Olivia had barely been at her desk two minutes when her phone started ringing. Got to love Monday mornings, she thought tiredly as she picked up the receiver. "Detective Benson," she answered.

"You'll never guess who miraculously showed up at the hospital this morning."

Flinching a little at the wide-awake tone of the voice on the other end of the line, Olivia rolled her eyes. It's too damn early for this, Novak, she grumbled silently. "George Clooney."

"Do I really sound like I'm in the mood for celebrity sightings?"

After a moment of thought, Olivia decided that Casey did not sound like she had just seen a celebrity. In fact, she sounded furious. "Casey, you've caught me before my morning coffee …"

Olivia heard the slightest hint of a groan on the line. "This morning, I was sitting in Maddie's room, keeping her company, and who waltzed in like nothing had ever been wrong but Kim Donovan."

Suddenly, the detective was wide awake. "What?"

"Yeah. Maddie was all excited and happy that her mom was there, and she introduced us. I'm telling you, it was all I could do to bite my tongue and not smack her teeth in."

Olivia snorted; Casey certainly sounded livid enough to hit someone, and she didn't doubt for one minute that Casey could have had Kim out for the count before Kim had even known what was coming. But she was a little puzzled as to why Casey was now championing for this woman's takedown when all she'd been saying for a week is that she wished Kim would just visit her daughter. "I'm confused. Isn't this a good thing?"

Casey paused a moment before responding, trying to collect her thoughts. "The fact that she just breezed on back into this little girl's life after breezing out of it for a week? When she needed her most? How is that a good thing? Jesus, Olivia, are you always this bad without your coffee?"

"I was just wondering why you had a sudden change of heart," Olivia replied evenly, trying not to throw Casey's attitude back at her. "All I've heard all week is how much you wanted Kim to come to the hospital."

"That was before Maddie had a heart attack and was rushed into surgery last night and she had to rely on a stranger, namely me, to sit with her in the recovery room because her mother couldn't be assed to go to the hospital herself. And now that she's here, all of the bullshit is forgotten."

Olivia narrowed her eyes and rested her elbows on the desk, massaging her forehead in slight confusion. She understood why Casey was so upset; the hypocrisy of Kim Donovan's actions and the obvious love the little girl had for her mother despite her mother's lack of adoration for her was frustrating, to say the least. What she didn't understand was why Casey was taking it upon herself to be Maddie's advocate. "Casey--"

"I'm fighting for her, Liv. I'm telling ACS that I want her."

"We've had this conversation before. You can't take her in."

"Why the hell not? I'll love her."

Olivia sighed; this was not a conversation she wanted to have with Casey over the phone, but the determined inflection in the ADA's voice necessitated it. "You can't. ACS will not place her with you."

There was a hesitation on the line, the space of a heartbeat, then Casey spoke up again with a slightly less edgy tone. "What, you talked to them?"

"I don't have to. Look, Maddie's problem right now is that she's in an environment where her caregiver is either unable or unwilling to give her the proper time and attention, right?"

"Yes," Casey answered.

"It would be extremely hypocritical of ACS to place her into an environment in which her caregiver works all kinds of crazy hours and is never home if they're taking her out of the same environment."

Casey drew in a jagged breath as she tried to find an argumentative stance. "So, what, I can't have a family now? I have to be the job--"

"Casey, that's not what I'm saying. It's just that ACS is hard-pressed to place neglected children in single-parent homes as it is; they're not going to place her with someone whose hours are as all over the place as yours, especially considering the reason Maddie was called to their attention in the first place."

When the ADA didn't say anything, Olivia softened, realizing she had upset her. "Look, Maddie's going to be hurting, emotionally and physically. It would be an extraordinarily hard adjustment, both for her and for you. And I know you could handle it and that you'd love her as though she were your own and I know she'd love you, too. But the bureaucracy isn't going to change, no matter how much you want it to."

"Love isn't enough."

The deflated tone in Casey's voice made Olivia cringe. "It's not that it isn't enough. It's that it isn't everything."

Casey cleared her throat, presumably so that she wouldn't sound upset. "I can't just leave her here, Olivia. Talk about hypocrisy … turn the kid's life upside down and then never see her again. What else am I going to do? I have to do something."

"You still have time to figure something out--"

"No, I don't. Cheryl told me that I'm a clear chest X-ray away from getting out of here--"

"Really?" Olivia asked, excitedly interrupting the ADA. "That's great!"

"Great for me, yes, but what the hell am I going to do?"

"Casey, it's not up to you to save her. You can still visit her while she's in the hospital, and if you're nice to ACS, I'm sure they won't mind allowing you to visit her when she's placed with a foster family."

"I don't want to be the one that swoops in, screws everything up, and then swoops out, leaving everyone else to clean up the mess."

"But it's not within your power to clean up the mess, Casey. Stop trying to take this all on yourself and trust that ACS knows what it's doing."

"Yeah, I guess." There were some muffled sounds on the line and Olivia could hear Casey and Cheryl talking. "Liv, I have to go. Chest X-ray time."

"Okay, hon. Once you find out when you're going home, call me and I'll come get you. And Casey? Stop worrying about it."

"I'll try. Thanks, Liv."

"Don't mention it. Bye." Olivia hung up the phone and sighed, placing her head in her hands.

"Rough morning?" Elliot asked, nudging her shoulder on his way to his desk.

"Exasperating morning," she answered, gesturing towards the phone. "She still wants to take Maddie in."

"So let her try," Elliot said with a shrug. He plopped into his chair and started rifling through the papers on his desk. "Why are you so adamant that she can't?"

"Because guilt is not a reason to become a parent to a sick child."

Elliot looked up at her, narrowing his eyes as he tried to read her. "You don't believe that she only wants her because she feels guilty. You're afraid that she's going to get hurt."

Olivia set her jaw and tried to pretend that Elliot was wrong, all the while cursing the fact that he knew her so well. Eventually, she gave up the pretending and just nodded. "It wouldn't work out the way she wants it to. She's such an idealist and she's so damn naïve at times. She thinks it's going to be all happiness and light, and it's not."

"You can't stop her from getting hurt, Olivia, no matter how much you might want to." He looked her over, then leaned in closer, lowering his voice so that Munch and Fin wouldn't hear him. "You really care for her, don't you?"

"We all do, Elliot."

"I'm speaking in double entendres, Liv."

Olivia smirked self-consciously. "You should let me know when you're doing that."

"And you're avoiding the question," Elliot said, smiling. "I'll take that as an admission."

"Take it as whatever you want." Olivia stood up and started walking towards Captain Cragen's office.

"Where are you going?"

"Casey thinks she's getting out of the hospital tonight. I want to stay with her tomorrow and I was wondering if Cragen would let me take a vacation day or something."

Elliot raised an eyebrow at his partner and smiled. "Pretty soon I won't have to be speaking in double entendres."

Olivia waited just a moment before throwing a pencil at him.

-----

The overhead light brightened the small but cozy living room as Casey flicked the switch on her way into the apartment. Wearily dropping her duffel bag in the corner next to the door, she headed for the sofa and flopped down on it with a relieved sigh. "Oh, I could kiss the floor right now, but that's a little disgusting."

Olivia smiled and closed the door behind herself. "Happy to be home?"

"I really thought I'd never see the inside of this place again." Casey pulled her legs up underneath herself and hid a yawn behind her hand. She gazed around, taking in the small details she typically took for granted: the strawberry candle that was so strong she had never even lit it, the ticking of the clock in her kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator. "It's so good to be out of the damn hospital."

Olivia sat down on the couch next to Casey and nudged her gently. "I'm going to draw you a warm bath and then--"

"No," Casey interrupted. "I'm too tired for a bath. Just let me take a quick shower and wash up a little, and then we can watch TV or something."

The detective nodded and watched as Casey disappeared into the bathroom. As she heard the shower turn on, she began flipping channels on the television, trying to find something for her and Casey to watch. After settling on a made-for-television movie, Olivia stood up and started poking through the books on Casey's bookshelf. She was surprised to find a couple of young adult novels hidden among the law books and school texts that the ADA hadn't yet thrown away.

She must have been more engrossed in Casey's bookshelf than she thought she was. A noise from behind startled her and she whirled around, her hand over her heart. Casey was standing in the doorway, pajamas on and drying her hair with a towel. "What are you doing?" the ADA asked, smirking.

"Looking through your stuff," Olivia answered with an embarrassed smile. "You still have young adult novels?"

"They were my favorite books growing up. Ghost stories." Casey sidled up next to Olivia and pointed out the novels in turn. "This one's about a little boy who goes to live with his uncle, who's a wizard, and finds out that there's a doomsday clock hidden in the walls. That one's actually the first in a series; I have the rest of them around here somewhere. This one's about a girl who can see the past through the windows of a dollhouse. And this one's about a girl who's haunted by a ghost from the Victorian era. The ghost uses reflective surfaces to try to pull the girl back in time."

"Why?"

"Because she wants a friend." Casey smiled, met Olivia's eye for a moment, and then settled back down on the sofa. "I was somewhat of a morbid kid."

Olivia sat down on the couch next to her. "I read romance novels when I was younger. Pure escapism. And I read Nancy Drew."

"Oh, I loved Nancy Drew." Casey blinked and rubbed her eyes. "Damn it. It's a little ridiculous how little sleep one gets in a hospital. They wake you up every couple of hours to take vitals and all that. It gets annoying."

"Want me to let you go to bed?" Olivia asked, eyeing the clock. It was eight at night; Olivia would be home by nine if all went well, which was something that hadn't happened in ages.

"No," she replied, biting back a yawn. "Can we pull out the couch, though? It'd be a little more comfortable, for you and for me."

"Sure."

The two got up off the couch and Casey stood off to the side as Olivia tossed the cushions aside and pulled out the bed. Sighing with relief, Casey crawled into bed and snuggled under the blanket and sheet. Olivia settled next to her, handing her a pillow. "You do realize that this is no different than you going to bed, right?"

"Don't have a TV in my room," Casey replied, tucking her hands under the pillow. "So it's a little different."

Olivia chuckled, then made herself more comfortable on the bed, slouching down and placing her arm behind her head as a makeshift pillow. "Well, if you're going on technicalities …"

Casey smiled and allowed her eyelids to flutter closed. "You know what else I used to love to read when I was little? The Boxcar Children. They were cheesy little mysteries, like who kept letting the animals out at the zoo, but I was in third grade and that was pretty much the most mystery I could handle." She yawned. "The Boxcar Children and Encyclopedia Brown pretty much filled my bookshelf for years."

"I remember the Boxcar Children," Olivia said softly so as not to startle Casey awake.

"My mom used to read those books to me because she read them when she was little …" Casey trailed off as she began slipping into sleep. Olivia made a move to stand up and leave Casey alone, but a plaintive voice stopped her. "No, don't go."

"Go to sleep," the detective whispered. "I'll come back tomorrow morning."

"Don't go," Casey repeated. She opened her eyes and pushed herself up a little. "Please?"

The pleading tone of Casey's voice and the small hint of a pout instantly won over Olivia. She settled back down on the bed and brushed Casey's hair out of her eyes as the ADA began drifting off again. Surprised that Casey wasn't pulling away from the contact, Olivia leaned forward and gave her a goodnight kiss on the cheek. Casey gave the slightest hint of a half-smile and reached out, taking Olivia's hand in hers. "G'night, Liv."

"Night, honey," Olivia whispered, smiling. She settled down herself, unconsciously closing the space between them. The deep, even breathing beside her indicated that Casey had already fallen asleep; Olivia gave Casey's hand a gentle squeeze and slipped her hand free, then turned onto her back, closing her eyes. She was soon asleep herself and just barely felt Casey's arm drape across her stomach.