The fog sat heavy on her brain, clouding over the dazzling and scary world above her. Ever so lightly she could hear voices calling her name, begging her to open her eyes. But the sleep sat calmly over her, the warm blanket of haziness pressing in on her tiny body, trying to drag her back down to somewhere deep inside her mind, a place where anything was possible and her imagination was free to run wild. However, the desperation in the voices high above in what seemed like another world were startling and the anxiety their pleas seemed to hold made her want to open her eyes and take away the fear the voices possessed.

The voices suddenly seemed to grow louder as though she was yanked upwards, her body levitating upwards to satisfy the curiosity as to who it was and why they were so afraid. Something familiar echoed around her brain, stirring her out of her reverie and allowing her to think more clearly. It was the voice that had snapped her out of it, allowing her to come to terms with what was going on and process what the voices were saying and who they belonged to.

One belonged to a man, the other a woman, both terrified and stifling back sobs, neither willing to show weakness. They called her name, softly at first, then more desperate and pleading. She tried to open her eyes, tried to break through the surface of her mind and be welcomed back to reality. But slowly the voices faded and she felt herself sinking back down, down into the depths of her mind. She tried to fight, tried to swim back towards the noise, but it was impossible to fight the invisible force that was dragging her down. And that was when it clicked … her mother. The voice high above her was her mother's.

Fighting far more desperately now, the attempt was futile and inevitable and she finally gave in, what little strength she had left wavering, and allowed herself to sink far back into the murky waters of her mind.

XXXXXXXXXX

He held her limp, ice cold body in his arms, whispering in her ear to wake up, to open her eyes, to just be ok. But nothing happened. Guilt slammed down onto him, hard, and he bit back the fresh wave of tears that had just appeared. Jordan knelt beside him, running her fingers through the little girl's hair. Her pulse was there, that had been the first thing she had checked, but it was erratic and uneven, not to mention deadly slow at times. The wound on the back of her head was still bleeding, despite the fact that Woody's jackets had been pressed tightly onto it.

She would never admit it out loud, but Jordan doubted that her daughter would survive the night. She needed a doctor and a hospital and if she could get neither of those things, there wasn't a chance in hell that she would live. Anger at just the thought of it boiled dangerously inside of her, threatening to spill over at whatever was in her reach. She could faintly make out the shadow of the man that had led them to Emma standing a couple meters away, his hands resting on his hips, no doubt a wide, sneering smile plastered on his face.

"Here," Woody said, gently lifting Emma's body off of his knees and placing her down on Jordan's. He stood up, withdrawing his gun from the waistband of his jeans. Emma needed a doctor and he would be damned if that pathetic excuse for a man was the death of her. He walked slowly over to him, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt, cocking the gun as he went. The man didn't even move from his spot, waiting for Woody to come to him instead, standing his ground in an attempt to look tough.

Woody grabbed the collar of the man's shirt from behind and pulled, allowing the fabric to close up on his windpipe, giving him only enough air to talk but hardly enough to breathe. He pressed the barrel of the gun into his temple with his other hand.

"You get on that phone and you call an ambulance right now," he growled, placing his face about two centimetres from the man's. It struck Woody as odd that the man didn't withdraw his gun as he saw Woody approaching, and his cop instincts kicking in smelt something fishy.

The man just stared back, the smile still plastered on his face. "You don't scare me, Detective," he said, not even leaning back as Woody moved his face closer still.

"My daughter is over there dying and you don't give a shit!" he said, slamming his fist deep into the man's gut. He keeled over momentarily in pain but immediately pulled himself back up, clenching his jaw to stop from saying something back or perhaps just biting him. "Now call an ambulance NOW!"

The man just smiled again. "Make me," he said. Woody wanting more than anything, besides Emma's life, to just shove him into a wall and cause him as much pain as he was feeling at that moment. The fact that both his and Jordan's cell phones had been confiscated from them before they entered the warehouse weighed heavily on his chest.

"You know I have no objection to that," he said as again he rammed his fist deep into his stomach. "How can you just stand there and watch that little girl die?" Woody yelled at him, holding his chin to make sure he maintained eye contact with him and gesturing madly behind him. "She's turning five in a couple of months did you know? What kid deserves to die before they see their fifth birthday! Come to think of it, what person deserves to die before they're 90! Wait a second; I know … " Woody said. Again, he curled his fingers into a ball and slammed them into the man's stomach with all his might. " … People like you!" he concluded, letting go of the scruff of his neck and allowing him to nurse his wounds.

The man backed up a couple of steps before crumpling in pain to the floor. Woody just stood above him, his heart pounding in his ears, the guilt of what he had just done balancing evenly with the fear for Emma and the anger towards the bastard.

"Here," the man said from Woody's feet. Woody looked down to where his extended hand was holding out Jordan's cell phone. He looked momentarily in awe at him, wondering if this was some kind of trick. "I have a daughter too. She'll be three next week. Just take the goddamn phone," he said, thrusting it into Woody's hand.

He snapped out of his reverie and flipped open the phone, madly dialling 911. Pulling his cuffs out of his pocket, he attached one to the man's wrist and the other to a thin floor-to-ceiling pole on the other side of the warehouse. It took the ambulance exactly four minutes to get there and only six to load Emma onto a stretcher and into the back, Woody and Jordan hopping in after her, exchanging a look of anxiety and worry as the sped to the hospital.

XXXXXXXXXX

There's nothing worse than waiting, especially when the fate of someone you love is the thing that you're waiting for. Jordan had never been that patient of a person. She was always out there searching for answers she was too impatient to wait to come to her. That's why sitting there in the ER waiting room was killing her. Not even the black coffee Woody had brought her was helping calm her nerves, in fact, it was almost making them worse because now that the caffine was in her system she would sleep even less, not that she was sleeping at all before.

She sat on the hard plastic chair, elbows resting on her knees, head braced up by her hands, Garret on one side of her, Woody on the other.

"Jordan she'll be ok," Garret said, placing his hand in a fatherly way on her back.

"How do you know?" Jordan asked, talking for the first time in the hour they had been there.

"Jordan … she's the little girl who blows bubbles in her pudding, the little girl who was determined to learn how to eat soup with a fork … and succeeded to a certain extent. She's the little girl who curls her hair around her pinkie finger when she's tired; the little girl who kicked her preschool teacher in the shin because she said that blue was better than pink. Jordan she's the kid with her mother's annoying stubbornness and her father's bubbly, happy personality. She's tough. That incident last year … she got through that just fine. She always has, she always will. You Cavanaugh's have an incredible ability to bounce back," Garret said, tucking a piece of her hair behind her ear and making sure her eyes never left his.

Jordan finally dropped her gaze to the floor and let out a little laugh. "Wow Garret," she said, leaning back in her chair and taking a deep breath. "I don't think I've ever heard you talk so much."

He gave her a quick, reassuring smile and a small kiss on the cheek before turning back to the Reader's Digest in his hands, leaving Jordan to talk to Woody. He placed his warm hand on he knee, allowing the warmth from his palm to radiate through her jeans and onto her own skin. She smiled at the comfort.

"She really blows bubbles in her pudding?" Woody asked, laughing at the thought.

"Oh ya. Started when she was two, the first time I gave it to her. She put the spoon to her mouth and I guess she though something was funny and so she laughed. There was chocolate pudding everywhere. But you should have seen her eyes when the stuff went flying; they just lit up as if it was the coolest thing she'd ever seen. And ever since then when I give her pudding she lets just a little air escape through her lips and damn can that stuff fly," Jordan laughed. "There's pictures. It was almost like a little show. I thought it was so cute the way her face just brightened every time she saw pudding so one day I had everyone over and I gave her a pudding and there was Nigel … snapping pictures every ten seconds," she laughed again.

Woody laughed along with her, images passing through his head. The sound of shoes echoing off the eerie hospital walls snapped their heads back up and they looked into the eyes of Emma's doctor. Woody and Jordan both stood up and watched as he wiped a single tear away from his dark eye.