Disclaimer: I don't own Law and Order: CI, or Law and Order. Not making money just having fun.

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Sins of the Father

Chapter Twelve: Family and Friends

One Week Later

She was in pain. That was the first coherent thought that came to Grace's mind. Her entire body was hurting, right down to her teeth. The last thing she remembered was that lead pipe hitting her across the face and hearing Nicole scream something like "What do you think you're doing!" Oh, that pipe. She ran her tongue over her teeth and took into account that she was very lucky she still had all of them. Now, if she could just do something about this hurting.

"Hey Ed, maybe you should get the nurse," a rough voice came from her right. It was strangely familiar but she couldn't place it just yet. If only she could get her eyes to work.

"Grace?" There was that voice again. She tried to turn towards it but the movement made her dizzy. Why wouldn't her eyes open? Slivers a light finally made their way into her pupils and her eyelids started to blink. She tried to breathe a sigh of relief but found her chest hurt too much.

"There you are," the lined face of Lennie Briscoe stared down at her. She tried to form his name but couldn't quite manage. He seemed to understand and held up a hand for her to stop trying.

"It's ok. You're safe now," he reassured. "Ed went to get a nurse. You're in Bellevue Hospital."

She could hear the heart monitor and breathing machine. Considering all the equipment that was surrounding her she must be in ICU. She had hoped to see Bobby there, or at least Alex Eames. But looking up at Lennie's grandfatherly face where concern and relief were clearly written brought a comfort to her anyway.

"Hey, look who's up!" Ed Green wandered into her vision, grinning broadly. "You've been teasing us for the past two days with little eye flutters and groans. Finally decided to give in, huh?"

She tried to smile but just like her eyelids, the muscles refused to work the first two times. Finally it must have because both men chuckled.

Ed carefully laid a hand on her foot, the only part of her body that didn't hurt at the moment. "I also called Robert Goren, and let him know you woke up. He's on his way down now."

"Now?' Lennie asked. "It's two o'clock in the morning."

Ed sighed and shrugged his shoulders. "He didn't sound like he was sleeping."

Lennie laid a hand on her wrist but she didn't feel the contact. Glancing down she found her wrist was in a cast. Actually, from her knuckles to her elbow was in a cast. "You should know that Goren and Eames have been taking up residence here for the past week. It wasn't until yesterday that they finally relented to having us stay with you the night."

Ed gave her a slight grin. "I think you're the only ME to ever get a 24 hour police vigil. A lot of people in the NYPD have a lot of respect for you."

They did? Grace tried to think of a time she had done anything outstanding and she couldn't come up with anything. She always did her job to the best of her ability, giving thorough autopsies and just doing whatever the detectives that came her way told her. Sure, she had run tox screens and reports to some people's homes or faxed over her results to precincts in the wee small hours of the morning, but that was nothing big.

"You know," Lennie spoke up, "We talked to just about every detective that walked in here and added up the cases that you had helped them with. I remember you helped Ed and me with twenty-six. Then when Fontana came on as his partner, you did eleven. You've helped Stabler and Benson from SVU with seventeen. Then there was Munch and Fin, who had fifteen with you. And Lieutenant Van Buren remembers you working with nine pairs of other detectives, averaging twelve cases each. That's a total of 177 cases that you helped solve."

She hadn't known it was that many cases. She wished her mouth would work. She would tell them it was the detectives who did the solving. She just found the clues. She merely handed them the pieces and they put it together.

"Oh, before I forget," Ed said, "Your Dad came looking for you last Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, and I told him what happened to you."

Her Dad. She wanted to know if he was alright. Did have something to eat on Thanksgiving? Was he alone? Ed must have noticed her distress.

"He actually had dinner with me and my mom that Friday night. We just heated up leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner and shared them with him. Then I brought him over to visit you. He's fine. He's," Ed had a wide grin that spread across his face, "he's in rehab right now."

Grace felt like ripping the IV out of her arm and dancing around the room. However, breathing had begun to hurt again so she settled for the biggest smile she could manage. She hoped he stuck with it this time. Maybe that's what it took, almost losing your daughter to make you realize the way you should live life. She wished she could have hugged the both of them. They deserved it.

A third face appeared between Ed's and Lennie's. Bobby had slipped in without either of the other two men taking notice until Grace saw him. He looked so tired, like he hadn't slept in weeks. There was a distress in his eyes, most likely over her, but it was mixed with relief.

"How long has she been awake?" he asked, not looking away from her. She figured he probably knew she couldn't talk just yet. Well, it wasn't going to stop her from trying.

"Right...here," she managed to get out.

All three men seemed to take a step back from the hospital bed. Grace grinned in triumph. Ed turned to Bobby.

"You really can get people to talk."

Bobby clasped his hands behind his back and tried to give an innocent look to Grace. "I'm sorry, how long have you been awake?"

Grace's smile faded somewhat. She didn't know.

"About twenty minutes, now," Ed chimed in.

Lennie looked over at Ed. "We should get back to our vigil now since Goren's here." Then he turned to Bobby. "Is Eames coming?"

"Later on this morning she'll be here."

"Well, let the visiting hours begin then," Ed clapped Bobby on the shoulder once before leaving the room and taking up his post at the door with his retired partner. Grace watched them leave her vision only to be replaced with a female doctor.

"Good morning, Dr. Harris," she greeted with a tired cheerfulness. "How do you feel?"

"Hurts," was all she managed. She figured the doctor would gather what she needed from that. She needed to save her words and strength for Bobby. She had to know what Nicole had told him. If full explanations were given for her time in Carmel Ridge, her relationship with his mother, even though she didn't know who Fran was at the time. He needed to understand. She needed him to understand.

The doctor check over her vitals. "Your pulse seems stronger than I've seen it, that's a very good sign. Heart rate is good. Maybe by tomorrow we can take you off the respirator." She turned a small knob on the morphine drip. "I'm upping your morphine just one notch so that pain should lessen in a few minutes, ok?"

Grace nodded slightly. The doctor gave a brief nod in Bobby's direction before leaving the room. Bobby had pulled a chair over near the foot of the bed so she wouldn't have to turn her head to look him. Once again, his weariness struck her to the core. She didn't remember him looking this...lost.

"You look bad," she whispered.

He smiled slightly. "I'll get you a mirror and then we can compare."

She tried to laugh for him, let him know she was fine, but all that came out was an "hm." But she had to know the physical damage before the emotional damage. "How bad is it?"

He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Truth," she prompted.

"Alright. You have a broken nose, collarbone, arm, wrist, hand, nearly all your ribs, cracked pelvis, knee cap and a broken ankle."

"Wow."

"Not to mention massive head trauma, bruised heart and a punctured lung."

"I should be dead." The words escape her lips before she could stop them. The despair that became evident in Bobby's face brought tears to her eyes. She was amazed to see his dark orbs shimmer as well.

"I thought you were." It only took him a couple blinks and a cough to dispel the emotion that had gathered. "The doctors think you'll make a full recovery. With some physical therapy on your knee, of course."

"Are you ok?"

He gave her a startled, deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. "Yeah, I'm fine. Nicole Wallace got away, but" he shrugged, "that's getting to be expected now."

Grace shook her head slightly. "Not what I meant. Inside, are you ok?"

He dropped his head and stared at the floor. Grace tried to force her body to sit up more, get closer to him, but all her muscles and broken bones refused. She must have let out a frustrated noise because his head raised and he looked at her again. She felt his fingers on the tips of her fingers and he smiled half-way.

"I'm doing better now."

Alex Eames decided that since her partner had most likely spent the past five hours sitting a most uncomfortable chair, watching over a wounded woman hocked up on morphine, he would appreciate a cup of coffee. A very bad cup of coffee at that, but still, coffee was coffee, right? She took of sip of hers and pulled a face. Too bad Starbucks didn't open for another hour.

She looked around for the sugar and found that two girls seated at a nearby table had swiped it for themselves. She started over to the table when the conversation reached her ears. She played around with the pink and blue packets of sweeteners and eavesdropped for a couple minutes.

"Can't believe she almost died," the youngest was saying. She looked no more twenty-two and had reddish-brown hair tucked up under a golfer's cap. She had a cute face despite the pinched concern and circles under the eyes.

"She did, Sarah. What do you think cardiac arrest is? She died three times." The older one had a much older face, hard lines already worn into it. She had a more brown colored hair that was pulled back into a messy ponytail.

The younger one, Sarah, nibbled on her thumbnail. "What would we do without Grace?"

Eames stopped messing with the sweeteners and listened more closely.

"We'd be just fine without Grace. Come on, Sarah. Like we needed her before."

"Of course we needed her before, Angela." Sarah's voice rose with indignant anger. "Grace raised us. She worked two jobs back to back and still managed to get her GED by eighteen."

"I didn't need to be raised. You did."

Sarah huffed. "You needed an authority figure and Grace tried her best to make sure it wasn't the police. She worried over you constantly."

"Well, that's what she does best. Praise the good one, worry about the bad one. Look, she's awake now, she's going to live. I'm out of here."

"Angela, she's going to need help getting back on her feet again. She needs us now."

Angela stood up and grabbed a worn looking fabric bag. "Yeah, I'll hold my breath waiting for that call. Say hi to Jon, Andy and Em for me, ok?"

Eames watched the older of the two leave the cafeteria before turning in the direction of the table that still had Sarah seated at it. She noticed that Sarah was crying and wasn't sure if she should disturb her. Bobby had told her that Grace had two sisters, but he didn't know their names. This was the first she had seen them.

"Excuse me," she politely leaned over the railing dividing the condiment bar from the tables and chairs, "I was just wondering if you were done with the sugar?"

Sarah sniffed and swiped at her eyes. "Oh, sure, sorry about that. I didn't realize you were standing there."

"That's ok," Alex took the offered sugar and dumped some into both the coffee cups. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," but the word came out smothered with misery. "It's just my older sister can be such a pain."

"Tell me about it." Alex gave her a small smile and sat down in the chair that Angela had vacated. If Sarah minded, she didn't tell Alex. "Do you have a parent in the hospital?"

Sarah shook her head, some fly away strands that had escaped the hat drifting slightly around her face. "No, it's my oldest sister."

"Grace Harris?"

Sarah's eyes went wide. "You know her?"

Alex nodded. "I was there when my partner found her in the morgue."

"They said she looked worse before I saw her."

"She looked pretty bad."

Sarah swiped at her eyes again. "Is your partner's name Bobby, by any chance?"

"Yes, it is."

Sarah let out a little laugh. "I thought so. I called her two Sundays ago, to see if she wanted to go to the movies with me but she said she had a date. That this guy, Bobby, had asked her out. She was really excited about it."

"She was?" Alex wondered if she should be recording this for Bobby to hear.

"Oh yes," Sarah continue. "I knew that Grace had dated off and on since her divorce but she never was excited about it, really excited, like she was that night."

She knew it was none of her business but she had to ask. "Why did she get divorced?"

A look of bitterness came across Sarah's little girl face. "She married this guy right out of college. She wanted so bad to give Angela and me a nice place to live. And he agreed to let us move in with them. But he was one of those men who required three things out of a wife: cook, clean and," Sarah's face flushed, "'put out' I believe is how he phrased it. The marriage lasted a year and then he left. She got divorce papers on Christmas Eve."

"Merry Christmas."

Sarah brightened. "Actually, it was. Sure, Grace was upset but it was a relief with him gone. She didn't have a standard to live up to anymore. It freed her, in a way."

"In a way?"

"Well, the divorce brought on depression, it was much worse than we thought."

"That was when she went to Carmel Ridge?"

Sarah nodded her head. "When she got out, she was a totally different person, in a good way. But then I heard her voice that Sunday night. I knew."

"You knew what?"

Sarah's eyes started to fill up again with tears. "I knew that Grace had finally found her happiness."