Don tapped his hands in a soft rhythm on his knee. Nothing could have pulled him from his thoughts short of a doctor or a nurse coming to him with an update. He stared straight down at a crooked piece of tile as his mind wandered back to the day he woke up in the same hospital just after the bombings.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Don figured he was still alive as he counted the beats from the heart monitor. Beep. Beep. Beep. Someone was holding his hand.

"Squeeze my hand, Don. If you can hear me, just squeeze." Mac's voice.

What a friend.

Suddenly it all came back to him. An explosion. Mac reaching into his bleeding and battered chest doing some emergency medical thing, no doubt. Damn, it had burned. They knew it was a bomb, so why didn't they wait. Everyone was out. Ahh, it was all a blur anyway.

"Mac?" He mumbled.

"I'm here… Don, so is Stella."

He opened his eyes and spotted Mac leaning over him. Than Stella came in and kissed him on the cheek, telling him everything would be all right.

Everything would be all right. Yes, his wife would pull through and yes he would make love to her again, and yes they would raise their precious, amazingly beautiful daughter together.

He chuckled to himself as he pictured bouncing a toddler on his knee and later fighting her over a boyfriend he found in his closet. Laughing harder he heard a voice.

"Flack?" Mac was standing in front of him. Blocking that piece of tile. Why hadn't he noticed?

"Hello, Mac." He allowed a smile. "I was just thinking about my little girl."

"Yeah… she's doing fine. Misses her mother though. Lindsay called a bit ago."

Don perked up a bit. "Nothing on Stella. She's been in there a good 6 hours. I'm getting extremely paranoid."

Mac nodded. He sat next to Don and just watched him. "I'd like to tell you everything will be fine. I'd like to tell you I know how you feel. But I can't do either. I've never sat waiting for Claire to come through something like this. I don't know what's going on."

Don shrugged. "Yeah… no one's told me anything. I'm really worried. What would I do if I lost her?"

Mac didn't speak.

Suddenly a doctor came out of the double doors across the hall. He spotted Don and headed straight for him.

Don's whole body stiffened and he stood slowly.

"She's going to be just fine, Detective!" The doctor had a huge smile spread across his face despite the sweat soaked head and the bloody scrubs.

Don's breath caught in his throat as he shook his hand. "When can I see her?"

"Give us another twenty minutes to close her up and she'll be brought back to her room. She'll be out two or three days, but you can be with her throughout that." He retreated back to the Operating Room.

Mac hugged Don and smiled. "Well, I suppose I'll get back to work. I've worked out Danny and Lindsay's schedule; so don't even think about that. And they're taking lots of pictures for the two of you." He left quietly and Don let out a sigh of relief.

He slipped into Stella's room where he pressed his hands against the window. The sun was coming up, shedding a beautiful light across the bay. His eyes wandered over to the empty gap in the skyline. Mac may not have been able to tell Don he knew what he was going through. However, he did lose Claire and that was ten thousand times harder to deal with.

Mac and Stella walked into the station, both coated in black soot, both teary eyed. Officer Don Flack stood up in silent shock before rushing to them. "You're all right!" He exclaimed.

"Flack…" Mac stumbled into his friends arms. "I lost Claire."

Silence filled the station as Mac began to cry.

The monitor's hooked to Stella's limp body beeped and whirred in regular patterns, giving Don an odd sense of comfort. He'd not moved from that spot since the day before, when they had brought his wife back to him.

Her eyes opened slowly. Damn she hated hospitals. "I'm sick of this place." She croaked with a slight smile.

Don looked up. "Hey, baby." His eyes danced with the pleasure he felt seeing her alive. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I lived through the scariest nine months of my life." She reached weakly to him, her hand falling short.

Half a breath later, he had her cradled carefully in his arms. "Oh, Stella!" The tears fell from his eyes onto her already damp hair. He kissed her tenderly.

She softly moaned, content to be in his arms.

"I thought I was going to lose you… and I didn't know what I was going to do… I didn't know how I was going to take care of Jordan and work-"

She reached up and placed a finger on his lips, silencing him. "I love you"

He smiled. "I love you too, Stella Flack."

She grinned, finally feeling like she belonged somewhere, was needed by someone. Feeling a little less like Little Orphan Stella and more like a mother and a wife.