((Hi, guys! Sorry it took me so long to update! I'll try as hard as I can to update more frequently. Enjoy!))
Shock had brought it on. Riza could've cried as she knelt on the filthy, uneven cobbled ground of the alley, clutching her womb. The gun she had fired shot from slipped from her hand, hitting the sordid stones and sliding off into the rubbish, its contents gone. She had used the rounds to punch a silhouette of a mugger who had just tried to assail her into a wall.
She hadn't even meant to. It had been instinct. The poor sap had thought the immensely pregnant woman easy prey. She was, in a sense. She had been concentrating on ridding herself of the nausea that resulted from merely walking across the street to defend herself from the grubby hand that reached out and drew her in to the shadowy alley. The former lieutenant hadn't harmed him of course…physically anyway. Being shot at did have lasting traumatic effects, whether or not the bullets hit their mark. They did, of course, in this case. But the mark wasn't him. It was around him, as she did in the old days.
It had been months since the incident in the diner. But the baby wasn't due yet. It still had a few more weeks to go. Not that it mattered to the baby. She groaned and gasped, pulling herself onto the sidewalk. Though she had changed her name, Hawkeye's resolve had never left her. Bystanders had been alerted by the gunshots, and were beginning to gawk and gape. An ambulance was called of course, but Riza didn't see. She couldn't see anything beyond her eyelids, closed to help her endure the incredible pain.
"I'm sorry, Colonel, but you cannot go in there," a nurse told him.
"I need to! She's the only witness we've got!" Roy Mustang replied, aggravated. "The woman's a key witness in a missing person case, dammit! Let me see her!"
"She's in labor, sir. Only the father or a party specified by Ms. Grumman are allowed into her room," the nurse told the officer, any mercy worn away by years of disinfectant.
"Wait-she's in labor?! Arrgh! I've only got a few more hours here!" He responded, a fist encased in an ivory glove falling upon the reception desk in the maternity ward of Aquroya's hospital. Due to Hawkeye's official resignation almost a year before, he hadn't been able to maintain a search warrant. It was only luck that Falman maintained some of his contacts in the investigations department, contacts he had made when he worked under Hughes. He had learned through Falman that there was a gun found in an alley that had been registered under a Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye, and that the firearm was involved in a shooting in Aquroya. There weren't any fingerprints, but the 'crime scene' was proof enough. Only she would've shot that silhouette in a wall. The Aquroyan police had been baffled. There was a weapon fired, numerous times, but the only two left on the scene when forces arrived was the supposed assailant, a middle aged man armed with a knife, and a witness- a pregnant woman who, at the scene, only commented in sharp gasps: "he attacked, he attacked" and "I'm so sorry." It was a curious conundrum indeed. The man, the original assailant, was unarmed and unharmed, but had lost consciousness at the scene from sheer terror.
Roy Mustang had been almost certain he would find Riza again. But he only had a few hours. He hadn't a warrant and therefore no official excuse to linger in the city.
A doctor and another nurse attending the patient could hear the yells in the hallway. Both were fully aware of the horrors this woman experienced, though their perspectives, like every other person following the case, were slightly skewed. All thought Ms. Lisa Grumman was merely a witness.
The Ms. Lisa Grumman in question lay on the cold, uncomfortable cot. Her breaths were shallow and her face dripping in sweat. Her mouth was open, trying to swallow as much air as she could. But she did not scream.
The nurse and the doctor were impressed. They thought her perhaps the bravest patient they had ever seen.
But she wasn't as brave as she wanted to be. She did not scream because she didn't want to be heard by the man in the hall. Beyond pain assailing her senses, she could hear his voice echoing from the corridor outside. She could hear the nurse at the desk constantly, calmly responding that at this point only the father of the baby could enter the room, and that Mustang would at least have to ask the father for permission to enter the room.
Riza Hawkeye, no, Lisa Grumman, began to wonder if it was possible that irony could hurt more than labor.