FIFTEEN
It wasn't often that they found themselves with an unexpected moment to themselves, so neither Sharon nor Andy objected when the Chief ordered them to remain in the hospital's waiting area while the others went upstairs to set up their makeshift monitor room (read: empty supply closet). They found a considerably quiet corner in the shade of a sickly looking yucca tree and sat down next to each other, sipping the water Andy had fetched from the cooler.
"Your partner is even more troublesome than I thought," Sharon remarked evenly. Flynn had half-expected her to throw a fit over Provenza's unveiled attempt at blackmail earlier, but she seemed oddly serene. Maybe she, too, felt more comfortable being accompanied into Elliott's room by someone else even though it would admittedly not be particularly smart for that person to be Andy with his temper and deep personal connection to her. He, too, had made peace with the situation. If Elliott tried anything, Provenza would shut him down, he knew. Flynn trusted him to have Sharon's best interest at heart even despite the fact that he would have gladly murdered her in her sleep just a few days ago. People were weird that way.
"Provenza is looking out for you and that might mean that the end of the world is upon us," he told her darkly.
Sharon snorted and almost choked on her water. "Stop making me laugh while I drink!" she admonished in that new tone of hers that he was only just getting used to. She had been playful with him before, but never had he heard such deep affection in her voice. He reached out and took her free hand, gently caressing the back of it with his fingertips.
"Are you really okay with interviewing Elliott? Because if you are, I'm okay with it, too, but if you're doing it out of some strange sense of bravado, you really shouldn't."
"Andy." She squeezed his hand back. "It's alright. I have a weird feeling about the whole thing and I want to know if and how it adds up. The best way is getting him to talk and if he will only talk to me, then so be it."
"Okay," Andy relented. "I just don't want you to get hurt. Emotionally, I mean. We are in enough of a mess as it is, don't you think?"
She gave him a sad smile and looked down at her lap. "You're right."
That profound sadness that he sometimes glimpsed in her was threatening to descend on her again and so Andy quickly fumbled for a change of topic. This was not the moment to think about their numerous issues. She was mentally preparing for an interview with a hostile witness after all.
"By the way, you did not object when Provenza called you my girlfriend." He brought her knuckles to his lips and dropped a playful kiss to them. "Does that mean I can introduce you to my mom now?"
Her face lit up in amusement and she cocked her head in that way that she did when she was endeared. That, too, was becoming more frequent. Andy was a detective and if he wasn't mistaken just because he hoped that she was in just as deeply as he was, Sharon was showing signs of being pretty smitten with him as well.
"Do you do that with all your girlfriends?" she teased.
"Just the serious ones," Andy quipped.
She opened her mouth to say something else but was cut off by the buzzing of her phone. One look at the display wiped the happy expression right off her face and she got up with a start, pulling her hand back almost roughly in the process.
"Sharon Raydor?" she answered and wandered off, pointedly bringing some distance between them. Puzzled by her sudden withdrawal and annoyed by the fact that she was out of earshot by her own choosing, Andy watched her. She was standing with her back to him, which was probably deliberate, too, but he could see that she was tense. The call only lasted a few minutes and when she came back, she looked a little shaken.
Andy was miffed that she had been so blunt in her attempt to shake him off, so he didn't say anything at first and just raised his eyebrows instead. Too late he realized that he was probably scowling. His face did things when he was irritated that he did not always have under control. Realizing what her hurried departure must have looked like, Sharon softened a bit.
"I'm sorry," she said softly. "That was the hospital."
Andy was confused at first, but then finally caught on. "The one we went to yesterday?"
She nodded. "The blood results came back. I do have a coagulation disorder."
It was impossible to tell from her expression whether it was good or bad news and Andy's understanding of medical terms was so limited that the only thing he knew to do was to raise both of his hands in a gesture of utter helplessness and defeat.
"So, is that bad?"
She weighed her head. "It is certainly not ideal, Andy. That's why they call it a disorder."
"I guess not," Andy said, his heart sinking.
"I can't pronounce the name of that disorder, to be honest." She seemed irritated by the fact that she couldn't and he found that funny despite himself. Sharon Raydor had an all-encompassing desire for control and being unable to correctly name an ailment that she was suffering from must annoy her like hell. "Apparently my body does not always produce enough of one of the substances that is required to make my blood coagulate."
„Not always?" he echoed, now completely confused. „What does that even mean?"
She chuckled at his idiocy and he could not find it in himself to be mad at her for it as he was aware that he must look quite stupid indeed.
"You could say it… comes in waves, I guess? Sometimes, even for longer stretches of time, the blood count is fine, but whenever it is not and I start bleeding, I will lose blood more quickly and for longer than I would without that disorder."
He could tell that she was foregoing a lot of medical terms she had just heard over the phone to explain it to him in a way that he would understand. While it made him feel like an idiot, he was still grateful for that.
"And can it be treated?" he asked. At least he knew which questions to ask now.
"Yes. At the moment, everything seems fine. They usually recommend to run a blood test for patients like me before something like, say, surgery to see if the count is down. If it is, they can substitute the missing clotting substance."
"And avoid major blood loss," Andy concluded and she nodded, obviously relieved that he had caught on and a little pleased with herself for putting it in such simple terms.
"I feel like I just graduated medical school," Andy complained.
"Well, Dr. Flynn. Congratulations," she deadpanned. They both laughed nervously at that, awkwardly ignoring the one question he had not asked. A soft look appeared on her face as she took his hand again.
"That means that if they monitor me very closely, my range of options could be a little wider than my doctor expected."
Andy's heart seemed to skip a beat and he was rendered mute for a moment, just looking into her eyes. He saw warmth there and, quite possibly, relief along with a new, completely different sort of fear. They had both tried very hard to never even entertain the possibility that this could go any further than what they had been warned about. Now that heartbreak didn't seem like the inevitable outcome anymore, the implications of that were suddenly beginning to sink in. Andy felt his hands start to shake.
"Sharon," he said, his voice hoarse. "Just tell me one thing. Are we suing your doctor for falsely telling you that you could never get pregnant again or for falsely telling you that your only option was to terminate the pregnancy? I'm not a lawyer, but doing both would seem a little contradictory."
He really hadn't meant it as a joke, but Sharon burst out laughing anyway. He tried to say something else, but it soon became apparent that there was no stopping her. This was an entirely new side to her as well: He had seen her laugh before, but he had never witnessed her unable to contain it. It was quite a beautiful way of finally seeing her lose control, he thought, grinning stupidly. Her body trembling with laughter, Sharon rested her head against his shoulder and grabbed a fistful of his jacket as if to steady herself. Smirking at her little escapade, Flynn brought his arms around her and held her loosely, his nose in her hair. It tickled him once again, but somehow, ever since her kidnapping, that sensation seemed like the most comforting thing he could imagine.
That was how the Chief found them. She looked stressed out, her hair frazzled in that way that bore evidence to the fact that she had run her hands through it multiple times, her large leather handbag in danger of slipping off her shoulder any second now. Her eyes were blazing.
"I see the two of you are amusing yourself," Provenza said between wheezes when he had caught up with her. The Chief shot him a look, then glared at Sharon and Andy again. Sharon had stopped laughing, sobered up by the Chief's obvious distress and wiped the tears from under her eyes with the backs of her forefingers.
"I don't know what's so funny, Captain, but then I don't think I want to know," the Chief said and it was obvious to Andy that she was currently referring to Sharon as "That Woman" in her head.
"Sergeant Elliott was just found dead in his room," Provenza supplied.
Sharon and Andy looked at each other in shocked silence.
"What?" Sharon asked, the flush her laughing fit had brought into her cheeks draining away in an instant.
"What happened?" Andy asked. "I thought he was stable!"
"He was," Chief Johnson said, visibly annoyed by the very unwelcome complication. "until someone put a pillow over his head and suffocated him."
Provenza lifted both of his hands as if proudly demonstrating a particularly interesting magic trick.
"Congratulations! This is now finally a real major crime and not just a pesky kidnapping case!"
"This is very inconvenient." Having waved Sanchez away when he had offered her her share of the take-out he had gotten for their lunch, the Chief was currently munching her way through a giant bar of chocolate which was never a particularly good sign. Andy threw a sideward glance at Sharon who was absent-mindedly helping herself to one of his fries. She was sitting in his desk chair watching the others discuss theories and Chief Johnson lamenting the general state of her existence.
"Easy on the fries, Captain," Provenza said as he helped himself to one as well. "Or you might find yourself getting really fat in a few months or so."
Sharon shot him a murderous glare, but didn't say anything. Andy leaned back against the side of his desk where he had taken residence after chivalrously having given up his chair to Sharon and rolled his eyes helplessly. As if to prove to them both that he had not gone soft on them, Provenza was being a pain in the ass.
"So let's do this again!" the Chief finally ordered, clapping her hands. The much-needed chocolate fix had apparently helped her focus. "What did we find out about Elliott's background? Tao!"
Tao perked up where he had been attacking his salad and lowered his fork and knife. They were plastic, but judging from the elegant way he held them they could have been the family silver.
"We found out that Sergeant Elliott did not have a happy childhood. Neighbors said that his mother and he never really got along and he moved out as soon as he was eighteen and visited once a week for a very stilted Sunday evening dinner."
The Chief nodded at Sanchez who had cleared the white board and now wrote "unhappy childhood" at the beginning of a long straight line.
"One year ago, Sergeant Elliott's mother committed suicide," Tao added. "Took some pills and left a suicide note. The coroner ruled out homicide."
Chief Johnson nodded at Sanchez who wrote "suicide" on the white board. She then pointed at Gabriel.
"Sergeant Gabriel."
"At the same time, Sergeant Elliott got into the care of a psychiatrist named Dr. Willmer who wrote in his notes that he saw indications of a psychotic disorder triggered by the trauma of his mother's death. When he tried to communicate this to Sergeant Elliott, he stopped coming to his appointments."
Sanchez added "diagnosis" to the white board, right under the word "suicide".
"Captain Raydor," the Chief asked sweetly. "Was that when that famous dinner at your house took place?"
Sharon sat up straighter. The old discord between the two seemed to be back. "That would have been around that time, yes."
"And Sergeant Elliott told you that his mother was the one with the psychosis?"
Sharon nodded. "It was implied, I suppose. He mainly wanted to talk about whether that meant that all the things she did to him could be chalked down to that illness."
"Was he looking for absolution?" Flynn asked and Sharon shrugged, looking put out. She had taken the news considerably well, but given what had happened over the previous days, he feared that her reaction was just delayed due to shock. The human mind had ways of protecting itself and Sharon's mind was quite used to it, he suspected. He leaned back casually and placed his hand over hers that was resting on the desk in front of her. The gesture was disguised by his computer screen to all but Provenza who huffed theatrically.
"Maybe." Chief Johnson walked towards the white board and grabbed a pen then wrote "Raydor kidnapping" and more to the right "murder". Taking a step back to regard the newly completed time line, she shook her head.
"This cannot be a coincidence." She turned around and looked at them all in turn. "Have we learned of anyone who could possibly want him dead?"
"Except for the Wicked Witch here?" Provenza gestured at Sharon who looked annoyed rather than amused by the ill-timed joke. The Chief ignored him.
"He wanted to talk today," Flynn interjected. "Maybe he was going to give up information that would have implicated someone else in Sharon's… the Captain's kidnapping?"
"Give it up already," Provenza grumbled. "No one honestly believes that you refer to her as 'the Captain' anymore."
Flynn ignored him and so did everyone else.
The Chief nodded, having gotten a whiff of blood. "Let's watch the video again. Buzz!"
The tech did as he was told and soon a grainy video from the hospital's surveillance cameras filled his screen. It showed a man in a bulky dark jacket and a baseball cap that was pulled deeply into his face. He seemed to know where the cameras were located, because he avoided ever turning his head in a way that would allow one of them to get even a glimpse of his face. They watched him make his way through the hospital corridor from a side entrance and into Elliott's room, then come out again a few minutes later and vanish outside. There were no cameras in the parking lot, but he had probably known that as well.
"That guy knows his way around a security camera," Tao commented. There was a beat of silence while his comment was sinking in, but then everyone seemed to think the same ting the same time.
"Just like Elliott," Provenza said pointedly. "Presumably."
"Who miraculously wasn't picked up by a single security camera when he kidnapped the Captain," the Chief added grimly. „Everyone, can you please try and find out more about that mysterious maintenance in the garage yesterday?"
The order prompted a sudden flurry of activity and Andy turned around in order to join the others when he felt the Chief's hand on his arm.
"No, not you, Lieutenant." He looked up at her in surprise. She usually wanted all hands on deck in a situation such as this one. The Chief pointed at Sharon. "If someone else was involved, you're back to security detail duty for that… for her. If I may suggest that you don't leave her with the one person who is after her this time?"
Andy shuddered. "No worries, Chief. I won't leave her out of my sight."
"Glad to hear it, Lieutenant." The Chief smirked. This was obviously payback for them winding her up by the elevators earlier. "Especially with those health concerns." She looked at Sharon suggestively. "Let me know if I can offer you any of my chocolate down the road for that, Captain."
With that, she walked off into her office, leaving Sharon at Flynn's desk with her elbows on the table and her head in her hands.
"Oh my God," she groaned. "I'm so screwed."