March 8th 2020

Chapter 68
Their Fear For the Girl

As the day had progressed, the vigil for Sophie had continued to shift. There were always some of her fellow officers with them, though they came and went as the need arose. The rest of them, Sophie's friends, her old caretaker/nanny, Lucas' mother… they were mainstays. For the time being, they didn't mind there not being any updates. If all remained as it was, it meant that Sophie was still back there, holding it together.

With the morning came the start of the day for the rest of the world, and that meant news reports, and articles, the current events… One of them was about her, their friend. She wasn't named as of yet, but they knew it was her, they knew… her. And to read about the event that had landed her here…

One of the officers who'd just arrived had gone and shown his phone to Officer Randall, and when he'd read it he'd looked upset. It left them with an impression like something had been printed that shouldn't have been. The group had looked to one another, with a question left unsaid between them. Should they look it up, see for themselves? In the end, the reasoning became that they were going to find out sooner or later. Rosa had once again been the one to dig it out for them, and it hadn't taken long for her to find what she figured had to be the thing that upset her partner and former training officer.

"She was undercover," Rosa whispered.

"What?" Maya blurted out, as did Riley, and Asher, and a few more of them. It hadn't been more than a whisper, but collectively… They froze for a moment, looking around, before looking to Rosa again.

"Why would she…" Lucas shook his head.

"I guess since she's newer, no one knew her yet, better for a cover?" Dylan offered. It made sense, but even then… All they could think was how impossible it all felt. Their friend, their Sophie, out there, undercover…

Rosa read on, and so the story came together. An unnamed undercover officer had been sent in to help pull a witness into hiding, only things had gone sideways, and the officer and the witness had been made to get into a car. There had been a chase, between the assailant and another officer – Beau Randall, they had to guess. The details grew fuzzy from that point on, except to say that there had been a crash, and a standoff, and in the end the witness had gotten off with barely a few scratches. The assailant had been superficially injured, and caught. As for the undercover officer, all the article said was that they remained unidentified and under care for life-threatening injuries.

"Is that why they're here?" Riley spoke in a smaller whisper than ever, looking to the cops in the waiting room. "In case someone comes after her?"

None of it felt real, none of it felt possible. It felt more like something out of a TV show, not their lives, not Sophie's life. Except it was…

"I know that she couldn't have said anything about it, but… We live with her," Ray looked to Asher at his side, as stunned as he was. "That couldn't have just happened today, could it?"

They'd tried not to get caught up on everything they'd read, what was probably true and what might not. It was hard to think about how, even if Sophie pulled through this, she might still not be able to tell them what had happened to her out there. As for right here and now, there was very little they could do but wait. They could have been anywhere else, more at ease, at someone's home if not their own, but who were they kidding? They'd be doing more or less what they were doing now, here, except they'd be doing it out there. And if they stayed here, well, when the time came where they'd be able to see their friend, they'd be right here.

"Maya…" She looked up when she thought she'd heard…

"Sammy?" she almost bolted to her feet, the quicker to pull her little brother into a hug. "How are you here?" she asked, her voice sounding more like 'I'm so glad you're here.'

"How do you think?" Sam told her, turning even as she looked up to find Shawn Hunter standing there, complete with flowers. "I made it through one class and I couldn't focus. I went back to the house and he offered to give me a ride."

"How are you like this?" Maya moved from her brother to her father, and he gave as good of a hug as she did.

"Hold on, I got another one of these from your mom," Shawn renewed the embrace. "She wanted to come, but it would have been difficult, with the kids…"

"No, I get it," Maya promised him, taking a deep breath, letting it out. She didn't even know what time it was anymore, but it didn't matter. She was just so happy to see them.

"How's Sophie?" Sam asked.

"She's…" Maya started to reply, even as she tried to find what she was supposed to tell him.

"Awake." They turned to find Mr. Mantovani standing there, smiling at them. "And asking for all of you. We promised to obey, on the condition that she pace herself and go little by little."

"Is she… I mean, is everything okay now?" Riley asked.

"There's been no word as to that," Mr. Mantovani replied. "But the doctor said this was all the more reason for her not to outdo herself on the visitors. The group looked to one another. Who would get to go first?

"I think you two should go," Nadine spoke up, looking to Maya and Lucas. They both looked surprised, ready to turn down this offer, but one look around the room showed that the vote was fully supported by everyone else.

So, Maya and Lucas followed Chiara's father out of the waiting room. Without a word, Lucas took Maya's hand, and she gave it a squeeze. One look at him said it plainly. He was as frightened as she was at the thought of seeing Sophie, seeing what state she was in. All day they had been left to consider just how she'd been hurt, and what kind of surgery they had to do on her. No matter what they came up with, would it be better or worse than what had actually been done to her?

All they could hear as they approached her room was the sound of the heart monitor, and then as they came closer, they could make out the sound of Diana Zvolensky's voice, in a low hush, joined by that of Teresa Mantovani. When they got to the door, Chiara's father told them to wait a moment. He went into the room and, a few seconds later, his wife and Sophie's mother emerged from the room.

"You go on ahead," Diana told them. She looked better than she'd done when she first came into the hospital, which they had to take as a good sign, a showing that Sophie might have been out of danger. "Much as I'd rather stay with her, I know there are others who need it as much as I do." After a beat, Maya came forward and hugged the woman, who gladly returned the gesture.

"My father drove up with my brother, he sent these," Maya told her, holding up the flowers.

"They are lovely," Diana smiled. "I'll see about finding a vase."

With that, the three parents moved off down the hall, leaving their daughters' friends standing there to look at one another. This was it.

"Are you going to make me wait all day, I know you're out there…"

Sophie. That was her voice, her perfectly Sophie-like voice. It was a bit weak, but all things considered…

Walking into the room, they first saw Chiara, sitting in a chair she had pulled as close to the bed as possible, as though she might have crawled up next to her wife if not for fear of causing her pain of some kind. She looked a lot less stressed than before, but the stress still very much existed in her brow, and to see the figure in the bed, they could see why.

Their pale, freckle-skinned friend looked as though she'd been showered in broken glass, for all the cuts they could find on her arms, her face… A bandage had been applied which kept her right eye covered, and despite the covering of a gown over her body and a blanket over her legs, they could spot signs of more bandaging under there. Still, for all that, what they could see of Sophie's face said she was just so happy to see them. Between painkillers and everything her body had been put through in the last day, their friend looked positively loopy, and they would wholeheartedly take Loopy Zvolensky after the day they'd had.

"Don't I look drop dead gorgeous?"

"Sophie," Chiara frowned.

"She doesn't like my jokes…" Sophie hummed.

"Hate to break it to you, but it's not working much better here," Lucas told her as Maya came up to the bedside, trying not to let any shakiness seep into her voice.

"You look like hell." Sophie looked at her, a miniscule smile lifting her face.

"See, she gets it."

"Don't you ever do that again, Zvolensky," Maya spoke quietly.

"Yes, Miss Hart, I'll do my best."

"What's the verdict on hugs?"

"Maybe just take my hand for now," Sophie suggested, so Maya took her hand. "Talk about complicated family reunions."

"Word of advice, as I'm guessing you're on a heap of drugs right now, you might want to be careful about what you say around your mom and her folks, yeah?"

"Got it," Sophie breathed.

"Any news about… I mean, are you still…" Lucas struggled to ask, coming to stand by Maya's side.

"They can't make promises," Chiara told him.

"The golden rule," Sophie confirmed.

"They will know more over the next few days," Chiara went on.

"Please, don't spend all that time here. It's bad enough I have to," Sophie insisted. "Go, live your lives, go to school, go to work. You have a wedding to plan for, remember? What is it, four months away now? It's still March, right?"

"Last I checked, but I don't even know what time it is anymore, so who can tell?" Maya nodded.

"Right, well, I'd tell you to go home, but I know you won't do it, so at least go to our house. You know the one?"

"Familiar, yeah," Lucas smiled.

"Go, get some rest, then come back later and tell me what the world looks like? I don't think I'm about to see it again any time soon."

So, with both their friends' blessing, and the promise that their old keys would still work, Maya and Lucas vowed to return the following morning and left the room. Walking down the hall, neither one of them said a word. They let the others know where they were going, which also meant that Melinda Friar, Shawn Hunter, and Sam Hart followed them out, while Asher and Ray went up to have their visit. Leading the trio of cars, Lucas drove them out of the hospital lot.

"I can't decide if her making jokes is a good thing," he spoke after a minute.

"I know," Maya replied. On the one hand, they could see it as 'good old Sophie, back the way she's supposed to be.' But the other hand, and the one they found themselves leaning to… that one said something more like their friend was deflecting, trying to present herself as being good, because the alternative was to show that she was anything but fine.

TO BE CONTINUED

See you tomorrow! - mooners