A/N: Thanks so much for the reviews. I'm glad you're enjoying this. Encouragement makes a writer happy to keep on writing.

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Deakins walked into her room to find it empty. He really wasn't surprised. He should have gone to the ICU first. So that's where he went.

He waved at the unit secretary as she smiled and waved from her desk at the far side of the nurse's station. He stood in the doorway of the ICU cubicle and just watched. Eames was sitting in a chair beside Goren's bed, fully turned toward him so she could see his face. She had a book laid in her lap, and she was reading to him. His heart was warmed by the sight while at the same time it hurt, knowing the pain this had caused them both. These partners were devoted to one another, and that, he knew, was a very good thing. This ordeal had tested the depth of that devotion, and it had survived. "Alex?" he said softly.

She turned. "Hi, Captain."

He stepped into the cubicle. "How's he doing?"

"They told me he's better, that he's stable now. My doctors said I could hang out here as long as I feel up to it. They want me to come upstairs to check in every few hours—my mandatory traveling time. I feel better being here, and I…I don't want Bobby to feel abandoned, or lonely."

"What are you reading?"

She grinned. "I stopped by the hospital library and picked this up. It's called Criminal Psychology.""

The captain nodded. "That sounds like something he'd like."

"Yeah, well, he's lucky I'm still awake."

Deakins laughed. He studied Goren's face. "He does look better. When I was here last night, he wasn't doing well." He sighed. "Logan may be a loose canon, but he was on the mark today. The best thing anyone could have done, it seems, was to bring you here to see him. And who thought of it? Mike Logan. That embarrasses me…I should have known. I'm sorry I didn't think of it."

She shrugged. "It's ok, Captain. They say they won't know for sure he's going to be all right until he wakes up, but…" She looked toward her partner. "I think he'll be ok."

"What makes you say that?"

"I told him he'd better."

Deakins laughed again. "That works for me, Alex."

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Eames sat quietly in a chair beside her partner's bed. In her lap was the most recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine. She took a drink of water. The only sounds in the cubicle were the quiet rasp of the respirator that still breathed for him and the beeping of the monitor over his bed that told her only that his heart was still beating.

She had been released from the hospital two and a half days ago, and every day she sat in this chair at her partner's side. Everyone he had ever cared about in his life had left him. She refused to do that to him. Hell, it was because she had not been there following the shooting that he'd nearly died last week. She left at night, to go home to her empty apartment to shower and sleep, only to hurry back to his side the next morning and find nothing had changed.

She watched the doctor confer with the woman beside him. She wore blue scrubs and spoke in hushed tones. She adjusted the respirator. Was he recovering? Eames was afraid to ask, but she knew she had to. She was used to thinking of Goren as untouchable, a human tank. But that big, intimidating body of his protected a sensitive heart, a damaged soul, both of which he hid from the world and desperately protected from further harm. The woman in blue left the room and the doctor turned from the machine, looking at her with that look. Oh, how she hated that look! She hesitated only the briefest second before she asked the one question whose answer she feared. "How is he?"

The doctor smiled with his mouth, but there was no smile, not even a hint of it, in his eyes. "He still needs help to breathe. He's not doing it all on his own."

"And what does that mean?"

"It just means he needs more time to heal and we still have to help him."

"How much longer are you going to help him?"

"As long as he needs us to."

"So you still think he is going to be ok?"

"His body is healing, Detective. He has retreated from the pain, but he'll be back."

She just nodded. She understood that. Bobby often retreated from his pain. She saw it every week, after he visited his mother. She saw it during and after those tough cases…the cases that inflicted psychological pain on victims…the cases that left innocence slaughtered. Above all else, Bobby understood psychological pain. He knew exactly what it was like to have your innocence slaughtered. It was worse than finding out Santa did not exist before you were ready. Hell, on some level, she would not be surprised if he did still believe in Santa. You could never predict what myths he held onto, held onto for dear life, because everything that was supposed to be there, to support you and keep you safe in an unsafe world, had been destroyed like porcelain in an earthquake when his mother's mind had separated from reality and left him alone. His brother dealt with the loss by retreating from it into a world of addiction and stepping out of his little brother's life. Bobby dealt with it by withdrawing and not letting anyone in, by keeping his heart wrapped in too many layers of bubble wrap. What he had yet to realize was that his partner had successfully breached that bubble wrap. Without even knowing it, Alex had found her way into his well-protected heart.