"Officer down! Officer down!"
The code shouted into the phone that normally rallied cops from across the city.
Not today.
Not when a bomb had just gone off in Lincoln Center.
There would be the usual crazies calling in to all the precincts all over the city: 'There's a bomb in that Big Mac box in the gutter on fourth!', 'I planted that opera bomb and will blow myself up next if you don't put my ex-wife in jail'...
And then, inevitably, tragically, the racial profiling and the ethnic fighting in the streets.
All these would have the city's finest, in all its branches, out chasing shadows for weeks. While the real work of catching the bombers, of finding the lost FBI agents trapped in the opera house rubble, and rushing a Major Case detective to the hospital before bleed-out could occur, would face delays.
Her breathing was wet and raspy.
The rib finally having snapped and punctured her lung and God knows what else, he felt certain.
Or did a bullet hit her...?
He's too old for this.
Too old for holding her in his arms again while she lays wounded and unconscious. And too old to save himself from his own feelings. Whether he's told her or not. Whether they ever make love or not. Whether he keeps his self-promise to take things no further or not are all irrelevant...
If she dies.
And a weariness fogged over him then...
He wondered if he could continue to hold her torso up, though knows he must or she might drown in the blood surely pooling in her lungs right now.
But his arms don't have the strength they once did.
He's tried talking to her.
Tried to keep her awake the way he did after the car accident, the way they distracted themselves as they sat cuffed to the pipe waiting for the bomb... but she's far beyond hearing.
He reached for her bloodied wrist then. Her skin is cold and he cannot find a pulse.
He thought of what she might say could she see them in this moment...
A joke, she'd make a joke...
What sort of joke? A joke about her ribs perhaps. He could imagine something about a 'kick me' sign taped on her back. She'd accuse him. Only, she would make it funny. And about her ribs.
He's not a funny man. That is one of the many things she does for them. For him.
Fuck.
She can't die...
He's too old for this...
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Once they'd been at a squad Christmas thing after hours in that bar where he has to physically crane his neck to look at the waiter.
"Now you know how I feel ninety percent of the time," she'd smiled.
They'd just closed a case and were looking forward to a couple of days off. He'd offered to buy a round of drinks, 'Merry Christmas, they're on me.'
The music was pleasant though not blaring. Everyone was getting a little buzzed.
"Anyone important dies tonight they're out of luck," she'd observed from where they sat in the corner. And he'd laughed out loud at that. She'd grinned up at him on that. It wasn't a sound one got to hear very often, she told him. A golden belly laugh from The Great Goren.
He sneered at that in irritation which only made her laugh. And then watched for awhile when Valdez challenged her to darts. She'd kicked his ass which Bobby again found surprisingly amusing.
He watched the crowd for awhile, content with his life.
It wasn't perfect. He and Irene had broken up a couple of months before, his mother was giving him the silent treatment these days. But work was good. His partnership incredibly satisfying and productive.
She slid back into the booth with him then and twinkled a little.
"That's revved up recently," she observed.
He followed her eyes to the other side of the room to see Cruz moving in to whisper into Lampley's ear. He was bleary-eyed and flushed. She, feline in her arching toward him.
"Where do you think his hand is right now?" she leered up into his face with a smile.
He looked down at her then, noting the way the table candle caught the deep gold in her eyes. The way her lips were slightly glossy and wet. The fit of her plain emerald green cashmere.
He leaned in, much closer than they were ever want to do intentionally.
"Are you asking? Because they aren't telling."
She'd held his eyes and nodded, "Harper and Cho have been not asking and not telling for six years now over at the Five Three."
"Ames and Jackson got reprimanded, separated, and reassigned at the Three Two—their asking and telling got a little too obvious," he countered, not breaking their proximity or gaze.
She nodded and sighed, "The price can be high."
"Especially if you're stupid about it," he tossed out as he turned to take a deep drink of his beer...
A siren was sounding far away...
He looked over at her small form stretched on the opposite gurney.
She's pale and still. There are tubes and monitors.
He flinched in pain then and looked up.
"Hang in there, Detective," he heard, "It clipped your shoulder... I need to see how deep..."
A monitor alarmed then and he looked back at Eames. They were cutting her dress, splitting it down the middle, baring her. He could see the bruising on her skin and the lacerations from the crystal pitcher as they work over her...
He yelped out loud then... What the hell?
He looked up again at the EMT working over him.
He's been shot, he knows now.
One of those bullets must have hit him. Though he doesn't remember feeling it. Did the second hit Alex?
He turned to look at her again.
"Has she been shot?" he choked out.
"No," the EMT answered back. "The woman there suicided though."
So Shendrick's dead? That's one way to deal with a conflicted conscience, he supposed.
He turned back to Alex, still trying to puzzle out all that happened.
But only sees the spread of bruising and blood staining moonlike skin below a bare uplifted breast, and worries that she might be cold...
She'll be pissed about that dress too... seven hundred dollars...
But then he remembered that there are alarms going off.
He focused harder and saw that the movement over her had become more frantic.
"What are they doing to her?" he tried to ask...
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That same Christmas eve at that bar, he'd watched her dance.
She'd moved smoothly to the base rhythm, her hips rolling, her arms raised, her eyes heavy-lidded. It had been one of those rare nights for setting aside the usual professional inhibitions. Just about all of them had danced, even Deakins. He himself had taken a slow turn, arms in the classic position, with most of the women present.
Even Eames. But it had felt odd and uncomfortable and much too close.
Afterwards, he'd made his excuses and left...
He was aware, as he sat up and slipped back into his torn and stained tuxedo shirt that she'd been taken directly upstairs when they'd been brought in, and that one of the EMTs—a big guy—was sitting astride her, pressing down onto her chest.
He's been stitched, his wound relatively minor, the bullet having passed through the fleshy outer part of his shoulder. He doubted Shendrick had wanted to kill him. Just wanted to buy herself time for the final act.
Relatively pain free after the meds they'd shot into his arm after the tetanus, he slid off the bed and pulled back the Emergency Room curtained partition and looked down the hall.
Deakins was approaching. He'd changed out of the dust covered tux but had a large bandage across his forehead.
He marched up to Goren.
"They're releasing you."
"Eames?"
"Still in surgery," was the terse response.
He nodded and turned away to head upstairs.
"Just a moment, Detective..."
He turned back, lifted his brow, and waited.
"Effective immediately, I am placing you on two weeks unpaid leave."
He had no response to that. How long had she been in surgery?
"There was your stunt with Arano in interrogation and now this... Alex is in surgery, Bobby! You went up there, unarmed, without permission, and did not wait for back-up. I haven't even begun to piece together what went down at that dinner, but when I do it won't be pretty for you, I'm sure." Deakins placed his hands on his hips and turned to pace for a moment. "There will be an inquiry into this Detective, you can bet your ass. Tensions are running high after the incident last night. I have no idea where your judgment has been on this one, Goren, but I have had it!"
Goren nodded quietly then turned and walked away.
He wished they hadn't given him the painkiller. He's no martyr but he doesn't like his thinking to be so fuzzy, not with things the way they are.
He continued down the long hall then, seeking the public elevator...
That Christmas eve at that bar, after he'd gone outside, he'd turned to find her standing on the cold sidewalk behind him.
"Want a ride?" she asked.
He nodded and they made their way to the SUV down the block. He wondered if their leaving this way had planted the same ideas in all minds present as Cruz and Lampley's departure had.
When they got to the car, he looked over at her, "You sober?"
She nodded, "Danced it off."
They both got in...
He's received some pretty strange looks, even in the hospital, as he made his way through. The blood-covered white shirt, he imagined. He looked over and saw the gift shop then...
They'd ridden in silence to his apartment then and he moved to open the door as she idled the engine.
"Merry Christmas, Bobby," she said softly.
He glanced over at her and blinked at the sort of glow about her, at her stillness, at what she surely must quietly know.
"Good night, Eames. Merry Christmas."
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The waiting room is full of the Eames family. All the males, even Noah. And their matriarch, Constance. In the back of his mind it registers that Paula must be home with the baby.
Johnny Eames rose when he entered, and came forward to greet him in that hale and hearty man's man way of an old school cop.
"How're you doing there, Bobby? They got you patched up?" he inquired as they shook hands.
He nodded. "What's her status?"
"We don't know yet. She's been in there two hours now. It looks like the rib punctured her lung but we don't know anymore yet."
He sighed and walked over to her mother.
"Anything I can do for you, Connie?" he asked gently.
She looked up at him with the same dark burning eyes he'd looked into every day for four years, the only tell of her stroke two years ago, a slight drooping of the left lid.
"Unless you've obtained an Ivy League degree in thoracic surgery since last we met, Bobby, then no."
He nodded and took her voice and words with him to a chair in the corner. They being exactly what Alex would have said in the same situation.
They sat and shifted uncomfortably for another hour. Deakins showed up in the interim, followed by Sylvia, bearing sandwiches and cups of coffee from the cafeteria.
"Johnny," the Captain greeted her father, "It's been a helluva twenty-four hours, but she's the strongest woman I know. A damn fine detective too. The very best. Sharpest mind on the force."
Goren watched as Johnny Eames took that proudly to heart, then flicked his eyes over to Connie just in time to catch her eye roll of irritation.
He knew that Alex being in the force had always been a tough thing for her. And these past few weeks could not have improved that outlook.
An intern poked her head in then, "Eames family?" she asked.
The room turned deadly quiet.
"That's us," said Johnny.
"I've come to give you a status report," she said nervously. They all held their breath.
"Well, spit it out!" barked Connie.
"Detective Eames has had a second incident. The first being in the ambulance on the way here."
"Define incident," gritted Goren through his teeth.
"Cardiac arrest. We have restarted her heart but she remains critical. We've managed to clear her lungs, but feel there may still be bone fragments from the rib that we haven't found yet. The head surgeon has determined to keep her on the table until her heart stabilizes before proceeding to search for the fragments. We're hoping that this will happen within the next hour."
Goren turned to see Charlie stand then. He's the firefighter? Married to the nurse? Or is that Henry? No, Henry's the oldest...
"...You're just going to leave her open on the table like that?" he heard him demand.
"It's the best thing we can do for now. I'll come back as soon as we have more information."
They all settled again into grim silence.
"She'll be fine," Johnny finally broke through, his optimism almost convincing.
"She always was hard-headed," observed Henry then.
"Hey, remember when she took that sailboat around The Sound by herself that summer?"
"She was only twelve..."
"Mom like to've killed her."
"As soon as she's well, she should take a vacation," said Charlie then.
"Someplace warm, she likes that," offered Gareth.
"By the ocean," said Henry, "so she can sail."
"Alex is too cheap to take herself on a vacation," grinned Charlie.
"That's true," smiled Henry.
"Maybe she'd pop for a Holiday Inn by the Jersey Shore for a weekend," contributed Gareth, "If she's got a coupon, that is..."
"Maybe she could write it off as some sort of work expense. A budgeting protocol workshop..."
"She could teach that and charge for it..."
"All right, that's it! You lot, out!" barked Connie, on her feet now.
"Con, honey, the boys are just lightening the mood, it's the Irish way," Johnny tried to mollify.
She focused her fury then, her eyes ablaze, "I don't care whose way it is! I will not listen to this! You will not joke about her that way. Not now. Not ever! You dandy lads would do well to save your money as she has. You never know when...when your circumstances might change," she looked meaningfully at her husband then. "You all sit here joking about her being selfish after what she did for her sister? Something she'll never get a chance to do for herself, that's what Alex did. You think that's funny, do you? Think that's what will lighten the mood? Get the hell out of my sight, all of you! Go smoke, or drink coffee, or crawl into caves to scratch and grunt, I don't care— Just leave!"
The subdued men along with the Deakinses all filed out silently.
Constance Eames remained in the middle of the room, breathing heavily. As she slowly composed herself, she pushed her hair off her forehead and lifted her eyes to him.
"You still here?"
"I'm foolhardy," said Goren.
She nodded and returned to her chair.
Bobby mulled for a moment, then turned toward her.
"Alex has..." he began softly, "Alex has... been helping you out... financially, since your husband's... incident...?"
She looked up at him through narrowed eyes but did not answer.
"I'm guessing Johnny doesn't know... It's just an arrangement between you and her..."
Constance sighed, "I'm too worried to be dazzled by you right now, Bobby. Paula and Carl needed help with all the fertility treatments at first. They are outrageously expensive. Five procedures she had, and none of them took. Five thousand dollars for each attempt. That pretty much wiped us out..."
"Alex helped with that too?"
"With the baby. With our mortgage. Johnny thinks that I just run a magically tight little ship on his pension. He has no idea. I'm telling you, Bobby, that baby should be made of solid gold, for all he's cost. And that's just in financial terms."
He nodded.
"I'm sorry you had to hear all that," she said after a moment. "But that's the way family is, and you're part of that, part of us, being her partner and all. Even more so since your mother's passing. We expect you on holidays now, I hope you know."
Bobby knew that implicit in this invitation was that Alex would still be around for him to partner.
"I wouldn't miss it."
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Just before dawn, he stood at the foot of her bed in the ICU, the rest of the family dozing in the waiting room. One guest at a time, it was now his turn.
He opened the paper bag he'd been gripping since he'd left Emergency hours before, and turned to the nurse as he made notations in the chart.
"Could I...?" he asked, showing what he wanted to do, "Just for her feet. She gets cold..."
The nurse nodded and smiled.
He walked to the tap and turned it to hot, allowing a few moments for the temperature to rise, then slid the hot water bottle under and filled it.
When it was capped, dry, and wrapped in a towel, he crossed back to the foot of her bed and, taking one last look at her doll-like face, the tubes snaking from her mouth and nose, lifted the blanket.
There were the scarlet-painted toes.
He gently slid the comfort object under them.
To keep her warm.