodded and let go of her arm. He could feel even more tension seep into his muscles as he felt a panic now begin to settle in on Luka's whereabouts.

Now was not the time for Luka to bugger off into his own little self-recriminating world.

TBC