Why's this hospital so dim?

What a stupid thing to notice, he chastises himself, as he sprints down the corridor alongside the gurney. He's only been in this hospital one other time, years ago. He doesn't remember the lighting being so poor. And the smell. Like an indoor swimming pool and … what is that, popcorn?

Is it a new kind of disinfectant? A Covid thing?

Maybe it's his brain's way of distracting him from the situation on hand. From the memory of the awful ambulance ride, of seeing his child covered in blood, of being reminded acutely of a nearly identical situation almost a year and a half ago.

Dear God, he thinks desperately. Please. Please, I can't lose her too.

Two weeks ago

She's still so beautiful.

It's the first thought he has as they take a seat by the window. He feels a fleeting guilt for having it. No, not for having the thought – he's a red-blooded male, after all – but for how quick, easy, familiar it is. And dammit if the same thought hasn't popped into his head every time he's seen her since they reconnected that awful night sixteen months ago.

Still, if he's being honest, he's always had feelings for Olivia, even when – no, especially when – Kathy was still alive. Which is not to say that he didn't love his wife – he did, really – but Olivia was just … something else to him. Knowing he would never, ever, act on those feelings (and it was moot because neither would she) was enough to keep his guilt at bay for over a decade. He loved his wife. They had a healthy, mature, and, yes, loving relationship. She was the mother of his five children. So what if he thought – thinks – his partner is attractive? What man doesn't have some female acquaintance, friend, coworker in his life who happens to be attractive?

Okay, Olivia is more than attractive. She's gorgeous. A knockout, as Richard Wheatley put it. Those eyes, those lips, those … breasts. But so what? So what if, in a so-called "parallel universe," he could have foreseen a future for the two of them? What mattered was his actions. He had never cheated on Kathy. He would never have cheated.

But that was then. And now? His wife's been dead for over a year, and still, all he feels is grief. An all-powerful, gut-wrenching grief. That, and a crushing loneliness. Despite his constant proximity to his children and grandchildren and his mother and his boss, Ayanna, whom, despite their obvious differences, he gets along with shockingly well, he can't shake the sense that he's all alone. Sixteen months later, he still doesn't know how to sleep alone. How to have breakfast alone, how to go to bed alone, how to grocery-shop alone. He's never done those things alone.

And his partner (No, she's not his partner anymore, he reminds himself. She's a Captain; his superior, if anything. But inside the privacy of his head, she'll always be his partner) is sitting across from him at this pretentious little eatery in Tribeca, nursing her weird-ass tea drink while he thumbs his eight-dollar espresso. At three in the afternoon the place is packed; full of hipsters and affluent soccer moms and seemingly random thirty-somethings clad in Goldman Sachs and Google and BCG fleece vests, some with surgical masks around their chins, munching on twelve-dollar bite-size Turkish pastries and sipping fancy coffee drinks, eyes and fingers glued to their Macs. The restaurant is dimly lit, adorned with Middle East-themed artwork, and lots and lots of hanging plants. Olivia chose the place, with its maroon booths and rickety wooden chairs that look plucked from a third-grade classroom, and its eclectic, farm-fed-this and locally-sourced-that twenty-two-dollar menu items. The precinct is close, but not that close, and so is Noah's school, he recalls. He hopes that's why she chose it, and not because she's into shit like this now.

Noah. He was shocked to learn she had a son. Why? Because he was shocked to learn she'd had a relationship long enough to lead to one. A little arrogant of him, he knows.

Good for her, he'd said to Fin. But of course what he'd really wanted to ask was, who's the father?

"Never pegged you for an espresso guy."

He looks up sharply. "What's that?"

She furrows her brow, nods at his drink.

"Oh. Yeah, well. When in Rome."

"Ha! Funny." She cups her drink, her elegant fingers encircling it like a security blanket. Her nails are painted pale pink, he notices. Badass Benson with pale pink nails. He likes that.

She's nervous, he realizes, with what he can only describe as a sense of relief. Not that he wants to put her on edge, but it's good to be reminded that she's human. He's not the only fallible one.

He realizes he needs to snap out of it, offer her more than just his physical presence. He's the one who called her, after all. "Had to get used to it in Italy. Now I can't go back to American coffee."

She smiles sadly. "Do you miss Rome?"

Not really. I just miss Kathy. "I miss the culture, the richness of it, you know?"

It's a bullshit answer and she knows it, but he thinks she appreciates the lie. The truth is too uncomfortable. But what, exactly, is the truth? he wonders. He does miss Kathy, but is it her, or the role she played in his life, that he really misses?

"Of course. Can't beat Rome for culture." She pauses, adds with a twinkle, "Except maybe Paris."

"Paris, mmm." A memory is summoned. Of a weekend getaway with Kathy late in 2019, just before the pandemic. Elizabeth was in town to stay with Eli. Of a dinkier-than-expected hotel room, an argument about whose fault it was they'd overpaid. Of a delayed Easyjet flight, a cab driver who ripped them off, a snowfall that left the city paralyzed and Kathy with a twisted ankle. They had one of their worst fights about money after that trip; one of several during an especially stressful six-month spate just after his undercover stint in Dubai, when he'd nearly been killed, only to emerge with a cracked tooth his filthy-rich employer refused to pay to fix, emotionally shaken and severely underpaid. "Kathy and I took a weekend there once," he tells her. "It was … nice."

She raises an amused eyebrow. "Just nice?"

He considers his response. "Well, the romance of it, you know? That was a bit lost on us. Too expensive to get the full Paris experience, and anyway, we were this old married couple with five kids under our belt. We did the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, ate a croissant, and went home. It was more of a … bucket list thing." He winces. Bad choice of words.

She cocks her head sadly. "I'm sorry, Elliot."

He waves her off. "No, no. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be such a downer."

Olivia lets a beat pass. "You're allowed." She shakes her head. "I'm sorry. I hate when people say that to me."

"It's okay."

"Do you miss her?" The sincerity of the look she gives him; her enormous brown eyes narrowed slightly, her full bottom lip forming a near-pout. It's one of her classic expressions, one that shows off the exoticness of her beauty in a way that always takes his breath away.

He shrugs helplessly, furrows his brows. "Yeah, I miss her. 'Course I miss her. Every second of every day." It's an exaggeration, but not by a lot. Olivia, he'd missed. In the early years, when he still couldn't get over how things had ended between them, how he'd ghosted her for no good reason other than his own, selfish need to save face after Jenna. Olivia's absence in his life had been an all-encompassing, punishing loss; a gaping, bleeding hole, brutal in its relentlessness. He'd never been addicted to drugs, but in those first few days, he imagined that this was what withdrawal felt like. And then finally when he adjusted, weeks later, the need to see her was sometimes so overpowering he'd lock himself in the bathroom and lean over the counter trying to get ahold of himself.

And yet he'd resisted the urge to keep tabs on her, to call anyone he knew who knew her, who might tell him how she was doing. He didn't follow the news, didn't google her, stayed away from any social media where he might run in to her. Kathy was pleased, thought he'd turned over a new leaf, had rededicated himself to their marriage. But the truth was that being reminded of Olivia – of the loss of her, of the fact that it was man-made, his fault completely – was just too painful.

And then in the middle years, when they'd moved to the Middle East so he could do private security because they couldn't survive on his pension, and his relationship with Kathy had stabilized because at least they could now afford to do more than eke out an existence. By then he was used to working alone and he didn't think about Olivia as much, but once in a while he'd have a dream that she'd been killed on the job and he'd wake up in a cold sweat heaving.

It was in the later years, when they'd moved to Rome and he and his wife had rediscovered how to not only survive, but to also have fun together, how to enjoy the little things and the big things, that he finally taught himself how to live without thinking about Olivia constantly: how to live in the present, accept the present, rather than treat the present as a waystation for an alternate, fantasy, future when he would see her again, be with her again.

When he would get to be honest with her about how much he loved her.

Such contentment with his present lasted a nice little while, gave him a reprieve from the angst that had plagued him for the better part of a decade. He and Kathy had taken strolls through the winding, cobblestone streets, eaten delicious, fattening foods, had watched their youngest son become fluent in a second language. They'd become grandparents.

It had been stressful to live for so long suspended between two realities, pining for a day that would surely never come, not least because, even if he and Olivia did, somehow, cross paths again, it would be too much to hope for that she might forgive him.

In Rome, amidst the fountains and the art and the food and the history, he was finally at peace with his life.

But then one day, about a year before they'd come to New York for that ill-fated trip, when he and Kathy and their pubescent son were holed up in their little apartment for days on end, locked down and frightened out of their wits of a virus they didn't understand, everything changed again.

And he realized point-blank that he'd been fooling himself. He needed to see her, and he was willing to risk his marriage to reconcile with her. Because even if she didn't love him back, he needed her to forgive him before it was too late. Because the last nine-odd years without her had just been a form of auto-pilot for him. A way of passing time.

It had started with a phone call from his mother. New York was getting hit, hard. Ambulances blared constantly, hospitals were at capacity, there was a shortage of protective gear and of toilet paper; morgues were overflowing. There was even talk of bringing into port a friggin' Navy ship just to relieve the hospitals. And then, the bombshell: his mother had tested positive, and then Kathleen had too. Freaked out and feeling helpless, he Facetimed his daughter three times a day. She and his mother were quarantining together, and seemingly having a ball: As it turned out, both were mostly asymptomatic, and they passed the time playing cards and drinking rum and binge-watching Breaking Bad in his mother's beach house.

All of which had gotten him thinking about his old life, the people he'd cared about once upon a time.

It was so silly, really, but right around day three his mother had insisted on emailing him an article. It was something she'd read on "the computer," about people with Type A blood, and how some studies suggested they were more likely to contract Covid and suffer worse symptoms. His mother, who was Type O, knew he was Type A (she blamed his father for that, of course.) But as soon as he read the damn thing, where did Elliot's mind go? Not to Eli and Kathleen, who were also Type A (his other children were O). But straight to Olivia.

Still, he'd resisted calling her. The most he'd been able to bring himself to do was check the NYPD bulletin board of deaths. He'd scrolled through the names, holding his breath as he'd hit the B's, freaking out when he'd seen the name Benson, only to realize it was some dude named Carl Benson, who'd been a beat cop on Staten Island in the 60's and had passed away peacefully at the age of 98. He exhaled only once he safely hit the C's.

It had taken another eight months to get up the guts to make a phone call.

To Fin.

A fourteen-minute conversation, each of them caught up on their respective lives, and still, Elliot hadn't gotten up the guts to inquire about Olivia. Fin must've known that that was why he called, but he never volunteered a thing.

Olivia pulls him out of his reverie. "It's a process, El."

He blinks. "What?"

She sighs. "Grieving. It isn't linear. You have days when you're fine, then days when it's unbearable. But over time it does get easier."

The comment catches him off-guard, and full of guilt about what – whom – he was really thinking about. "With all due respect, Liv, you don't know about grief."