The days ran together, indistinguishable from one another. Every morning she came to the hospital to sit by her partner. Every night she went home and ate the dinner her sister left in the fridge with a note that always said she should come by and stay with them while she recovered. It was a nice gesture, but she just didn't realize that Alex could not--would not--leave her partner. She loved to play with her nephew, the baby she'd carried inside her for nine months, only to give him up to her sister when he was born. But Goren really needed her, and as much as she loved her family, her partner was more to her. On some level, they understood that. They acknowledged him as an extension of her. They understood partners as only a cop family can. Your partner was the most important person in your life, more than family, more than friend. Every day, your life was placed in your partner's hands. He had your back, every single day. And she could not help but feel that she had dropped the ball; she had failed to watch his back. This was somehow her fault. She had done the unthinkable. She'd let her partner down.

Her mind, again, returned to the park. It had been more than two weeks, but it still sprang into her mind as though it had been yesterday. She remembered getting shot. She would never forget the raw emotion that had been in his voice when he'd yelled her name. There was so much that just wasn't there in her memory, though. How Logan and Barek had both been hit. How her partner had seen her take a hit before he could do a thing to protect her. How he'd placed himself between her and the bullets that kept coming. How he had saved her life. Logan had told her that there had been some trouble, that when they'd put him in the ambulance at the scene, he'd been breathing. Somewhere between here and there, he'd stopped. Pneumothorax, they'd explained. And something about a chest tube, to drain the blood and air from his chest cavity. But what had scared her most was when Deakins had sat with her, along with Barek and Logan, and gently explained what had really happened in the ambulance. He'd done more than stop breathing. They'd lost him. The fact that they had gotten him back right away didn't register for a minute. She had never felt such terror in her life.

The doctors now told her that he was resting, healing. They no longer wore those worried looks she'd come to hate. Now they were just biding time while he healed. He'd started to wake, but they weren't ready yet. They said he still needed a little more time. So they kept him sedated, made him stay asleep. She was angry at them for that. She wanted to see those warm, dark eyes looking at her. She needed to hear that gentle, quiet voice. But she trusted them to know what they were doing. So she just sat by his bed and read to him.

Last night before she went home, she'd watched as they had removed the tube from the side of his broad chest. The nurse had promised her that was a good thing, that he didn't need it anymore. But she was still frightened. After all, they'd not been able to save her husband. And no one in her life meant more to her than he had…no one…except Bobby. She was surprised to realize how much her big, quirky partner really meant to her, how deeply within her heart he dwelled. And it was somehow comforting as well. She'd made them promise to call if anything changed after she left. To her great relief, they had not called, and when she'd arrived that morning, he was still ok.

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She watched the doctor as he examined Bobby and then turned to study that damn machine that lived on the other side of his bed. She had no desire to understand it, as long as it did what it was supposed to do. But today was different than the days that had come before. The doctor pulled up a chair, sat before her with that serious doctor look on his face. Quietly, he told her they were going to take him off the respirator. Her heart leaped into her throat; panic, like bile, climbed up into her mouth. This doctor was good, though. He read the panic in her face and quickly reassured her. "He's all right, Detective. He's no longer letting the machine do all the work."

"Yesterday you said he wasn't ready to come off the machine yet. Did I miss something?"

The doctor smiled. He leaned back in his chair, away from her, back from the intimate position of 'heads together and we'll figure this out.' She wasn't going to figure out anything. There was only one person she wanted to put her head together with to figure something out, and it wasn't the doctor. He said, "You saw that we took out his chest tube last night. We took an x-ray after you left, and it looked very good. His lungs have healed and they are no longer leaking air into his chest cavity. All the bleeding has long stopped and his injuries are healing very nicely. His liver functions have been improving which means his liver hasn't sustained any permanent damage. He's no longer in a coma, detective, and that's the best thing we could have hoped for. He's letting the machine work less and less for him. When we first hooked him up to it, he was letting it do all the work. Over the course of every minute, he would take one breath, maybe. The machine did all the rest. Now, he's doing all the work. He's fighting the machine, not letting it work for him any more. So we're going to turn it off this afternoon and take out the tube. We'll stop the sedatives and let him wake up. If all goes as planned, we'll be able to move him upstairs sometime tomorrow or the next day. Once we take him off the respirator and he wakes up, he'll no longer need intensive care."

"So he's going to recover?"

There was that smile again. "Yes, detective. He is going to recover fully. He's a fighter."

He left the cubicle and she got up and moved to her partner's side. She lightly fingered the hair at his temple. He was going to recover; he would still be her partner. For the first time since she'd woken after being shot, she could take a breath and not feel that rock in the pit of her gut. He really was going to be ok.