When Hailey enters the main hall she tries to locate Vanessa or even Kim, but she can't find any of them, she walks up to a nurse to ask for Vanessa's room but she is cut by Jay who appears from nowhere and gently orients her away to talk privately.
"I talked to my brother and told him to stall a little bit so you have time to get here, and before you ask, no I didn't tell him why, but I think we really have to think this through now, we have to come clean to the medical staff, at least for the evidence collection, we won't have a second chance at that..." Jay was trying to get all his emotions in check to negotiate with his partner without getting emotional, he was beyond exasperated and couldn't figure out if he was closer to punch a wall or cry.
Hailey was observing him, for a minute there, she felt like fighting him, like physically, she was mentally strained, it seems like nobody was leaving her a second to think, she is stretched so thin she feels like she was going to pop at the tiniest annoyance. But deep down, she understands what Jay means, he means well. He always ever means well, so that's what she goes with.
"Jay, I know you mean well, but there is no "we" in this situation, there is only what Vanessa wants and needs, and what we can do to help her achieve that, I will talk to her and help her understand her choices but I'm not pressuring her either way and you need to make peace with that."
Jay exhales and they just stare at each other for a moment, he feels like whatever connection they naturally have, is breaking right now, maybe forever. He hated that, feeling like he was an annoyance to her as if he was the one being unreasonable.
"What did Voight want?" he asks without transition, he hopes talking about Voight would redirect Hailey's irritation towards another person "Did he suspect something?"
"Not really... I mean hell, I don't know he asked me if the story we're telling is true, said he would ask you too..."
Jay wanted to tell her we couldn't promise her to lie, but decided for another revelation instead, if she was going to be pissed at him better to get in front of it now.
"Look, I don't want you to freak out but I grabbed the clothes she was wearing when we found her, I bagged them and I intend to submit them for DNA collection. And please before you fight me on this too, we can always submit these things with a bogus case number or as an anonymous file." He was pleading with his eyes, fighting the tears threatening to drop, and then, she couldn't find the strength to refuse him.
"I'm not fighting you, this has nothing to do with you or me..." she wishes she could hug him to show she wasn't really pissed at him, but instead she gives him something he needs more right now, a small victory "But I hear you and we can run the clothes for DNA, see what comes up, if it comes clean then we don't talk about it anymore, Ok?"
Jay hesitates, but then acquiesces and with just a tilt of his head, signals the end of their little side-bar and leads her to the exam room where Vanessa was being treated.
In the room she sees both Kim and Vanessa sitting at the edge of the bed in silence, and on the other side of the room, Will and Maggie are talking in low voices.
"Hey", she says as she approaches her two squad-mates, "How are you feeling?" she asks automatically.
"Hum good, feeling better." Vanessa answers without really looking up.
Kim simply smiles to her, and before she can say anything, Hailey asks without really asking "Would you mind giving us a minute, please?" Kim always diplomatic answers with the affirmative but leaves the room with a reluctant look on her face.
Then Hailey turns her attention to the medics behind her and goes with a blatant lie,
" Will, Jay wants to have a word with you, he is right outside" she adds to get rid of him too, he will soon realize that that wasn't true, and she could care less. The brothers will figure it out.
He exchanges a cryptic look with Maggie and then heads out too.
She doesn't know what to do with the head-nurse and decides that right now she will need to risk it because she was one person she knew she could trust with not being invasive right now, but Maggie understands their need for privacy and disappears behind a curtain and pretends to be busy with supplies for her tray.
Hailey having replaced Kim at Vanessa's sides slides her hand in Vanessa's and inhales deeply,
" Vanessa, you know now it's time for you to tell me what happened, you need to tell me what this person did to you. I can see it but you know I need to hear it. I'm so sorry it has to be this way, but you need to be strong for me ok ?" Vanessa starts to shake her head left and right, she pushed the thought away for the last couple of hours, she doesn't want to think about it, she doesn't want to talk about it, she doesn't want to say it. She's made her decision and she thought Hailey had understood, this wasn't going to be that neat little incident in her life, where she goes through every hoops the system lays in front of her, for once she is making a decision for herself, she is not going to lay there and watch the whole world look at her destruction.
All she has to do is clench her teeth, and let them check her and fix her very likely broken wrist and bruised face, get some Ibu, and call it a day.
She knows if she opens her mouth she is gonna cry and there is no way she can stop now if that happens.
" We need to know so we can help you the best we can, Maggie and I here are the only ones who need to know right now."
Her breathing is getting very uneven, she is hyperventilating, her vision narrows, she realizes that she doesn't have enough strength to fight back Hailey constant assault of care and kindness, she wants to lie but she can't find the lies... so she opens her mouth to let go of a silent wailing before blurting "I don't want to, I don't want to Hailey, don't make me, please. Nothing happened...I already told you! I swear...I'm not … I can't". And then she breaks into violent sobs again. Her voice breaks so much that most of the crying is hauntingly silent.
Hailey holds her, she holds her tightly, she whispers things in her ears, she reassures her and focuses like hell on her younger friend because if she doesn't she will break herself.
And when she thought she'd lost that battle she can hear Vanessa trying to get something out,
"I, I … I can't say it" she gasps, eyes wide open realizing that as long as she doesn't say it, it's still a concept, a thing that happens to people, people she knew, a thing that she narrowly escaped so many times before, so long ago, she can even hear clearly echoing in her head the voice of one of the foster mom, a very religious old lady who used to say: "Words have power, if you say something out loud, then you're willing it into the world", so it made no sense to her to say it out loud.
Truths can exists without ever being said loudly.
"Vanessa, honey, look at me, were you raped?" As soon as she says it, Hailey hopes for a split second that the answer will be no, maybe she got it wrong, maybe she was doing too much projecting... but that was childish wishful thinking when in an exhale she hears the younger woman letting out with a whisper " Yes, I... I... yes".
This time both Maggie and Hailey are there to collect her between their arms when she crumbles again, the nurse silently made her way back stand closer to them, knowing when she is needed is a talent she was born with. She gently leads Vanessa from her sitting position to lay her down on the bed to give her some oxygen, the young girl was having a full-blown panic attack.
"Sweety you're alright. You already survived this, you're gonna make it to the other side I promise. But for now, you need our help ok? We have to check you out and collect some physical evidence. Do you understand?" again without uttering a word or looking at her, eyes fixated on the ceiling Vanessa finally nods her ok for the rape-kit.
Will had left the room and left the little group of a few minutes to let them conspire what they needed to conspire. He knew Jay wasn't looking for him since they had talked a few minutes before, but he was polite enough to pretend to believe it. But eventually, he still had a job to do, and he had a hurt patient to look after, so after a couple more minutes he knocks back on the door and enters the room again " Maggie how was the preliminary check? What do you say, should we get her to CT scan? Or should we call in Ortho for the broken wrist?", he tried as hard as he could to sound casual, but his reappearance has sent the young cop on the bed on an episode of panicked breathing.
Maggie drops whatever she was doing and signs to him to meet outside the room " Can you get me, Natalie, instead, and maybe have April on stand-by please?" Will looks at her with surprise and quickly obliges without discussion, he knows not to argue with Maggie, not when she is in this aggravated state.
He still adds " Will we talk about this at some point or ?"
She just looks at him with a sad look and says that she doesn't know that right now.
When it starts, fight has left Vanessa's body, she knows to survive this, she will have to detach a bit, hell, to detach a lot. She was used to it, her whole life has been a long stretch of detachment to survive.
Do not get close to anyone, to anything, do not cherish belonging or places, or people... keep to yourself, and you'll live to see another day.
That was her rule book, as unfair as it was, it had helped her thus far. Being so resilient that you don't let daily unpleasantness disturb the course of your life. Lately, it had helped her become a good cop; she doesn't get phased by ugliness.
She is a survivor, and survivors survive.
She needed to hold onto that, she won't be the first nor the last, she remembers the secret talks whenever she was moved to a new group home, all the kids had to know how to survive predation, how to endure the amount of touching that was impossible to avoid at one point or another. Girls had to learn how to transform unwanted attention on the mildest assault possible. Don't let them put it in you, because as traumatic as rape was, the real implied consequence was being pimped out to the whole neighborhood. Vanessa had seen this scenario unfolding plenty of times.
She very much doubted the women around her had any idea how that life was really like.
Now she was on a new mission, her whole life has prepared her for this moment, she still didn't want to disclose to her team and have them investigate this, this couldn't happen. But right now she just needed the exam to be done, then maybe she would be able to move on.
"Do you need me to stay or to go ?" Hailey's voice broke her out of her haunting thoughts, she looked at the blonde, who was looking at her with her signature mommy face, like she was nursing a small child.
She shot a quick glance around the room, it was now overcrowded with people, at least she felt overcrowded. April was the first one to join them, and then Natalie has arrived too. Maggie was giving them a short briefing on the case, they were looking at her with a mix of seriousness and softness that made her feel nauseous, now the OB-gyn was talking to her with what she assumed was a reassuring tone, but she could only see lips moving.
Her eyes trailed back to Hailey and even though she couldn't find it in her to answer, she extended her valid hand to grab hers and squeezed it hard. She needed her to stay.
And then it began.
"Are you ready?" Maggie's voice asks but Vanessa doesn't answer.
The nurse tries again, "Were you wearing this during the assault?" this time Vanessa shakes her head no.
"I'm sorry sweety you will have to say it out loud, Hailey is here as your friend but also as a police officer, whether you decide to pursue this or not it's up to you, but that's protocol, you need to answer the questions out loud, do you understand? " Vanessa nods then answers "Yes, I understand".
Very gently Maggie asks again "Were you wearing this tonight ?", " No", she answers softly, "Ok we will still bag them, there may be transfers of DNA on it".
While Maggie goes through the questions, April gently leads her behind the curtain so she can take off her clothes and give her a paper gown to formally start the exam.
First, they have her stand still for a moment while they take pictures of her bruises.
It looks bad, and she can't remember most of the hits, the one on her back she remembers, her purple left wrist also, most of the rest she can't remember how they happened.
She can't remember how long it took anyway. 5 minutes ? 2 hours? She couldn't tell.
After the pictures, she has to lay on the examination bed, and while Maggie still asks some questions as they go through the steps, April is now drawing up some blood, and Natalie prepares a tray with all the swabs and gynecological tools.
Vanessa tries to avoid all eye contact for a while and continues to answer with apathy.
But some questions are just too hard to answer, so when that happens she just looks straight into Maggie's eyes and shakes her head.
The Head-Nurse says that's alright, that she will have a chance later to give more details.
To remember better.
Of course, Vanessa hopes she won't.
She prays it ends soon, their academy class about sexual assault was quite poor, but she remembers well the steps of the rape kit.
The questions, the photos, the swabbing, the DNA collecting under the fingernails and hairs, and the anal and vaginal examination. It's all a lot longer than she thought it would be.
Now Maggie has finished with the questioning. The three women were operating silently, in perfect sync.
Natalie describes to her every single step she is taking, so she has time to picture it and prepare herself for the intrusiveness of it all.
"Now I'm going to swab the genital area for fluids", this is when Vanessa's body tensed, and she blurts out " But I took a shower! I took a shower after, I'm sorry but I ..." she starts hyperventilating again, she was squeezing Hailey's hand very hard, and looking at her as if she could fix it for her.
"That's alright honey, even if you took a shower there might still be traces, don't worry about that now, ok, breathe, we're nearly through".
The 3 medical women looked at one another, knowing too well that a shower might render completely useless the whole exercise.
But they needed her calm to finish, and honestly, they may be lucky and still collect something, hair or semen, something that could nail the son of a bitch who attacked the young officer.
"Ok so now I'm gonna need you to breathe very deeply, I'm going in to do the pelvic exam so I can assess how much damage you sustained there ok?"
At this point, she really thought she was prepared for it but turns out she wasn't.
Turns out nobody ever is, her body starts trembling violently, she can't control it, she won't have anyone or anything probe in there.
The way it hurts, she doesn't think she will be able to.
It feels so swollen and raw. She is again in a state of restlessness, she can't process her surroundings. She can't hear what they're telling her, she retracts her legs and sits up and tries to gather her knees to her chest to gather herself.
After a few minutes, Hailey decides it safe enough to come closer, and sits on the bed beside her and again whispers things to her ear to calm her down.
While she does it, April comes up too and offers "We're so close now...But look, I can give you a mild sedative so you don't have to feel it all? It's gonna take a minute and you will feel relaxed. And then we will be done. Its 5 more minutes."
Vanessa starts to calm down, she holds onto Hailey and can't keep her eyes off of her, Hailey nods yes with pleading eyes, and finally, she lays back to the intended position for the pelvic exam, presses Hailey's hand harder than she ever did and closes her eyes.
When its all over, after the medical team is done cleaning up the table, and Vanessa is allowed to go behind the curtain to change back into fresh sweats, Hailey gathers Maggie, Natalie, and April and silently remind them the terms of this examination. Only Hailey would collect the evidence bags who were now labeled with made-up initials. As far as anyone else knew they did a classic fix up and send off.
That part was actually the only contentious point, they just couldn't make peace with the idea of releasing the young woman that same night, but Vanessa had flipped at the idea of staying there the night, and after all, she went through nobody had found in them to force her to do yet another thing she didn't want to.
After a few minutes, Vanessa is done changing, and after a couple of failed tentatives, requests Hailey's help to tie her hair down on a loose ponytail. When that's done she immediately pulls the hood of her shirt all the way down under her eyebrows. She can still feel people staring, but this at least gives her a sense of protection.
"You did so well..." Hailey starts but her voice breaks, she can't speak anymore, her own body so tensed she feels like she was about to snap in a thousand pieces. Everything she's been bottling up till now was menacing to break free.
So now it's Vanessa's turn to comfort Hailey as she brings her into a tight hug. She doesn't want her to see her picking up on her wavering look, already regretting having agreed to do all of it in the first place.
The last thing they needed to do was bandaging her left arm, which wasn't broken after all but heavily bruised.
April announces that it would take her another five minutes to finish that.
Hailey decides she will use this time to get some air and gather herself before facing the rest of the squad who was no-doubt still waiting for them.
Her brain is still working overtime, she doesn't know how long they will be able to keep up this charade.
She hoped Vanessa will come around soon, but she wasn't so sure about that.
Herself has been hurt on the job years ago while working with her previous squad and she's never told anyone how bad it got, not then, and still, not now, only Jay had succeeded in breaking through because he had looked where he wasn't supposed to.
"How is she?" Kim went up to her as soon as she entered the waiting area.
"She is ok... they're actually discharging her tonight."
"Good" answers Voight, "But both of you cannot go back to your flat, it's under wrap for the forensics team."
"Fuck! I didn't even think about that" answered Hailey passing her hands through her hair.
"You can stay with me tonight, I have a spare room and tons of clothes." Offered Kim cheerfully. She didn't want anyone else to beat her to it.
All the guys were also offering their extra bedrooms and couches, but she already knew she had the best prospect.
"Thank you Kim" Hailey simply answered, too exhausted to drag this discussion.
"Ok, now that's settled" Voigt turned to the whole team who was now gathered around him, "I'm expecting all of you sharp tomorrow, its gonna be a short night, maybe several...but none of us are getting any meaningful rest until we catch that prick."
Before Voight finished with his short send-off, Vanessa accompanied by Maggie appeared through the door, holding a bag of medication with her right hand, her left one freshly bandaged.
" We are releasing you under your care, she has no life-threatening wounds so if she feels more comfortable at home there is no reason for us to keep her here" announced the nurse, trying to sound light and casual like it was just a routine call.
But she was looking into Hailey's eyes to show her she was still playing the part, and that she was releasing Vanessa against her best judgment, but of course, the young woman refused to stay.
" Thank you, thank you so much, and please let Natalie and April know too".
To anyone not paying attention this seemed like a normal polite conversation between professionals, but what Hailey was thanking their team for, is for lying to everyone to protect Vanessa.
"But of course, don't mention it."
After the doctor was gone the team rounded around Vanessa to express their relief.
"I'm so happy to see you ready to kick it!" shouts Adam when he levels with her.
"Good to see you on your feet already" adds Kevin with a little fist bump on her shoulder.
Bracing for contact Vanessa barely flinches back and even tries a smile "Thank you guys you really didn't have to stay all this time!" She tries to keep an upbeat voice, "You heard the doctor, I'm good to go, and you all need to go home now! Sarge tell them!"
"We're off now Kid, but we needed to make sure you were alright", answered Voight with a low voice and a reassuring smile, "How long will have the cast on ?"
" A week, renewable if it feels some kind of way by then".
" Good, take the time off, but you will have to come by rather soon, we still need to gather your testimony and have a look at the forensics, we're not stopping until we find this guy I promise" and then turning to the rest of the team "We don't know what this is yet, everybody sleeps with their gun bedside tonight, copy?"
"Copy sarge," they say in unison.
Vanessa just nods and smiles, she doesn't feel so bad anymore, the sedative she was given is helping a lot in that regard. She prepares for more touching as the guys all say goodbye, but at last, when she thinks she is done with the pretending, Kim approaches her and says "We're gonna be roommates for a lil while! At least a good thing in a sea of shit right?" an inquisitive look flashes through her eyes, she looks at Hailey who answers the silent question "It's just for a little while, the house is still under... investigation, and I thought we could be more comfortable at Kim's but if you prefer another accommodation I'm sure we can think of something?" Hailey tried to convey so much softness in her sentence, but in reality, she can't think of any alternative; and it must have worked because Vanessa just offers a smile and says "Thank you so much, you really didn't have to... we won't stay in your space too long" to which Kim answered "Don't be silly, I was always a bit jealous of you guys! Being Intelligence roommies !" She offers her arm and leads both girls outside " Come, we can take my car".